Quantum leaps in education - Stephen Downes

While returning to Christchurch from Dunedin last night, I browsed through this article / report by Stephen Downes on 'Quantum leaps we can expect in teaching and learning in the digital age'. It was published in 2017 and had been sitting in my 'to read' folder for a while. Here are notes taken:

An essay about change and technology addressed to today’s teachers and the students of tomorrow.

Begins with overview of the technology environment. Summarises developments in the access to the internet, increased power and memory in hardware, the impact of microcomputing (e.g. drones), the promises of the internet of things and how these have contributed to constant and accelerating change.

Then discusses ‘what can we (teachers) do’? Explains the concept of ‘affordances’ and how technology changes the ways in which opportunities are provided by tools, infrastructure, software and interfaces between humans and tools. All of which contribute to change.

“In an education system focused on the future, therefore, the core of learning is found not in what is defined in the curriculum, but in how teachers help students discover new possibilities from familiar things, and then from new things.”

Discusses the old and the new in education, classrooms, textbooks, pedagogy, assessments, institutions and credentialling.

The turning wheel provides summaries of what is currently occurring with virtual services, platforms, ‘the end of the app’, and decentralisation.

Spreading activation details the means for upscaling innovations including technology enablers for conferencing and communication.

Provides resources to assist development of curricula, ebooks, publication databases, courses, educational resources, data and applications. New business models evolve and resources become services.

Closes with ‘who speaks for us’? Proposes the importance of learning analytics and how the current emphasis on course level, educational data mining etc. shifts education towards intelligent curriculum, adaptive content and adaptive learning.

Food for thought as per normal. I will need to mull the concepts over for a while and work out contextualisation to vocational and higher education application.