Some time back, I had written an article on the “School of the Future “. I had highlighted the fact that the school as it is now won’t be around anymore with the pace at which digital technology, robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are all working to enhance human life and our day to day experiences. The school of the future will no more be a building with students sitting for hours at a desk and the teacher standing at the front. No, it will be more of a virtual classroom operating seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
Students will be able log on at home or anywhere and view the classroom. Anyone logging into the virtual classroom will be able to see and interact with classmates who are online as if all were physically in a classroom . Students will be registered online and be working in their own environments, on their own or in groups through the virtual classrooms or labs. There will not be any need for big school buildings as we will not be dealing with many students on site at one time. We will be having sophisticated labs where one or twice a week, students can access the teacher when they need one or for special tutorship and individual attention.
I had also commented that there are many such schools now in Australia and the United States striving to bring the future into the present and that some studies have shown that such education achieve better results than traditional methods of schooling.
I had concluded thus : Education has traveled a long way and will continue to flourish. The dynamics or tectonic shifts will give rise to a profound question about education: in what way should our education system be rethought to equip it for future challenges? Much of today’s educational approaches, thrust and content will have to change. Are our Education authorities listening? Be prepared, the future starts now.
Instead of wasting billion of rupees on prestige projects and populist measures, this government should have been preparing our students for the school of the future. . Our Education Reform has turned out to be a sham. Now that chickens have come home to roost, we do not have the necessary broadband, the laptops/computers for students and teachers, the on-line video contents and the essential supporting elements for the software and hardware are missing.
But BEWARE !!! If we go by what the minister of education is planning to implement, we may be vitiating the whole concept of the education of the future. The school of the future enables us to move to a new learning environment for our children. Unquestionably, it will foster more of intimate, self-directed learning and collaborative spaces and a shift away from exam-centric objectives and will enable more diverse curriculums that focus on the development of real-world skills and involve whole community participation. It will also drive more of independent thinking, moving away from the teacher- led model and will allow the student to take a larger role in guiding his learning.
The change in the learning environment is already happening in many countries. A series of micro schools are focusing on a personalized learning approach, where students are encouraged to work independently and at their own pace on assignments tailored to their interests and strengths. These schools are already abandoning our current model for a more individualized approach. Every school is making this shift to learner-centered. The transformation journey has already started in leveraging powerful technology to extend and capture “anytime, anywhere” learning.
Education is about enlarging the horizons of human perception. But unfortunately, today, education has slowly shifted into a mode where people believe it is about enforcing heaps of information. But because of AI and new technology, there will be less focus on memorization. With the democratisation of knowledge and availability of technology for easy access to information, the focus is more on HOW TO TEACH AND RATHER THAN WHAT TO TEACH.
There are now unique possibilities for developing new models of learning, groundbreaking programs that emphasize interdisciplinary learning, critical thinking skills and individualized learning plans. It will be a new learning environment where the learners can set their own goals, build knowledge collaboratively and create their own content and questions. It makes different kinds of learning processes possible. This is what the Ministry of Education should be aiming at, not the hotch-potch concoction for the traditional retrograde, teacher-centric, “what -to -teach” model that it wants us to implement.
