Technologised School Systems: Are We There Yet?
If you think technology in the classroom is all about iPads and PCs, you're so wrong!
24 August 2017
Editor
Do you think iPads and computers in schools constitute the entirety of next-level education? Think again: the world’s already overtaken that stage. Because whilst Generation Z like to think that they had the biggest slice of the technology-marries-education pie, Generation Alpha are planning to up the ante.
First things first, millennials are people born mid-1980’s and early 2000’s, Generation Z are the Post-Millennials, and the term “Generation Alpha” refers to everyone born after 2010, according to the demographer, futurist, and TEDx speaker Mark McCrindle, who stated that the world is welcoming about 2.5 million Alpha’s every day.
Forget The Gadgets – Forget The “Now”
The Alpha’s will most probably look back on our days, and to them, it will seem painfully archaic. More likely than not, they will ridicule what we like to think of as a technological and innovative revolution.
Experts and futurists predict a future where a strong internet connection is the only infrastructure schools will need. Why? Well, have you ever come across the term “hologram”?
Holography is the science of innovating holograms; physical structures that can alternate light into images – it also, too, what Generation Alpha will experience day-to-day, within the classroom and outside it.
In simpler terms, holography gives us the luxury of looking at vivid and life-like images, with a limited-to-communication interaction with them. Which indicates that students or teachers of the near future won’t even have to physically be inside classrooms. Talk about the ultimate student fantasy.
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Curriculums Of The Future
But introducing a holographically enhanced educational system isn’t as simple as finding the means to produce cost-efficient holograms on a large scale. Such innovations will require new curriculums that can keep up with this higher ceiling of complexity, meaning that future students will go beyond mastering computer programming and digital coding. Students will be required to master, over time, new fields of reality-augmentation, and it wouldn’t just be part of their education system either: education will fall in line with a larger evolution of augmented reality. Films like Tron might come to mind, but it won’t all be fun and games.
Ever come across the harrowing statistics about the number of jobs that technology will make redundant in the near future? Well, it’s not all doom-saying: the future will create new jobs too.
According to research by the World Economic Forum, it is estimated that we will witness the birth of almost 1.5 million new digital jobs all around the globe, at a time where almost 90% of organizations and corporations are reporting shortages in IT-skilled professionals.
Where do Generation Alphas come in? To take these jobs, of course!
Alphas will be primed and ready for this surge of IT jobs, on proverbial standby to take the reins of artificial intelligence practice and instruction, creating the largest leap into digital communication and workforce ever witnessed. One might even hazard to say they will be the most transformative of all generations.
Schools of the future will no longer be defined as a place, but rather a high-level powered by the Cloud — that is to say, education through cloud computing. This cloud-based infrastructure and software model will enable unlimited access to shared resources: constantly-updated educational materials, student collaboration networks, learning applications, et al.
What does that mean for the rest of us? We can certainly try to catch up to Gen. Alpha — and may mercy fall upon the rest of us.
