Technology and education

TECHNOLOGY AND
EDUCATION
AlexandrosTrimisApril 2011

Traditional education is
necessary

 Lead and participate in teams
 Communicate your emotions and empathize
 Create with your hands and use every part of
your body
 Learn about things that fall out of your practical
way of thinking (history, arts, philosophy etc)

But technology can help

 Enhance the current learning experience in
Schools, Universities and Corporations
 Fill in the gap where traditional education is
not offered
 Fill in the gap where traditional education is
not provisioned
 Put the focus on Learning and not on the
Degree

10 Shifting Education
Paradigms

 Time  Teacher
 Reach  Interaction
 Convenience  Agility
 Pace  Collaboration
 Ratios  Form

Time
Traditional
 One-time student

A person would be formally educated through his 18th
year and then decide to follow higher studies
Online
 Lifelong learner

A person can get educated in whatever point in his life.
Due to the vast changes in the profession pool and the
duration of work contracts that opportunity is much
needed

Reach
Traditional
 Few millions

Education was expensive and it was kept for the ones
who could afford it
Online
 Few billions

Anybody with an internet connection can have access to
quality materials from top universities and great
teachers

Convenience
Traditional
 Location based

Ability to pay for relocation costs and to spend a
concrete amount of time on education was necessary
Online
 Location irrelevant

You can have access to the same educational material
from your home and with no cost

Pace
Traditional
 Linear Model

Whatever your abilities or deficiencies were, you had to
follow a linear way of getting educated
Online
 Self-paced model

You can get educated on the subjects you are interested
in at your own pace and preferable time schedule

Ratios
Traditional
 One to Many

In traditional classes there was always one teacher and
many students who were competing for his/her time
Online
 Many to Many

Lecturing can happen at home and the teacher can
spend enough time with each student. Students that
outperform can now act as teachers

Teacher
Traditional
 Few selected teachers

Teachers were considered the ones that had specific
amount of education and research papers
Online
 Few billion possible teachers

Teacher can become anyone who has the ability to
teach a field of study in concise and understandable
way. Separation of teachers from pundits and self-
selection of the good ones

Agility
Traditional
 Formulated knowledge

In a traditional setting a book might be taught the same
way for a number of decades
Online
 Up to date knowledge

In the online world knowledge is altered and enhanced
every minute. Due to the exponential pace of change
there is a need for limitless updates of material

Interaction
Traditional
 Book
The traditional medium for education offered no
interactivity to the user
Online
 Screen
Screens are dual interactive. Can track and understand
your behavior and you can interact with the screen. The
material has also changed from text and images to
videos, text, images and audio

Collaboration
Traditional
 One to Few

Collaboration was possible only with classmates
Online
 One to All

Collaboration is wide open to age spans and geographic
location. That enhances the quality of collaboration and
the topics at hand

Form
Traditional
 First read then write

The form of education was lectures and exams
Online
 First do then read

Technology has transformed the way we learn by first
doing and then learning regenerating the way we first
learned through play

Is it the right time for a change?

 High levels of adoption in online learning
 Rapid obsolesce of knowledge
 Unprecedented number of quality materials
 Technology advancements

Users and Products
Users Products
 Individuals  Platform

o Marketplace
 Schools (K-12)
o Assessment
 Universities o Learning
 Small Businesses o Training
 Content
 Enterprises Management
o Aggregation
o Filtering

High Levels of Adoption

 More than 4.6 million students are currently taking at
least one online course. This number has more than
doubled in the last 4 years
 Based on recent research, students in online learning
conditions performed far better than those receiving
face-to‐face instruction
 There is a 12.9% growth for online enrollments
contrary to a 1.2% growth for overall enrollments

Obsolesce of Knowledge

Instability
in the work place, just-in-time production
and rapid obsolescence of technical knowledge
demands constant learning

o The fastest growing group seeking education are
working, part-time students older than 25
o The amount of technical information is doubling
every 2 years
o A current learner will have 10-14 different jobs by
the age of 38

Quality Material and
Advancements
 The University “Open Education” movement provides
plenty qualified educational material

 1 trillion web pages and 200million blogs carry a lot of
information that is not curated in any educational way

 Collaborative Intelligence and the role of Social
Media. Ability to learn through millions of users instead
of a handful “accredited” professors.

 Increased bandwidth gives access to many more
mediums and to dynamic and interactive content

Technology and education

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