Learning Futures

DAVOS, SWITZERLAND — The world is going through a seismic shift in the make-up of its workforce and the boss of the world’s largest staffing firm told Business Insider that the only way to stay employed is to constantly learn.

The World Economic Forum’s benchmark “Global Risks” report for 2017 says the biggest risk to doing business globally is unemployment or underemployment due to the greater adoption of robots, automation, and artificial intelligence.

However, Adecco CEO Alain Dehaze told BI that companies now need to look beyond displacement and how people need to look towards constantly re-educating themselves in new skills.

Take it One Step at a Time

Now, don’t misunderstand me. I am not living in a “pie in the sky,” world of education. I realize we still have to operate within the confines of the systems we have, but I do believe that we can meaningfully incorporate more dynamic learning strategies in our classrooms without ignoring all of those things we have to do and are required to learn in our classrooms. I don’t think it is a choice. We are doing students a disservice if we aren’t moving BEYOND traditional learning with the technology we now have within our grasp. Just small pushes against the walls, against the system can bring about meaningful change.

One,

Small

Step

at a Time

That’s all it takes, just one small step at a time. I’m not asking anyone to immerse their classrooms in these ideas overnight. I’m just asking that as educators, we consider the transformation that is possible and try new things. Even in small increments, we can make a big difference, and better prepare our students for the future.

Tomorrow is another today

So much for history. The second place to look for glimpses of the future is the present. As William Gibson, a science-fiction writer, once memorably put it, “the future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed”. Technologies have surprisingly long gestation periods; they may seem to appear overnight, but they don’t. As a result, if you look in the right places, you can see tomorrow’s technologies today. This approach is taken by journalists and corporate anthropologists who want to understand new trends. It involves seeking out “edge cases”: examples of technologies and behaviours that are adopted by particular groups, or in particular countries, before going on to become widespread. A classic example of an edge case is that of Japan and smartphones at the turn of the century.

What is the role of the single teacher in a classroom in a world where millions of potential teachers are now a few keystrokes away on a laptop or phone?

To ask that question seriously, you have to buy into the premise of “millions of teachers” (if not billions) being within reach online. You have to be open to the idea that physical space teachers are no longer the smartest people in the room when it comes to content and curriculum if that room has access to the Web. And you also have to see that development as a) pretty amazing, and b) great for learners (read: kids.)

As John F. Kennedy eloquently stated in a 1961 speech about space travel, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Moonshots in education involve goals that are difficult, perhaps seemly impossible, to achieve; however, we need these now and in the future to prepare our students for success.

The first step in this process is encouraging student agency and achievement in the classroom. In order for these two aspects to soar, the role of the teacher needs to change from the lecture model to the mentor/coach model. That is, the teacher needs to change from the “sage on the stage” to “the guide on the side.” The more a teacher does for a student in the learning process, the less empowered the student is.

Everything is global–trade and economics, media and information. Young people are more likely than ever to interact with people from different cultures while at home and on the road. As we become more connected, more interdependent, how do we prepare young people for the world they will inherit? We see six reasons, seven competencies, eight strategies and nine innovations.

For generations, new technologies – from the steam engine to the Internet and beyond – have fundamentally changed the nature of work and the economy. But it is happening faster now while we are living longer. Where our parents and grandparents might have experienced only one, or even no, significant change in their lifetimes, you have likely already experienced a dramatic technology-driven shift in your career, and your children will likely absorb a major shift every ten to fifteen years across theirs.

The master's program is in data, economics and development policy. Duflo says with the knowledge gained in the program, students should be able to run their own evaluation projects. They would know that most imaginative, well-thought-out programs fail, and therefore they have to be tested in the field — and they would have the tools to do that testing.

More than 8,000 students around the world have enrolled online.

Classroom educators know better than anyone else how much of learning is built on the strength of relationships in the room. When students like and trust their teacher, they learn better. That’s why large class sizes and a focus on standardized test scores — to the exclusion of other things — frustrate many veteran teachers. They know those factors often hinder teachers’ ability to form relationships. But a slow shift may be coming as some school leaders are starting to recognize that the health and happiness of teachers, students and staff depend on making space in school for relationship-building.

I had a conversation with a parent who relayed an experience visiting a potential new school for her child. She asked for a tour of the school and they just walked her around the building, showing different physical spaces. When she asked about what the school does especially well, the tour guide looked confused.

The idea that the school does more than process students, send them from class to class, keep order, give them an “education”, and send them on to the next processing plant didn’t seem to click for this guide. What the parent was looking for was something inspiring, something compelling, something that would invite her child into good, significant, rich, rewarding, and meaningful experiences. As I understood her, she wanted a vision for school that was more than quizzes, classes, content, tests, achievement scores, and certainly more than a nice and clean building.

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The EmployABILITY student starter kit is an online resource featuring a student-focussed, personalised employability profile tool and developmental resources.

The first step in the student starter kit is to assess your employABILITY using the EmployABILITY self-assessment tool. This will generate your personalised EmployABILITY profile.

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Many economists say there is no need to worry. They point to how past major transformations in work tasks and labor markets – specifically the Industrial Revolution during the 18th and 19th centuries – did not lead to major social upheaval or widespread suffering. These economists say that when technology destroys jobs, people find other jobs. As one economist argued:

“Since the dawn of the industrial age, a recurrent fear has been that technological change will spawn mass unemployment. Neoclassical economists predicted that this would not happen, because people would find other jobs, albeit possibly after a long period of painful adjustment. By and large, that prediction has proven to be correct.”

Thanks to the Shift Happens videos (2007), you will likely be familiar with this statistic about the future of work:

“The top 10 in demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004. We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t exist yet, using technologies that haven’t been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.”

People repeat the claim again and again, but in slightly different forms. Sometimes they remove the dates and change the numbers; 65% is now in fashion. Respected academics who study education, such as Linda Darling-Hammond (1:30), have picked up and continue to repeat a mutated form of the factoid, as has the World Economic Forum and the OECD.1It takes some work to find out that the claim is not true. When I tried to find an original source for the claim, I was surprised to find out that versions of it date from at least to 1957. Interestingly, in 1973 Norman Kurland said such statements ‘typified’ the 1970s discourse about how jobs are supposed to change, but the claim now appears new and radical in 21st century videos like Shift Happens.2I’ll get to that deeper history soon.

That means getting the major requirements “out of the way” in order to ensure graduation (a degree still gets one past past the screening algorithms for a first job), and then concentrate on the synthetic skills that can help one succeed in everything else. It means treating college like total immersion in a foreign country, exploring courses and extracurricular opportunities beyond one’s normal range of interests and experiences. If a school offers pass-fail options, a student can take classes where they have more interest than skill in order to connect with people unlike themselves, whether Python programmers or spoken-word poets. What makes them tick? There is no better way to hone the ability to work with others who complement rather than mirror one’s own skills.

A student entering college this fall could be in the workforce until 2065 or 2070. No one can predict what the world look like then, except that it will bear little resemblance to today’s college major. Being able to synthesize knowledge is a life-changing lesson that one can fall back on whenever life changes. And — we can predict — change it will.

It’s safe to say social networking has taken a hold of the bulk of the Internet world and is not letting go so easily. How does social media meld with our imaginings of what future learning looks like? Let’s begin by looking at the present.

People of all ages using social networking can confirm it has both benefited and complicated their lives. Downsides are to be expected as with anything used in excess. Many of us fall prey to those addictive Facebook conversations rife with animosity, especially considering the goings-on in our present global political arenas.