What the World Needs from Education (Medium/OL Weekly)

From my beloved OL Weekly by e-learning guru Stephen Downes:

Marc Prensky knows how to make a big statement. Here's his latest: "People, In the future, will increasingly mean newly empowered symbiotic human hybrids who can, as individuals and teams, apply the strength of their unique blends of human and technology components to creating new and positive value and solutions to local and global problems. 

“The big issue for the world is not to create more or new jobs, but to figure out effective ways for people to be compensated for whatever series of world-improving projects they want and choose to do.” 

Can't say I disagree with him. 

See also: The No-Collar Workforce, Deloitte.

What the World Needs from Education is a little deeper dive than usual blog fare, but it's worth the time. It provides a framework for moving forward through the technological evolution and its pedagogical impact on teaching and learning, but also the world beyond degree attainment. This piece forces us to reevaluate our objectives for ourselves and for our learners.

Symbiosis with technology — i.e. tools becoming indispensable parts of us — is, of course, the story of human development. The question of what we keep in our human heads (i.e. our dreams, passions, compassion, warmth, kindness, good, ethical behavior) and what we delegate to our extensions (e.g. calculation, memory, speed, accuracy, analysis, connection) has been a human issue since the invention of the abacus and writing. Today this integration is speeding up incredibly. 

Finding new evolving integration opportunities — and realizing them seamlessly — is perhaps the most crucial task for humans in the coming years and centuries. It is what will lead to the solutions of all our pressing problems, which neither technology alone, nor humans unintegrated with it, will be able to fully deal with. Helping each individual find his or her unique, appropriate and ideal “style” of hybrid symbiosis is perhaps the central challenge of future education. And yet, no one has adequately addressed the issue in those terms.