Dec 30 2008
The Future of Education
Video on future of education, high schools, colleges, universities, curriculum, syllabus, exams, assessments, business schools, MBAs, degree courses - by Dr Patrick Dixon, conference keynote speaker for NAIS
- Future of schools, colleges, universities, education.
- Pupils need broader perspective.
- Preparation of children and teenagers for life.
- Syllabus and curriculum.
- Grades and exams.
- How examinations are poor test of workplace skills.
- Challenges of parents and teachers.
- Purpose of education.
- World changing faster than you can plan a syllabus.
- Teaching methods and trends.
- Teaching materials.
- Preparing students for uncertain world.
You know, the topic of the blog today, is “Future of Education”…We all know that things are not going to return to the way they were when your parents or grandparents went to school.
What are we preparing the students of today for tomorrow? Are we preparing them to be workaholics like their baby-boom generation parents. Are they going to be working in manufacturing plants, which have since closed or laid off workers, and had the industry shipped overseas to places where the labor is less expensive?
Technology will dominate, and is already dominating, the future of education. Yet the current schools and institutions need to upgrade their thinking. Yes, the world is changing faster than you can plan a syllabus. By the time a student graduates from college, they must quickly learn that in order to compete, they must never stop the learning cycle. Don’t ever be satisfied with the piece of paper that you received. Always want more…
Our students of today are the tech generation. They have known about email for all their life, and can probably not remember when “snail mail” was in.
What will the Future of Education hold? There is little doubt these days that things need to change. Businesses are changing faster than schools can keep up. Schools don’t have enough access to funding that they need to upgrade their equipment to have digital classrooms. Funding will be a whole other post, but where there is budget cuts in any state or federal program, education is sure to feel the axe first. Government would rather spend their money in other parts of the economy.
My hope is that education will one day be so easy to obtain, that it will become ubiquitous; easy, affordable and everywhere. Education should be a universal process that anyone who wants it, should be able to have access to it. The internet is one international tool that is making that happen. But there needs to be teachers, and places, and resources for students to fulfill those needs.
