Look before, or you'll find yourself behind – Benjamin FranklinThere is a certain futility in crystal ball gazing but preparing for that uncertain future is something that we have to grapple with if we are to prepare both ourselves as educators as well as our students for a future that will almost certainly pose very different challenges to those of the 20th century.

One of the challenges of the next decade, and for that matter beyond, will be how we cope with accelerating change. As one killer app merges into the next we have to accept that we can’t keep pace with every development and need to look beyond those specifics to the direction of travel in education and the way it mirrors life in general. Educators, and for that matter anyone else, will have to develop a push Personal Learning Network (PLN) and make some hard choices about the specific applications and activities they adopt without getting so comfortable that they lose the innovative edge. The focus will shift from the technology to the pedagogy again and with it a distribution of the teaching role across groups the membership of which will widen over time.

Wires are beginning to disappear although Becta is still advising a mixed economy in new builds. It’ll be vital to develop infrastructures that are adaptable as we become fully wireless and then as the nature of wireless connectivity develops. Will there be a new generation of applications and devices that challenge the ability of a school to be wireless just as it appears to be perfectly possible? As someone who has experience of the effect of navy manoeuvres on a school’s wireless network I know it’ll not always be straightforward.

In any event infrastructure will be increasingly distributed as ‘www’ more than ever means whatever, whenever, wherever. Platforms will develop so that the user combines services uniquely and ICT moves from the company or school server to the cloud.

On the subject of ‘the cloud’ we are already seeing examples of sharing and collaborating in Google docs, Google Wave and specifically school facing apps like Primary Pad. It might be a challenge for some of us to trust something that we don’t have direct control over and I suspect that local backups will be a feature for some time to come, certainly with more ‘mature’ practitioners like me!

If you think back ten years or so the increase in collaborative learning both in the classroom and in remote locations and sometimes with strangers has increased dramatically and I see this becoming the norm rather than the exception. The web has prompted collaboration outside of learning too as companies take advantage of online expertise and offer apparently free tools to enhance this. I say apparently free because there’s still no such thing as a free digital lunch; you just pay in privacy and other ways.

The social constructivists among us will see learners’ knowledge manifestly being socially constructed in this collaborative environment. It always was but the nature of the 20th century classroom was an inhibitor. In light of this many observers expect to see a blurring of the social and educational environments but I’d suggest the hypothesis that many might welcome a separation. If I could remember where I’d seen it I’d credit the author but I’m sure somewhere teenage learners were reported as wary of ‘their’ networks being hijacked by their schools. It was called something like, “Stay out of my face ………. book.”

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This is a good moment to remember that education does not exist in isolation and other thus far unforeseen social and economic factors will have their part to play in what education looks like in the years to come. The whole issue of disengagement in some developed countries needs far more attention that simply to be dismissed as a result of schools not mirroring the out of school behaviours and activities of learners.

A happy by-product of the distributed and collaborative learning networks will be a decrease in didactic lessons and tests. Creativity is on the rise as learners demonstrate their learning in exciting multimedia ways. As these become familiar how do we stop them becoming passé? Testing will develop to service the needs of personalisation rather than ‘pig weighing’. I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in a couple of assessment pilots that were heading in this direction, the eViva project as a teacher researcher with Ultralab and as a member of a focus group for the QCA KS3 testing pilot set in a virtual world.

Curricula that were once 'done to' will constructed by learners. Hopefully this might break the cycle of progressive curricula and ‘back to basics’ that the older among us will be only too familiar with. However, I still think we need to make sense of the conundrum of who it’s all for. It’s much more complicated than ‘employers want’ or apportioning curriculum ownership on a proportional basis between learners, parents, employers, society (Remember society? It’s that thing that we were told in the ‘80s didn’t exist.) and other interested groupings. In addition are there content essentials for all that there is too much information and ‘it’s about knowing how to find it and validate it’? For instance, if we are to learn lessons from history are there not some items of content that everyone should explore, deconstuct and reconstruct? I couldn’t possibly justify hoping that young learners would engage with the history of the holocaust by chance. But where to draw the line? The real change will be in where the information comes from, how it’s used and how learning is demonstrated. We really need to aim much higher in Bloom’s Taxonomy that we are.

We already live in a world where, for the first time learners meet more data out of school than in it. I said data because I don’t believe much of it qualifies as information. We are on nodding acquaintance with the notion of digital literacy but this will need to become internalised by learners as they search and validate data as by second nature. They need to be familiar with all the mechanics of a search that are already far more complex than simply using efficient search terms but also, in a global learning village, with the notion that there might be multiple realities.

Knowledge is no longer mediated by conventional publishers but agreed by a collaboration of users. Knowledge that was previously taught and received is constructed and sources mashed. This brings with it a new literacy in which the dominant skills are about validating and verifying the veracity of information. In use there will be a heightened awareness of copyright issues including that of creative commons.

Web 2.0 apps become more commonly used now although it would also be true to say that there are areas of desert separating these growing oases of practice. It’s reasonable to assume that paper will disappear in the way slates did although this is an area that is not happening fast. (How many schools/managers/educationalists/policy makers does it take to change a lightbulb? None. They don’t like change!) These apps will, and indeed are, be streamed live and as they develop bring implications for bandwidth. No doubt the digital immigrants among us (don’t knock the expression, was it ever meant

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to be any more than a generalisation?) will continue to cling to our offline Plan Bs for some time to come though. In any event the distinctions between the offline and online worlds blur then disappear as learning becomes genuinely blended. Virtual worlds are already being used to learn in and we have the opportunity for virtual field trips and as these blend with the offline world we will be much more aware of what face to face brings to the table.

And what about people? How will they develop and what characteristics will grow out of these changes and also be driven by them? I see the developed west out of its comfort zone as developing economies connect and collaborate. Location and content of learning are influenced by health, climate, globalisation... Individuals will have a wide range of careers over a lifetime and adaptability will become an essential life skill. Qualifications, skills and training will be adapted to accommodate this. Digital natives will finally come of age and be capable of more technically proficient and socially mature use, use that is capability based and e-safe.

E-safety must become embedded in everyday life as second nature in the same way we cross a road. This encompasses everything from the risk of sexual predators to that of fraud and identity theft and it includes information literacy but we must be alert to the danger posed by moral panic. Going online must not become victim to the same unsubstantiated fears that drive some parents to deprive their offspring of a kickabout in the park or a cycle ride to school. Let’s empower our young people to recognise and deal with danger.

There is a complex interaction between activity such as social networking and devices. A new device provokes changes in usage and social and educational trends (web 2.0 is a great example) provoke changes in devices as fitness for purpose issues emerge. Technology is already more handheld and personal but if you want real science fiction, one last prediction, schools will come to embrace the mobile ‘phone!

So there it is; a bit of a list and prey to the complex interactions of people, science, the environment, circumstances, happenstance and, perhaps most of all, history. Now to put some flesh on it.

There to be shot at!

Sources:

The Knowledgeworks Foundation http://www.kwfdn.org/

Ten Trends http://thecleversheep.blogspot.com/2009/11/classrooms-of-tomorrow.html

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