The trends reshaping education in the future are mostly related to tech development, gamification, and augmented reality. This will lead to a more dynamic STEM approach and tech-proficient students.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought an accelerated transformation of the educational landscape. Before the crisis, new technologies slowly made their way into schools, conquering classrooms and timidly sneaking into educational curricula.
When face-to-face attendance was not a viable option, schools, universities, and jobs moved to the online environment to maintain their activities. Education has reached a turning point where the only alternative is to renew itself and adapt to an environment where virtuality is gaining more and more weight. This guide will show you some of the leading trends shaping the education industry.
Careers of the Future
By 2030 more than 40% of jobs will be replaced by robots in the United States. The jobs of the future will be linked to technology and innovation:
- Web developers
- Data analyst
- digital marketers
On the other hand, routine and mechanical tasks will be rendered ineffective by artificial intelligence. Advances in areas such as biotechnology, neuroscience, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence will take the most relevant leap forward and begin to show the future that awaits us.
The years ahead of us will be flourishing with innovation and technology. We will have access to great computing power very cheaply, 3D printers will have endless applications, communications will be limitless, we will see quantum computing mature, there will be serious conversations about inhabiting Mars, and the Internet will become our neural network.
Beyond our passion for technology, the advantages of evolution in these disciplines come with a social dimension to analyze. It will be crucial to understand how it will affect us as human beings and society.
Educating to Empower Through Dynamic Curricula
Empowerment involves increasing the individual capacity to be more autonomous, proactive, and collaborative. Students have a more entrepreneurial spirit to create projects and push them towards financial or personal goals.
Students will become increasingly aware of their capabilities and develop skills such as confidence, imagination, entrepreneurship, and creativity within the classroom. Today, a new conception of work is emerging, one in which professions are pursued for the sake of passion rather than financial security.
Dynamic curricula, also known as modularity, is a method used to personalize education and motivate the students to choose their educational path. They become the ones who decide exactly what to study and how to study, thus promoting empowerment.
Enhancing Education Through Gamification
Gamification promotes the development of cognitive skills such as concentration, memory, and psychomotor skills. Students gain visual dexterity, spatial coordination, and perceptual discrimination, enhancing autonomy, self-control, and creativity.
Schools are now implementing gamification techniques to teach programming languages to 12-k students. Apps like Kodable or Osmo are great resources for this method.
Benefits of gamification:
- It generates pleasure.
- It mobilizes the subject.
- Students develop creativity, curiosity, and imagination.
- It activates divergent thinking.
- It favors communication, integration, and group cohesion.
- It facilitates coexistence.
Augmented Reality in the Classrooms
Augmented reality offers us a wide range of potentialities within education. Textbooks would become more interactive by allowing the visualization of objects in 3D and incorporating exercises in which the learner could explore these objects from every possible angle. For example, think of basic principles of anatomy, engineering artifacts, or works of art that could be viewed from different angles.
Augmented reality would also enable information about specific physical locations or even allow teachers, students, and families to create itineraries, scenarios, and experiences based on geolocation.
Educating to Solve Problems and Situational Thinking
Quality education adapted to our times is an education that prepares the learner to make decisions in the face of existential problems. These challenges help us to grow and encourage a new type of reflection: situational thinking.
Education today is usually understood as a competition to demonstrate the knowledge that has been acquired, with the least important consideration being whether or not this knowledge is useful for anything other than passing an exam. However, in reality, education should be understood as a necessary and habitual element in our lives, as a constant that allows us to permanently adapt and evolve as people and as members of society.
In this context, one of the issues is the need to prepare the new generations to solve problems and make informed and well-founded decisions. Schools like DataCamp, General Assembly, Thinkful, Springboard, App Academy, and Flatiron School, educate people to be able to analyze their problems and take advantage of them to generate opportunities.
Kumbirai is a GIS & MEAL specialist using geospatial analytics to advance global health and social impact. A certified Data Protection Officer (DPO), an open-data advocate and self-taught software developer, he builds web GIS tools that turn field data into decisions. He lectures in GIS/Remote Sensing and mentors emerging practitioners. Founder of a geospatial startup and nonprofit, he believes, “Real geospatial innovation happens when we empower communities with the right tools and knowledge.” Open to consulting and collaborations.
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