The future of education, as well as nearly everything we do is changing, and to be a part of the change your children need to be internet savvy. And one of the best ways to be internet savvy, is to let your children get onto the internet as young as they can. Then when they go onto school, university and beyond they will be prepared for the future. The alternative is quite simple, they will be overtaken by the children who have been brought up on the internet.
Let the internet be the teacher. Show your children how to search the internet to find what they are looking for. Youtube.com, khanacademy.com and whatever the internet can provide, will be the teacher. Then if you want more, find it on search. And if you can’t find it, put it on the internet yourself, and you can become the teacher to any child who wants to learn.
That is the future of education, where anybody and everybody can be the teacher, and the internet is the classroom.
The world is changing so fast it is nearly impossible to keep up. The internet is changing life as we know it. Your children are growing up in a Brave New World. And we the parents and your children’s teacher are just not keeping up. Everything your children will learn at school, is available at the click of a mouse, or just a touch on a screen. But are they learning how to click a mouse or touch a screen. Are we really teaching them, what they need to know to survive the future.
To survive the future your children need to know how to read and read fast. At the moment we are still teaching them to read. If they are learning phonics, so much the better. But can they understand what they are reading. Reading comprehension is the key to the internet. Nearly everything your children will do on the internet, will have something to do with reading, understanding what they are reading and typing something.
You have all this information at your fingertips. And the internet is information, but your children have to read and understand to make use of it. Also to survive the future, your children have to be able to find the information they are looking for on the internet. And that means SEARCH. They must know how to search the internet to get the information they are looking for.
These are the skills for the future. Are your children learning them? If your children can master these skills, they can find and understand everything they want to know. Everything else at school is just a click away. But your children can learn these two skills by themselves on the internet. There are learn to read programs on the internet. And you can search to find out how to search the internet.
The Internet is changing everything we know.
When China started the rankings I would think it was just to give their universities something to strive for, so they could upgrade their universities to a world acceptable standard. Since then the fabric of the western world has been stretched rather thin, and now a university degree doesn’t automatically mean you are going to get a job. Since the financial crisis unemployment in the EU and the US is still a problem, and a lot of that is in the middle income brackets where university students find jobs. It used to be, you would work in fast food while at university, but now it looks like you keep working there even after you graduate.
Also debt is a big problem in the world and that includes student debt. When the government stops guaranteeing student debt then that will cause a problem for universities. Universities just can’t survive unless they are subsidized. They have come to the point that when the gravy train stops they just don’t know what to do.
And right now there is a trend starting that is away from a university education in favor of short course diplomas that set you up to do one job really well, especially internet related jobs. The top 10 in demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004. What can set you up faster to get into the workforce – a 4 year degree of which up to 50% could be obsolete before you graduate, or a 6 month diploma course you can do on the internet while you are working.
Now the rankings and joining up with sister universities around the globe could be classed as the death throes of a dying industry that is very close to its use by date. The whole education machine could be going the way of newspapers and anything to do with printing including the local printing shop on the corner, because the internet is here. And the internet is changing the world as we know it. The internet could have a bigger impact on the world than the printing press or fire for that matter..
But the biggest change will be when the internet generation or the igens or egens or internet natives or whatever they are called go to university. This is the generation that will be brought up with the internet. They are the generation that do not know life without the internet. And when they start going to university where will they go. Online or on campus what do you think? And in some countries they are already looking at university courses. Why have MOOCs taken off, they have only been around for a few years.
We are the baby boomer generation and we are on the way out. We have sold the house and most of the possessions, brought the camper van and driven off into the sunset, leaving the internet generation to change the planet in ways we never dreamed of. And one of those ways will be education. Already education standards are popping up in many countries, but that wont be able to stop the internet generation from changing a claustrophobic establishment, into something more streamlined and accessible from anywhere on the planet.
The baby boomer generation are running universities, and they are up against change. Are they willing to forgo everything they have dreamed of, to keep their universities as ivory towers of learning or will they join the cyber generation. Virtual universities are still empty now but what will happen when the igens start going to university. We are a few years away yet but we wont have to wait very long.
Why go to a physical campus when you can go to a cyber campus
Peter Legrove will be giving a speech to his daughter’s school about the future of education as it could evolve. The internet has changed the world as we know it, but education is a bit slow to change. Just remember the mighty dinosaur was replaced by a rodent the size of a cat. At the moment we do not know what is the dinosaur or what is the cat.
