(And in case you’re wondering why my entire final project is a picture of a boat, click on the picture to get there.)

When thinking about the future of education, it is first important to discuss what education is. In its most basic form, I would define education as the transfer of information from one source to another. With this simplified definition, it can be seen that learning has been going on ever since prehistoric ages when the only way to transfer knowledge was by orally telling stories. With advancing technologies however, the methods that humans use to pass down information have changed. As humans have progressed from cave drawings, to written and printed texts the amount of knowledge recorded and passed along has increased exponentially. Now with computers, this potential seems to have no limit and it has changed how we interact with the wealth of information.

Looking back, it is clear to see that education has, and always will be constrained by the technologies available. It is especially clear when comparing the stone cave drawings to the petabytes of information we have stored on the Internet today. In thinking about the future of education, it is important to discuss what technologies there will be and how it will affect how we learn. Instead of proposing a fictional story, I will describe a few futuristic technologies that I believe will change how education takes place.

Today, our lives revolve around electronics and computers. This fact however will not change, as our lives are so adapted to them. With this technology, more and more people will be connected to the Internet, creating a social network and virtual reality. Perhaps the future brings some new device that allows humans to seamlessly interact with computers. By mapping brainwaves to digital inputs of ones and zeros, it may be possible to store memories, and to create an interface to the computers that make searching instant.

When applying such technologies to education, it can be seen that such a device will change how users handle information. Students will no longer be required to memorize facts, as these facts will be instantly accessible through the web. Though students can retrieve information, there will be a need to understand the rich content that they are given access to. They will need to know how to apply the information instead of just memorizing pure facts. With this method of learning, there is a shift toward quality instead of quantity. It doesn’t matter how much an individual can memorize as long as he or she can efficiently apply the knowledge.

With the reliance of society on the Internet however, there are also new skills that students must learn. As there is so much data, students must be able to parse and use the data to propel their knowledge. Students must learn to distinguish between accurate and falsified information by learning to compare different sources. In addition, students must learn how to reason and challenge what exists. There is so much information out there that it is important to distinguish what is true and false. There will be an increasing reliance on consensus, where the majority rules on what is accurate or not. With such technology, there will also be great efficiency as a whole.

In addition to a centralized form of knowledge, education will also involve a new dependence on social skills. Teamwork will be an essential part of learning, as the tasks that mankind will pursue will become too large to be tackled individually. Devices that allow synchronized thinking will emerge that allow humans to work together as clusters. This type of technology will open our minds to others and such technologies make it essential that people have a cooperative attitude.

With such widely broadcasted and centralized information, the future will also bring many new ways to access the data. We can already see a glimpse of the future with the emerging tablets and computers today. I believe that these devices will only become smaller and eventually, everyone will have computerized contacts. Such contacts open up the possibility of virtual worlds where people will no longer have to leave the comforts of their homes. Perhaps, we will no longer have homes, and instead live in capsules where our lives are extended and our minds are free to roam.

I can imagine that in the future, individuals will choose to live in a program. People will be able to create their own world, and they will not want to return to reality. Individuals may actually lose their desire to learn as the technology makes their virtual life more attractive to live in. They will no longer need to work, as all the pleasures they want are given to them through the simulated society.

The future of technology however remains uncertain. Perhaps there will be new technologies that close the boundaries between computers and the mind. Maybe it will be possible to download knowledge directly to the brain and instantly have it accessible. The future of learning may not involve traditional methods of repetitive study but may be a simple push of button. Such methods of learning would revolutionize society and schools would cease to exist.

Though information will become widely available, there will be new needs to verify the accuracy of what is learned. Perhaps schools in the future will take on this role of validation. Schools may have to work together to ensure that the appropriate material is being distributed to the society. Teachers will work collaborate and collectively decide what information is needed for specific occupations. Because everyone in society will have equal opportunities to learn, profession will be dictated by desire. The motivation and enthusiasm an individual has for a field determines their profession.

In 30 years, learning in the future may be completely different than it is today. With the technologies available, the only limit to our knowledge is our human potential. By augmenting our minds with computer components, our ability to learn expands dramatically. However, even though we may have a great wealth of information available to us, it is useless unless there is some motivation behind it. In our present day society it is easy to get lost behind the television and other entertainment services, and the future will not be any different. Even if we are able to download data directly to our brains, our progress is dictated by the effort we put into productivity. Technology and education may change but our society’s working ethic will not.

A few examples of the technologies that exist today are linked below. The technology exists but the question is really in how we use it.

http://www.justgetthere.us/blog/archives/Augmented-Reality-in-a-Contact-Lens.html

Here we have an implementation of the contact lenses computers I mentioned. This will truly change the world by providing an augmented vision to society. It will open up the world to the wealth of information available on the web in a small convenient form factor.

http://code.google.com/apis/predict/

Google Predict is what I believe is a stepping stone to the future connection between our minds and computers. Having computers predict what we want increases the efficiency of our minds so that we will instantly have what we want when we want it.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24759/?ref=rss

Here we have a new technology of teleportation. I consider this a major breakthrough because it allows us to instantly teleport information without wires or signals. Information will travel from point A to point B, without being passed through any mediums, making information truly instant.

I consider my second-to-last blog post (the one here) to be directly connected to my final project. An addendum? A coda? They certainly came from the same place, although I went in a slightly different direction for this.

I can’t post my whole final here. Some of it just isn’t post-able, although I would love to share it if there is a way. The section written in Microsoft Word that were easily transferable here. Two parts were made in Pages and I don’t know how to post them. (Or send to Professor Ugoretz, which I’m having a fantastic time trying to figure out!)
Never mind! The last parts of my project are attached at the bottom as .pdf’s!

Oh, and this is totally a utopic vision of the future of education. I briefly flirted with the idea of a dystopic SF view (the government force feeds us information in our sleep!) but I like to think we’ll get better as time goes on, not worse.
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