Aria at 20
My Granddaughter just turned TWO!! What will her world be like to learn in, to live in and to work in by the time she is 20?
I hope she will be fully prepared to begin a career matching her interests and aptitude. She will have been able to test herself through her life experiences and education. Whether she and the young people of her generation decide to be an engineer, a scientist, an artist, a programmer, a drone operator, a manufacturing technician or one of the other great opportunities which will exist, she will be educated and fully ready for her entry to the workforce.
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She is likely to have had a full array of learning technologies deployed in K to 12, in our universities and in our homes. These will provide for a much greater understanding, exposure and connection with work and life. Let's all hope these technologies do not become so immersive that they substitute for or overcome our person-to-person relationships. They need to be engaging, active and challenging for our young people, just as they need to be for those of us who are older. They will fit us, our learning styles, draw on our strengths and address our weaknesses. We are just beginning to see how personal and wearable technologies can enhance learning, engagement and experience. Over the course of the next 18 years (while Aria is going through her prime years for education), the brain research and resulting technical developments will be enormous.
We may well see true leaps and bounds in the acquisition of languages, in the ease of understanding of scientific disciplines, mathematics, human and animal psychology that are well beyond our imagination today. Today we can play with apps like Luminosity, Star Walk, Wolfram Alpha, Elevate and many more. How will applications like these become more integrated into our structured education process to increase our human potential? Fun to consider.
What will this cost? What would university education look like for Aria? How will public education embrace these new possibilities? And what about cars? Check in on our next note.
What about cars?
The autonomous vehicle or self driving car is not far off. With Aria at age 2, how long will she have to wait until she has her first ride in a self driven car? Likely within 5 to ten years, so she will be 7 to 12 years old. Will that car take her to school or over to a friends house or to a field trip? Will it be a small bus loaded with other students?
How will driverless cars change the learning environment. What a question! More flexibility on where you learn. Less dependence on parents. Less dependence on adults. Less opportunity for parents to be involved? Driving my kids around was opportunity for discussion around what was happening in school and in their lives. Wow, what a change!
The Cost of Education
So in a world where we can look the best answer up on line, or even the best instructor, how will college courses be taught? If the best math instructor in the world is in India, will he or she record their lectures or talks for Aria to watch? Will they be interactive? Of course. What will the impact be on the jobs of the local professors at our regional schools. Dramatic! The competition by instructors to be the best, to offer the best products will likely be intense. Many may become facilitators of the learning experience. Will professors grade papers or will the computerized learning system handle all the feedback and evaluation.
Since there are so many jobs in today's teaching environment, what will be the impact of going to an online academy to take the best course available? Will all the local teaching jobs be gone? The cost to society will be immense in that case. What would the local university teaching role be in an environment where we can study a topic from the greatest expert or the most engaging teacher in the world?
The cost of the course . . would be based on what we pay the instructor right? Plus the cost of the technology to deliver the learning. Let's assume the cost of the tech is nominal . . . the cost of an iPad or a good smart phone. So if the best instructor demands $1,000,000 to be recorded delivering their class, for one student the cost would be $1,000,000. But what if one million students take the class? The cost is now $1.
What is the cost of the loss of all the educator jobs in today's system? Enormous. Do they become learning facilitators, programmers, proctors, coaches, translators?
