I think that the old system of mass education is slowly dying.
The present system has done very little for us ,and only brought about a unequal two tier state. The present educational system is out-dated and will be done away with soon, given the speed with which technology is changing. Technology is reinforcing positive steps to help users generate their own interactive learning environment, such as e-learning. Users will soon be able to access these virtual games through their TV with internet access, mobiles and other mediums.
The question is no longer how but when.
The current education system is based on points in the current system. The best and often most wealthy get the best that the education system can offer with money paid to elite feeder schools, grinds schools, specialized grind tutorials, and outside lessons to help them succeed.
The current situation serves governments, research and development hubs in campus and universities. Government spends a couple of million into a new university research program with backing from another semi-state government body, Enterprise Ireland. The money is concentrated in a special circle and within the most well known universities.
The current technology revolution as seen with e-learning and the rise of social networking means that people can go to college or just study online. There will be a stage where people wont even have to go to university in person as they can just register online, sign an e-sheet in a tel-conference, sign in or dial in to confirm attendance seen today in corporate environments. Issues such as no-attendance will be addressed and a solution will be found in time clocking, virtual assistants to help the student, large group project management database based on sharing a virtual server with I.P tracking, cookie tracking if example one is not concentrating fully on class while online/enforcing virtual lock down while in tele-conference mode, all possible now, thanks to technology.
The question now is, 'will the government embrace technology and work with this change in tandem with universities or will the present situation continue to maintain the status quo?'. My feeling is that initially resistance will be strong but people will have to change with the technology. It is as inevitable as the rise in mobile tel-workers in sales, marketing and online distance learners. The fact is that the idea of mobile home workers will increase long term. All a web designer needs now is to be mobile,, and have a wireless net connection. If they learn a programing code language, they can just teach themselves and set up their own contact list, sales pitch, and company name. In fact the most equipped people to deal with the present recession is the mobile web technology guy. He can learn in another country and still make work commitments, meeting virtually, out-source his manual work abroad, send invoices, accounts figures digitally or electronically, get salary into his bank account, send faxes and meet and greet clients by deadline end of the week. This further strengthens my case that the old education model is dying and the government in most western countries are clueless what to do, and have not prepared for it.
Recently, I heard a story in the news about the current coalition Fianna Fail and the Green party talked about introducing third level fees as a revenue earner in the last mini-Budget in a few weeks back. This will make the idea of getting into colleges such as Trinty and UCD even more elitist and the financially well -off will benefit. Only now, even the high income earners are complaining and making their kids go to protests outside Government offices (no point in my opinion) as it is hurting their pocket now that their own job is under pressure.
So it may be time for the government to form their own digital education board/advisory board around them telling them how best to embrace the rapid change in technology. The government should work closely with more technology-related boards.
The recent financial system collapse has told us, the public, that we are not rational beings with rational decision making abilities. Again, this system of core classical economics as a rational science taught in secondary schools has reinforced the same dogmatic message.
Economics as a subject needs to be changed and looked at. Things need to be looked at again in a new light, updating school subjects since they were mostly originally formatted in the 19930s . The passive student needs to know more about interaction with his own subject, his own practical examples and experiences with the subject. This will be reinforced with the new system of virtual learning.
I see a more interactive student-to-student model emerging. In fact, I see a less teacher-model influencing the class. The new 'wiki' open source model will emerge whereby students can go online to a cloud computing scenario, log into their class Google docs file, share a virtual server, work on a project management software package ,have instant messenger/chat (IM) facility, filtering of group files, online chat based on certain specific keywords, search facilities, instant search tools, and interactive widgets on their user interface desktop.
Each student can add their own piece onto the saved document/file, share it with the group, or save for later. Other users can add their own piece, or edit the original piece as an open source file. Other interactive features uploaded as a power point file might be video on demand, or posted virtually in private network room, and virtual collaboration projects for practical examples. This final project can be saved on the network cloud and later passed for exam purposes back and forth for updating between students.
This is already happening amongst young web savvy technology students/pros who are not attending any colleges. The best web savvy self taught teenagers can teach themselves new programming and 3rd party applications themselves, and don't even need to go to college.
One thing is to certain, student-to-student in a virtual cloud computing environment is the only way forward instead of old rehashed learning environments. The future is going to be interesting!
