Education at the heart of humanity - #edcmooc

In the modern age people have put a lot of energy into enhancement of themselves as humans. Merely existing is not enough and has not been enough for quite a while. Every day of our lives many of spend endless amounts of energy trying perfect ourselves by buying better clothes, nicer things, going to exotic places, exercising our bodies, changing our bodies through plastic surgery... We are trying to reach some unattainable idea of of 'good enough' - but shouldn't just being be good enough? When did the human project become so time-consuming?

Even this course now, even this activity of writing this blog post... my goal is to achieve something. And by achieving something I would grow, better myself and come a small step closer to that perfect version of myself. For me education is central to how I see myself, but what's the value of traditional education in our world and in the future world? What's the value of knowing anything when all the knowledge of the world is available everywhere and anywhere? Being a transmitter of human knowledge has become next to meaningless in a world where machines store and distribute every piece of knowledge that ever existed.

But what is knowledge then? Does modern technology change the concept of what knowledge is? Is there knowledge that a machine can't have? How does it feel when a loved one betrays you? Is that knowledge? Is knowledge general or personal? And how do we value education as it is today? Apparently, in the future an education will have less value, but be more important. By that I mean that more people will have access to education, which in turn will mean that competition will be fiercer. And education won't be something you do to prepare yourself for a career, it will be a natural part of your ongoing career - something you have to do to keep up with the fast changes of technology.

The humanist project's ambition is to reach equality, which is something that we are far from achieving, and I believe it's even less likely to happen in a world where more and more jobs require an academic education. The future job market that will grow fastest is most likely the digital one and this will also, most likely, exclude a large group of people. Even with ambitious efforts like the MOOCs, where the thought is to make education more democratic, the near future seems even more challenging than the present for those who are not fully connected to the digital world or academia of the actual world. Is technology changing the world so rapidly that it has become impossible for us to include those who are straddling behind? I hope not. Or rather, there's always hope.

The utopian version of education - week 2: #edcmooc

Watching the youtube-clip A day made of Glass 2 I find myself feeling elated. Although aware of the fact of its commerciality, I am drawn into this perfect world of smiling children and happy parents/teachers. It's a world of constant sunshine and perfect order. Technology always present, but never threatening or enclosing. It's easy to dram of such a time and place where everything we can imagine is possible in teaching.

But I keep reminding myself of the fact that many of the things envisioned in the clip are very possible today, even though they might not look as extravagant as they do in this utopian version. I'm thinking of the part where the students, while working on constructing a bridge, contact a bridge designer to ask him for feedback on their project. This is something that is very possible today too, but I don't think many schools take advantage of the fact that we're able to do this with the help of Skype and other tools.

It's not just about technology. It comes down to imagination. You have to be creative enough to see what's possible with the tools you have. If we develop our imaginations and creativity, maybe this utopian future is a lot closer than we think?

Technological determinism and online education - Week 1 #edcmooc

Thinking about technology and its impact on our world is complex and there are many possible perspectives you can have. Reading Daniel Chandler's essay on technological determinism you get an overview of different ways of looking at both technology itself and society. The question driving the discussion is how much technology decides social change. In dystopian visions of our future world, technology has usually run amok and humans are more or less controlled by technology. This idea that technology is a driving force in history and something that has a life of its own has been discussed by Marshall McLuhan and Lynn White. Others have argued that technology has a way of turning into something it originally wasn't designed for, for instance Neil Postman and his "Frankenstein syndrome". The point here is the combination of the concept of technology having life of its own and the idea that humans rarely foresee all consequences of their creations. The most common example is the atomic bomb which was a result of a chain of inventions.

In the editorial Change comes hard the evolution of education is compared to the evolution of PCs. The idea presented is that much like computer companies in the past were resistent to technological advancements, colleges and universities ar now resistent to the idea of online education. It is argued that the future of education will be digital and the assumption is that this technological change is unstoppable. It is therefore foolish of colleges and universities to not jump on the bandwagon and evolve, since they will undoubtedly be forced to do so in a near future anyway. It is my personal opinion that this is probably true. Now that technology makes e-learning possible and readily available for so many people, it's not going to go away. And for critics who argue that the quality of online education isn't as good as traditional education, it is inevitable that after a period of adjustment to new circumstances, online education will only develop further. It is my belief that e-learning is the way of the future.

Technology and a Dystopian World

There have been many dystopias in literature and on film over the past hundred years, but the first one that I always think of is Ridley Scott's Blade Runner with Harrison Ford running around a dark and rainy future world chasing 'replicants', who are human-looking robots designed as work force on off-worlds. The feeling you get in the film, made in 1982, is that even though technology is everywhere the world is a dark and failing world with little light and little hope. It's interesting to look at the film and realise just how little we can predict the future. If you compare our digital world with its online connectivity and the isolated world of Harrison Ford's Deckard it could seem like complete opposites. But maybe the social media online is just the first stage of humans alienating themselves from each other? Maybe digital closeness is a first step to alienation?