The education tsunami – 9 pieces to make sense of a revolution

ParisTech Review / Editors / 2015-08-06

The Internet has revolutionized our access to knowledge. Education is on the verge of major changes. Nine recent pieces published in ParisTech Review try to make sense of this tsunami.

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Education Series – 1 – What is this, a rebellion? No, Your Majesty, it’s a revolution!

Institutions are evolving, but the arrival of new technologies and practices such as MOOCs have only had a limited impact thus far. Yet it is now apparent that we stand at the dawn of major changes. It is not just the new tools that will change matters but an in-depth evolution of Society and our economies.

Education Series – 2 – New knowledge, new know-how: skills for the 21st Century

Knowledge is becoming increasingly important in our economies and Society at large, to the extent that a new expression has been coined to baptize this new development phase: the knowledge-based economy. Characterized by the growing contribution of production, dissemination and uses made of knowledge (intangible or immaterial capital) to the competitiveness of enterprises and nations, the knowledge-based economy calls for future citizens and workers to be taught a renewed set of skills, differing partly from those developed during the industrial era.

Education Series – 3 – New thinking patterns: which impact on education?

Children of the digital era are accustomed to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. Philosopher Michel Serres describes them as no longer having the same heads. Is it a generational question? In any case educators cannot ignore the new thinking patterns. Our schools must take them into account, not only in adapting teaching methods but also in inventing a new role in a Society that consumes knowledge instantly.

Education Series – 4 – Collaborative practices in education
An interview with François Taddei / Biology Researcher, Founder and CEO, Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI, Paris)

With the rise of machines, an important number of skills are bound to disappear. But the emergence of new issues also requires new forms of human expertise. Facing worldwide problems that we are yet unable to solve, we need to develop different forms of intelligence, learn to cooperate and achieve results that aren’t possible for individuals alone. Will our education systems, fundamentally based on competition, meet this challenge?

Education Series – 5 – Should we all learn to code?
An interview with Serge Abiteboul / Senior Researcher, INRIA, Professor, ENS Cachan, Member of the French Academy of Sciences

The question first arose in the 1980s, with the advent of the personal computer: were we all going to have to learn to program? The development of the software industry seemed to have given one definitive, and negative, answer to this question. Yet it is coming back, with a vengeance. Why exactly should we take it seriously this time around?

Education Series – 6 – Will school teach us the grammar of the digital world?
An interview with Nicolas Danet / Lead Client Manager, Change.org

Any child is capable of learning how to code. In a world where digital technologies are increasingly pervasive, it is healthy for future citizens to acquire a basic understanding of how their environment works. But is school the most suitable place to do so?

Education Series – 7 – MOOCs and serious games: learning in the digital age

Innovative, more participatory and personalized forms of learning are emerging. Among these new forms of learning, two have acquired significant importance over the course of recent years: serious games and MOOCs. Their main advantage is to allow a high degree of personalization in the learning process, a principle that has been long advocated by education specialists but that happens to be impractical in our mass educational models.

Education Series – 8 – Professional training reinvented

Of all children entering school this year, 75% will exercise a profession that doesn’t exist today. This trend is already noticeable. The good news is that neuroscience discoveries support the idea of learning during our entire lives. But capacities are only one part of the whole picture. How can we establish a genuine culture of lifelong learning? Technologies will help, but companies should also encourage employees to share their experience, knowledge and expertise as part of a comprehensive learning environment incorporating experiential elements, feedback and more formal courses.

Education Series – 9 – Higher education: apocalypse, now?

In the same way it revolutionized creative industries, digital technology is revolutionizing higher education, an industry that can be traced back almost a millennium, with the creation of the University of Bologna in 1088. Digital technology has drastically altered the economic balance between the different players, making some models obsolete, allowing others to emerge, enabling economies of scale on one side and leading to additional costs on the other. Destruction, creation: is higher education to enter a Schumpeterian cycle?