MOKOPANE – Everyone is still talking about the technological revolution/fourth industrial revolution, the “robot apocalypse”, if our jobs of today will still exist in the near future and if we need to re-think our teaching methods?
Minda Marshall, co-director and co-owner of Lectorsa, one of the leading research and development companies internationally in Mokopane that supply solutions to the entire market segment has done intensive research on this subject because she already realized more than 10 years ago that change in education is going to be inevitable. Marshall is also the co-chairman and director of Mokopane Destiny Academy, a private school in town.
She says the First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production. Now a Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the third, the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres.
According to Marshall these are indeed matters of concern and it will especially affect the youth.
She says: “We need to re-think our methods of teaching and equip students with the necessary set of skills to succeed in this uncertain digital age of automation and artificial intelligence. Technology and globalization are significantly shifting business models in all sectors, which brings us to the conclusion that on average, a third of the skill sets required to perform today’s jobs will be completely new by 2020 according to the WEF whitepaper on Realizing Human potential.
This new world is fueled by data and internet-connected devices that are capable of collecting and processing ever-growing amounts of information. There has never been a more crucial time to re-wire learner’s minds through developing their visual processing and cognitive skills.”
“We need to equip them with the right set of skills in order to succeed in this globally and digitally interconnected world. This act of ‘up-skilling’ will be crucial to retain or attain employment over the next few years, the WEF surmised.
The silver lining is that while millions of jobs might be lost to new technology, it will also create many new jobs, some of which we can’t even imagine today.
The main concern, however, is our children’s future. How do we prepare them for a future that is changing at an almost unreasonable pace?”
Marshall believes we stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work and relate to one another. In it’s scale, scope and complexity the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before.
“We do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear; the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society,” Klaus Schwab, Founder and executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
One of the educators in an overseas institute informed that over 25 years of teaching she realized that we need to rethink our methods of teaching after one of her Gr 12 students had written: “Today teachers teach us what they know instead of what we want/need to know.”
These words confirmed that we can not continue to use the same teaching methods or interact with information in the same way that we did 20 years ago.
The challenge of the future is not so much that there will not be jobs available but rather that our children will not be equipped with the specific skills to face the day-today challenges that the available jobs will require.
