The future of education

Despite the fact that in my University degree I have studied a lot of different topics, I have always been interested in the future of education, and I have always been curious about how will change in the future.

'Traditional education is dead' is a phrase that I have heard a lot of times during all my educational travle.

I think that this sentence is completely true, but I also think that it is not a bad new, it is just a change, and we have to adapt to it. It makes no sense to keep doing the same things that we have been doing for the last 100 years, we have to evolve.

AI and education

I think that IA (Artificial Intelligence) will be a key factor in the future of education, not just because will act like teachers. I also think that softwares like Chat GPT created a whole new world of possibilities for the students, from completing homeworks to cheat in online exams, oh come on, we all already did that :P.

This fact shows how the today's education system is not thinking about the tomorrow's world, and it is not preparing the students for the future, it's like if we were still teaching how to use a typewriter.

I'm not a AI hype guy, I don't think that AI will solve all our problems, but it's not an opinion that it already marked a key factor in the world of education. Teachers now can't send boring homework to complete the gaps, because the students have now apropiate tools to solve them in seconds without even think about the solution.

What can teachers do?

I had a recent exam in my Swedish University about Digital Marketing, and the exam was completely online, a fill short sentences test in a Moodle platform form, the idea was the fantasy to Chat GPT, but the reality was quite shocking.

The teacher (I don't remember his name but was such an intelligent guy) made the questions based about the theory but not as sirect questions. All of them where based in the practical project we did weeks ago, a long term project with a final submition and presentation. The questions were like 'How can you apply the whatever theory that will help the development of your practical project?' or 'What is the best way to apply the whatever theory based in your practical project?'.

Seems a simple question, but it was not, because you have to know the theory, but also you have to know how to apply it in a real project, and that is something that you can't learn in a couple of hours, you have to work on it for weeks. And what does that mean? Exactly, the people that didn't cooperate in the long term project, they had nothing to do in the exam, even with CHat GPT.

From the theory to the practice

In the same way that making your students to memorize the CSS' media queries has no sense (I never remember them, I always have to google it), making your students to memorize the theory just because whey need to know something of a topic has no sense either.

The best way to learn something is by doing it, and that is something that I have always missed in my University degree. Luckily, that will change soon because future students will have the information to use it, not to memorize it. Modern technologies will help us to study faster and better, and we will have more time to practice and to learn by doing.

What's the point of memorizing the theory if you can google it in seconds? The point is that you have to know how to use it, how to search, what's the correct information, how to apply it, etc.

Not just the students, also the teachers will have to learn how to use the new technologies, and how to teach the students to use them. The teachers will have to be more like a guide, and less just like a teacher.

The future classroom

I'm optimistic about Universities and schools, I don't whink they will close in a near future because you can search a tutorial in Youtube, but I think that they will change a lot in the next years to adapt to the new tools. Covid-19 has been a big push to the online education, and I think that it will stay, physical classroom will stay as well, at least for the future years.

My prediction is that future classrooms will be a mix of online and physical classes, and the students will have to learn how to use the new technologies to learn faster and better.

Universities, colleges... are not a place to study in silence, they are a place to meet people, to share ideas, to learn from others, to make friends, to have fun, to grow as a person... And obviously, to learn. You will be able to learn from home, but you will miss a lot of things that Discord can't give you.

The power of the Internet

In the same way I thing that study from home is not the same as in university or Master degree. Nowaydays it's becoming more powerful than ever, a 90% of my coding knowledge comes from the Internet, and it's just an example. Self-learning is a really powerful tool that can push yourself to new limits. In my company, some developers come from a Bootcamp, that is a not traditional way to learn, but they can be a good solution for some people. Also some of us like me are working in a position that usually requires a Master degree, but I don't have it and it's not a problem at all, I have learned a lot by myself and sometimes that's more valuable than a Master degree.

Conclusion

Education will suffer a needed change to adopt all the new possibilities that the new technologies are giving us. We have to stop teaching by memorizing and start teaching by doing, using these new tools to go faster to the practical point, to teach the new pupils to create, imaginate and innovate using all these new innovations in they favor.

Technology will not replace your job, but someone that knows how to use it may replace you, so adopt and learn, it makes no sense to fight agains the future.