Hello parents, students, teachers, Members of the Board, I’m after a bit of information, thank you.
Has anybody here had anything to do with the Khan Academy, please? Khan spelled K H A N, Thank you, thank you. Has anyone taken part in the Khan Academy, please?
Now, we are at school so you can raise your hands. Thank you, thank you.
Now. What about OpenCourseWare please. Has anyone here had anything to do with opencourseware, like know what it is, or what it does, or have you doen anything from opencourseware. Thank you, thank you.
Now has anyone got any idea what a MOOC is, please. M O O C thank you. Has anybody actually done a MOOC. Thank you.
Raise your hands please we are at school, thank you.
One more thing ‘have you heard of “The Hole in the Wall Project” thank you.
OK thanks.
Now my question to you is. “How can you steer this school into the future, when you do not even know what the present situation in education is?
We are at school now, so for homework preferable this week, but definitely before you make any decisions on the future of this school, google, yahoo, bing or whatever search engine you use.
Khan Academy and watch one of the videos, or better still watch one with your daughter. Khan academy was one of the first threats to the schooling system of today. It started when one person wanted to help his school age relatives to get better at math. And it has now gone around the world. Khan Academy started in 2006.
Next up google MOOCS and find out what they are, then do one or better still, you and your daughters do a different one each. So you know what the present situation in education is. MOOCs are a disruptive technology, that is upsetting the entrenched bureaucracy of the established education industry around the world. MOOCs are changing education as we speak. They are less than three years old. If you do not understand what a Disruptive Technology is, there is a MOOC about it. Do it and find out the future.
Opencourseware is a free online lectures for world class universities around the world, We are talking M.I.T. Yale, Harvard. To be honest Massey is not there.
Now we move onto the “Hole in the Wall Project” An internet connected computer was put in a slum in India to see how the slum kids would react. And they taught themselves English with no teachers, no textbooks and no classroom. They knew English was important so they learned it. The kids taught themselves and each other. Do you know what this means for your daughters? It means your daughters are competing with the slim kids of Calcutta. To find out more, google it. This project was the winner of the TED talks award in 2013. To find out more go to TED talks and listen in on some of the videos, they are usually only 15 minutes long and are very informative.
Your daughters are up against the lifelong learners who learn math from the Khan academy, get qualifications doing MOOCs.
The internet has leveled the playing field in ways you cannot even imagine.
The top 10 most in demand jobs in 2013 did not exist in 2006.
That means life long learning is the future. The jobs your daughters do after they start their working life have not been invented yet. There are two skills your daughters need to survive the future in any profession. Does anybody know what they are? The first one is typing at 60 words a minute plus. Can your daughters type at over 60 words per minute? It looks like video is taking over the future, but the internet is still text on a page. And you have to type to put it there.
The internet is information and to absorb the information you need to survive the future. Your daughters need to be able to read fast and understand what they are reading. Therefore speed reading is part of your daughter’s arsenal for the future. And these two skills you have to learn yourself. Your daughters should start learning these skills now in their spare time, because they will need them.
After the financial crisis of 2007 the world changed. The middle class was destroyed, now the middle class is dead. How does that affect your daughters? Primary school prepared kids for secondary school, secondary school prepared students for university and university prepared young adults for the middle class. Now there is no middle class. If you want to find the middle class you have to go to Asia, Russia, China and India and possible South America. In Europe, America and possible in the Pacific the middle class is dying.
So you can ask, why send your daughters to university, when about half what they learn is obsolete before they graduate. Why let your daughters go into student debt when there is no guarantee of a job. The future is lifelong learning. So what are your daughters going to do. At present university is still on the road to the future and it is still recommended. But for how long.
The system we have in place now does not prepare you for the future. To become a master in your chosen field you need to do 5,000 hours of learning. To become a grand master you need 10,000 hours of learning. So start reading now and doing MOOCs.
The future is Asia. After your daughters graduate from university let them have the option to go to China, Russia, India or possibly South America, to teach English so they can also learn the language. The languages of your daughters generation are Mandarin Chinese, Russian and Spanish, and Portuguese for Brazil.
The future of this school is in the choices you make, but before you make them, google it.
Thank you for your time.
Teach Your Child To Read 