‘‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world,’’ said Nelson Mandela and this approach still holds true around the world.
In the age where exponential technologies need to address and solve complex issues, education systems globally should undergo significant reforms.
Across the world, IT companies face the challenge how to recruit workforce that is talented enough to sustain their enterprises’ growth and how to actually recruit the adequate number of people.
Antoher obstacle lies in the depth of the knowledge we, the globally connected workforce, have and how each of us would answer the question, ‘‘What do I truly know? How can I expand on what I know and how can I outsource to the expert what I do not know to enhance the learning curve of my company?’’
The answers to these questions lie in the self-awareness we receive from the education: formal and informal, from the mileage and extra kilometers we go through day in and day out and from the environment we are part of. Let us now look at the world we belong to in this moment and the world we are preparing generations after us.
Hubspot published a fantastic survey that VisionMobile created. They interviewed 30,000 developers and the final pieces of information were leveled out as if there were only 100 developers in total in the world. The results were eye-opening.
If there were only 100 developers in the world, 94 of them would be male. 30 of them would originate from Europe, 25 from North and 5 from South America, whereas 34 will come from Asia, 4 from Africa and 2 from Oceania. Java would be the language that 21 out of 100 programers are proficient; 16 of them will operate in C#, 12 in HTML, while 11 in Javascript.
When it comes to educating the next generation of digital workforce for the jobs that may not even exist yet, plenty of room for improvement exist.
Here are three major education challenges which we can solve to make a huge shift in our societies, schools and marketplaces:
1) Hands-on education with internships and practical work will prepare the workforce for jobs and Industries of the Future as defined by Alec Ross.
According to Bloom’s taxonomy, knowledge can be classified within three levels: Understanding and Remembering; Analyzing and Applying; Creating and Evaluating.
Unfortunately, most of us learned in school in such a way so as to show we understand teachers’ input sufficiently and to repeat this information during tests. Those of us who continued to stimulate our incredible curiousity managed to move towards deeper levels of knowledge such as Creating and Evaluating which include adaptive thinking, developing, and supporting.
Practical work helps us better understand what we truly know, where there are gaps in our knowledge and how we can improve ourselves and ”sell our knowledge several times.”
Consequently, because in today’s markets human capital and right timing are so precious the employees who know how to create something new and evaluate the previous versions will contribute most to success of their respective companies and will be most sought after experts.
Today’s job market require employees, even at entry-level positions, who are familiar with latest technologies and can propose ways to use them better and exponentially.
2) The world moves so fast, yet people fond of learning may not leave their starting destination permanently in search of better education and jobs.
Overachievers (top 5% of students and professionals) gravitate towards innovation hubs and cities of excellence so as to get their hands-on experience with top opportunities, challenging projects or impact-driven initiatives.
Typically, human beings are inclined towards the comfort zone which can be defined as ”remaining in the environment where it is cosy, although they are not utilizing their ultimate potential” and entropy which is best seen in the situation ”our house will move from order to disorder unless we intervene and clean it”.
Yet as overachievers we have the tendency to constantly move frontiers of what is possible and to expand our comfort zones. Also, higher achievers learn new, useful skills on a daily basis that move them towards higher responsibility and seniority in the same way as compounded interest brings extra value to the shrewd investor.
Likewise, if ambitious professionals do not find ways to contribute anymore to a company or community, it is time for them to move on to another environment, which in today’s time of globalization may not be permanent. They may come back after a while in the community where they started out and create a grand development initiative from scratch or bring new investments and jobs.
After all, cutting-edge technologies, including AR, VR and education platforms enable them to create value regardless of their whereabouts.
3) Education becomes interactive, personalized interface and window for job opportunities in the global village.
Have you heard yet how AR and VR technologies can help you in harnessing better education?
Over the last 30 years Intelligent Education Platforms have been developed and their algorhythms and philosophy can create educational revolution in times of disruption. Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) function in full capacity as they simulate human tutor’s behavior and guidance.
When ITS learning processes go beyond marking wrong answers and facilitating new roles of teachers with real-time data and personalized information about what learners can improve, ITS can benefit scientific community to a much greater extent.
Likewise VR and AR technologies supercharge students with curiosity and motivation since these devices are quite novel, while people can come together and experience the same content wherever they are.
Since there is so much equipment out there available (from smart phones to various headsets), the next step for the more democratic use of VR and AR should be that it becomes available to students and educators from all walks of life, whereas interactive content is produced on large scale without compromising the quality.
In this article we are looking at top-notch AR and VR solutions in education niche that bring value to millions of users and disrupt the way we learn.
