“The best way to predict the future is to build it”*

Futurelab launches new Opening Education report: ‘2020 and beyond: Future scenarios for education in the age of new technologies’

[ClickPress, Wed Jun 13 2007] The education sector, traditionally the poor relation when it comes to new technology, must have a hand in shaping technology appropriate for the networked generation of learners, warns a new report from education innovator Futurelab.

The report, ‘2020 and beyond: Future scenarios for education in the age of new technologies’, raises fundamental questions for educators on the nature of learning and knowledge in a world where technology is invisibly embedded in everything we do.

Within 13 years, the report predicts, technology will be embedded and distributed into most objects - from clothes and keys to city streets and bus stops. Everyone will be able to connect 24/7 to one network with massive processing power, giving seamless access to tools and resources integrated into clothes or accessories.

Keri Facer, Research Director at Futurelab, comments on the implications this view of 2020 society has for education: “The education sector has always received hand-me-downs from other industries. For example, PDAs were developed initially for business use and they are now being used more and more in schools. If we want to shape technology and not simply react to it, the education sector needs to be involved at the development stage of new digital technologies making them appropriate for learners. The Government must invest more in educational research and development in order to systematically model and build a new education system ready for the real possibilities of the future.”

Futurelab’s ‘2020 and beyond’ report offers a series of potential scenarios that could be a reality in 2020. These include centralised, massive processing power and storage allowing you to record your entire life in DVD quality; virtual landscapes overlaid on the physical environment for participants in complex game play; buildings that sense your body temperature and adjust air conditioning or heating accordingly; and blanket wireless connectivity allowing you to download or access information anywhere and at any time – you can start watching a film at home, pause it and carry on watching on your notebook while travelling, and finish it off at a friend’s house on arrival.

The report asks what implications these sorts of technologies might have for education – exploring the possibility, for example, that children will bring technologies with them into exams, or that new forms of educational divides will open up between children who have personalised devices and those who don’t. Most importantly, the report suggests that what children will need to learn in schools will change radically.

To find out more about what society could be like in 2020 and the resulting questions for education, ‘2020 and beyond: Future scenarios for education in the age of new technologies’ can be downloaded from:
www.futurelab.org.uk/research/opening_education.htm.

Teachers can also download a poster linked to this report.

Futurelab is a not-for-profit organisation that is tapping into the huge potential offered by digital technologies and innovative practice to develop pioneering learning resources and approaches that support education for the 21st century.

Opening Education is Futurelab’s ‘blue skies’ publications series, intended to open up areas for debate; to provoke, to challenge, to stimulate new visions for education.

Ref: f081.doc

Bookmark this release: Del.icio.us - Digg - Furl - Blinklist - Reddit