Sarah’s Blog is about …

I came across this slide show a few months back and then misplaced the url, but someone was kind enough to reacquaint me with it a few days ago. It is called Shift Happens, the contents of which are based on a presentation given by Karl Fisch. It is rather long, but very interesting if you have the time to go through all 67 slides.

In particular there are a couple that stand out for me and have direct implications on the way we plan the future of educational opportunities for the future world. They are as follows:

“We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist using technologies that haven’t been invented in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.”

“There are over 2.7 billion searches performed on google each month. To whom were these questions addressed before google?”

“The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years. For students starting a four year technical or college degree, this means that half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.”

We are already working towards some of the challenges posed by these statements. Think of the Ultraversity degree that I am involved with or the IDIBL work in which my colleague Richard is engaged. But there is so much more we need to get our heads around if we are going to be able to provide meaningful ways of developing our current and future learners. At CORE Education, this is what we are currently engaged upon, and have been since the days when we were all still at Ultralab. The development of tools on their own, however are nothing if not underpinned by the development of relevant processes, which in turn need a philosophy, which will support the dynamic environment we now find ourselves in. And it is this emerging philosophy, which interests me and is one of the areas I am exploring in my PhD.

Tags:   Life Long Learning · Professional Development1 Comment