This is what Andreas Schleicher, director of education and training at the OECD organization, says in a video call before the third APCA conference for the development of national human capital in industry
"Technology in the education system must match the students' technological habits." This is what Andreas Schleicher, director of education and training at the OECD, says in a video call before the third APCA conference for the development of national human capital in industry.
"Most 15-year-old boys feel bad if they are not connected to the Internet. This is according to studies. Almost half of the world's population looks at technology as a basic need like water or air to breathe. We also see that the time young people spend on the Internet outside of school a lot during the typical school day the proportion of time spent surfing has almost doubled in three years which is a good thing. So the world around us is changing. The virtual world becomes real for a very large part of the young people.
However, in the web as it is today, Schleicher sees a disadvantage in that technology has created echo chambers where we are more likely to communicate with people who look like us and think like us, it is actually difficult for people to deal with opposing views, which makes our societies polarized."
"The network was very democratic, anyone could participate, anyone could cooperate with anyone else, but there was also a concentration of power to a degree that had never existed before. Google brings in a million dollars a year per employee, which is 10 times the average American income. The world in Shiditelli crushes the individual and eliminates cultural uniqueness. In such a world, people need to be entrepreneurs, to bring ideas, which the big companies with all their infrastructure are not capable of. For this, the state of knowledge and skills must be improved."
There are many types of work that can be outsourced and gradually also to the computers themselves. Our way to climb up the ladder is to take advantage of people's cognitive ability, and allow them to create. There is one bright spot and that is the social skills. They become more important and require our ability to collaborate to create. Before the industrial revolution both education and technology were unimportant to the vast majority of the population, but then came the industrial revolution which transferred technology from people. Today we look at the wonders of the industrial revolution. You wouldn't want to live in those times because a lot of people were left behind. The solution was a universal education system that marches people forward, but if we're being honest, the change was very little. Now we are seeing and experiencing the digital revolution, and once again technology is running ahead and causing pain to many, many people."
"The question we need to ask ourselves is how we build an education system, when artificial intelligence will be a force that will make us think strongly about what it means to be human, that we need to add value to technology. The education system currently works to promote the weak. But if 88% of students can learn on their own by finding solutions on their own, teachers can focus on those who struggle. Learning through thinking is the way to educate in the 21st century."
"However, memorization is still the dominant teaching strategy. Digitization is rushing forward and education must accelerate to follow it. We are told in Israel that this is what can be done with the salaries the teachers receive. But it is possible otherwise. In Shanghai, China, the authorities have radically changed the culture of teaching and learning to develop more creativity and the skills necessary to solve complex problems. Likewise, social skills are also important - sensitivity, empathy, curiosity, courage and leadership. We are going to see in Finland, Germany, and Switzerland Japan and China how they assimilate this into the education system. In the United Arab Emirates, students are already taught to learn. In countries that succeed in mathematics, they do so thanks to an investment in teaching students to think like a mathematician, and not necessarily memorize complicated formulas."
Indeed, according to him, the field of training and education must undergo a change. "Currently academia and engineering schools are designed to keep students in and everyone else out, but the future needs to be integrated. They are a combination of fields, they are a combination of the learning context - we need to help students see the connections. Innovation today is no longer just having a great idea and you can do something wonderful but being able to be able to connect the dots. The future is becoming based on teamwork and we see good examples of this in Israel and elsewhere."
"This is a revolution in the field of higher education, from a place that provides knowledge, to a process where students come to understand learning, and its effect on everything. The technology is very powerful, it can help us move from the textbook phase to the phase of building new pedagogies and virtual laboratories, the joint learning environment."
"Technology makes everything faster, for example the student can receive immediate feedback on his answers in the tests, and not wait a few days for a grade, and in addition to the tests, other ways of assessing the student's knowledge should also be incorporated, for example computer games. We also need to connect the teachers to the students in powerful ways through technology."
"In the OECD member countries where technology has been incorporated into the education system, a positive effect on the quality of education is felt. But in most countries, we have 21st century technology with 19th century teaching methods. Technology should be leveraged. Just providing content to students is no longer enough today, what does a university do, it is going to separate people by training them in different fields so that everyone can do the best in their profession. Reality is not obliged to this separation. Technology is going to shape the world of learning and education in the coming years." Prof. Schleicher concluded.
