Being in a Car Driven by a Blindfolded Driver: Attempting to Predict the Future of Education

https://www.actiondays.co.uk/activity-days/blindfold-driving/

When I think about the potential of the digital future of education, it scares and excites me at the same time. There is still a part of me that assumes we are just a couple of steps away from some sort of William Gibson-esque cyberpunk future where all of us are more isolated and afraid than we ever were. I know this probably won’t happen, but years of reading and watching stories like that has an effect on you.

However, I know that digital spaces and technology have so much potential for students of the future and today. Even today, there is so much more potential for students to learn a wider variety of subjects and skills that weren’t available years ago. Going through Henny’s “9 Things That Will Shape The Future of Education: What School Will Look Like in 20 Years?” does make me kind of excited about what could be the future of education. The potential of a more digital learning environment to give students flexibility and freedom that could be a good way to instil a greater sense of independence in students, as well giving more space to explore a wider variety of topics and subjects that are specific to their interests. I still remember in my old school division, I had a student take an online course in Equine Studies because they were interested in horses. Hopefully, a digital learning environment gives students freedom to explore topics like this even if their interests are more unique. Students will not be limited by the options presented in their school or school division, and could instead be able to study any number of subjects that offers interest to them. They will be more free to take on more experiential learning opportunities and be encouraged to engage in longterm inquiry-based projects. The limits that used to be put on the educational system could be shattered! It is all very exciting!

As well, new digital tools such as AI will make skills like writing more accessible to students who have struggled in the past, and there are new tools that can help teachers to more readily adapt for the needs of specific students in a more time effective manner. However, as we become more dependent on AI based technologies, it will also make it more important for teachers and students to think more deeply about about the information that they are presenting.

There is quote from the Postman reading from last week that has still stuck with and I have thought about a lot. When speaking about how technologies have different ideologies, Postman talked about the different ideologies of different media generations, such as how a literate person favours “systematic analysis, not proverbs” and how “the television person prefers immediacy, not history” (1998). Since it was 1998, the computer and the Internet were the highest concerns to the people Postman was talking to. Of the computer generation, Postman said they value “information, not knowledge, certainly not wisdom” (1998).

As someone who was part of the the computer generation Postman was talking about, at first this came off a little “Old Man Yells at Cloud ” to me, but, over time, it started to make more sense. For my generation, we were exposed to an unlimited amount of information, but we only stayed at the more base level “who”, “what”, and “where” level questions and didn’t go into the “how” and “why.” With the acceleration of AI technology, it is going to be much more important for students to be able to go deeper with their criticism of the information and tools presented to them, so this ability to think deeply about information and its impacts may actually become something that is more valued by the people of the future. AI still has the limitations and biases of all forms of technology that have come before it, and it is important for people to be able to detect those biases in information and be able to discern the meaning behind it.

I cannot lie, I am still not on the AI train yet. To be totally honest, it sort of freaks me out. I know that at some point in my life I am going to be forced to engage with it, but for now I’m just standing on the sidelines and seeing what happens. But, I am interested to see how this new form of technology will impact the values of the people of the future. As technology continues to advance, I am curious to see how people will make meaning of themselves and their relationship to this new technology.

To close off, I am curious, what do you think the generations of the future will value as technology becomes more and more entwined with human life?

First Reflections on the Power and Role of Technology

“Embedded in every technology there is a powerful idea, sometimes two or three powerful ideas.” Neil Postman

This one quote has stuck out to me this week. Reading through Postman’s “Five Things to Know About Technological Change” has made me reassess what technology is and what role it is supposed to play in our society. One of the key things I have thought about in relation to this idea is that technology is not simply a machine or a line of code. The technology we use is in many ways a representation of our society and what the values of our society are. It represents our hopes and dreams, but it can also demonstrate the dark sides we want to hide as well.

One of those powerful ideas that I have seen in technology is how it allows us to interact with and interpret the world around us in new and powerful ways. This can best be encapsulated in the internet and what new ways it has allowed us to view our world, but has also presented new challenges that we never could have thought of before.

My first degree was in journalism, and I was getting my journalism degree at one of the best and worst times in the history of the profession. The early 2010’s felt like one of the most optimistic and pessimistic times to train to be a journalist, and it was all because of the internet. The internet offered people freedom to information that was never available before, and it gave people a new power that couldn’t have existed previously. Instead of simply being media consumers, average people could begin to document and comment on the world around them. This alongside the creation of the smart phone gave people access to professional level equipment that they could carry around in their pockets to expose the truths of the world we live in.

It was exciting. Regular citizens were able to topple dictators and hold the powerful to a higher standard just because of a piece of plastic and computer chips. As well, people didn’t have to turn to traditional sources of news content anymore; instead they could get live reactions from the people who were really there totally unfiltered from any kind of journalistic lens. This totally changed the relationship people had with the media. Because there was such an avalanche of information coming peoples’ way they had to be much more critical of what they were consuming. The idea of a “credible source” began to lose its meaning as consumers tried to sift through all of the new information that came there way.

Going through journalism school in 2011 was interesting to say the least because we were trying to make sense of how to make the work we do fit in this new landscape. The old systems that had made journalism work for 100 years were going away as the internet became the dominant force, and now that has changed in the decade since I graduated. Even our school didn’t really know how to respond to the changes it was seeing. Sure, our teachers gave us marks for tweeting out the stories we wrote for our intro to print media course, but what did print media mean in a world where newspapers were obsolete? How could we create solid credible stories in a world where speed was key and there was a constant flow of information in a market where consumers wanted their news faster and shorter than ever before? And most importantly, how could the traditional news media be relevant in a world where there was less and less trust in the traditional media and what it represented? These were questions we weren’t able to answer back then, and it is still something the media industry is struggling with today.

Technology is power. It gives us the power to travel through time and space without ever leaving our living rooms, but it can also make us travel into some of the deep recesses of the human experience that we don’t want to go into. It gives us freedom to access more information than any group of people in human history, but we may not be prepared for what that information says or be ready for what it means for us. In my current role as an ELA and Social Studies teacher, I hope that I will be able to prepare students to have the power to access this information and give them the skills to interpret and make meaning of it. My students are going out into a world with more information than ever before, but it also has more blatant liars than ever before. I hope that I will be able to teach students how to detect lies and to be able to see through the distractions of our world to find the truth.

Works Cited

Five things we need to know about technological change. (2018, August 6). kottke.org. https://kottke.org/18/08/five-things-we-need-to-know-about-technological-change