Subscribe to this Feed by Email
As the coordinator for a think tank which happens to operate online, we talk about all the serious issues in our civilization and society. One of the most pressing issues of our time of course is education, because a nation is only as good as its education system was 20 years the prior. This is because kids grow up, and soon they will be running things. If they aren't educated very well, or can handle the task, they could lose the whole thing. A nation which has been going on for hundreds of years could fall in a single generation due to poor decisions being made.
Okay so, let's talk a little bit about the future of education, along with some of the other technology which will converge. If this sounds a lot like the folks from the Singularity Institute, then in the way you are right. You see, in the future rather than social networks there will be thought swapping, and you will have an inbox, and a brain chip, and you will be able to send thoughts rather than e-mails or tweets to your friends and those in your social or business network.
If you are going to school, you might have downloaded all the information on a given topic into a chip, as part of your education process for college. Your degree with all the information is already in your head, but you will still be required to listen to lectures, ask questions, and deal with real case studies so you know what you are doing. That makes sense right? Now then, as you are watching these lectures chances are you will be able to ask a question of the lecture or professor giving the talk, but most likely you won't need to raise your hand to ask the question.
There was an interesting article recently in the New York Times on March 31, 2012 titled; "Speak Up? Raise Your Hand? That May No Longer Be Necessary," by Jan Hoffman. When I read that article about the use of clickers - the article stated;
"In recent years, college students have been bringing clickers to lecture halls, for instant polls and multiple-choice tests. Corporate executives sometimes distribute the devices at meetings, and then show survey responses immediately on Power Point slides. Just two of many companies that make clickers have sold nearly nine million units in under a decade. One the companies, Turning Technologies, sold 1.5 million in 2011 alone."
Now then, that story gave me this idea. If you were a student who doesn't like to ask questions in public, or perhaps, you have a low self-esteem, or you are in a big lecture hall, you might be a little intimidated to ask your question. However, if you don't ask the question you won't learn the information, and there are probably others also in the room or listening to lecture who have that same question. So, if someone doesn't ask the question, then no one will get the answer, and many people will be stuck simply not knowing. That would be wrong, and that's not good for the educational process.
Therefore, there will probably be a box that you could send your thought to from your brain chip which would be permanently connected to the Internet. First, your brain chip would see if the information was already there, or if the box would see if that specific question had ever been answered before. If not, then when the professor was at a breaking point, and yes, they would have to have more breaking points, more often, and at least as often as a couple of bullet points on a PowerPoint presentation, then they could simply see if anyone had asked the question, and collect that question from the box, and then answer your question.
This would work quite well, it is a great way to communicate and move the class teaching process forward faster. Please consider all this and think on.
Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on the Future of Education. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net/
0 comments:
Post a Comment