For 2042

For 2042

Personally Speaking, the scenario “Trust yourself” is most viable in 2042 in the Facer & Sandford (2010) reading. It predicts a highly individualized world where people can develop their lifelong personalized education system composed of components chosen from the standardized provision.

In my viewpoint, the personalized product can be viewed as a symbol of development in highly commercialized society. In the post-industrialization era, people start to get tired of standardized products and seek for more specific service. As the cost of personalized decreases, especially the fixed costs since most of the personalized studying plans can be achieved through the Internet in present time, more education firms enter in this market. This situation would avail us of lowering price of the individualized education system. For instance, in the past, only members of upper class have the privilege to hire several tutors to take care of every aspect of their studying. However, we get access to cheaper online sources and studying agents that are helpful for us to develop personalized education system. In the future, this trend would be more popular with development of technology.

Another reason for the possible prevalence of personalized education is that lifelong study grows to be a necessity for people in modern society. Fierce competition requires people to study more while working. Take MBA as an example, it is a barrier and also a requirement for manager positions in many enterprises. And they need to learn some newly emerging business skills after working for several years. For programmers, they need to catch up with latest techniques. In the future, this trend would give birth to personalized lifelong education system for every person. It will help us jar out of our cocoon of standard studying.

Other predictions such as segmented MOOC courses and application of AR are also possible in the future.

Segmented education is a trend. Nowadays, classified courses have already emerged in MOOC platforms. It is like a draft version. Coursera includes courses like art history, introduction to world history. But it somehow is inside the area of traditional formal studying subjects. More professional courses about new technologies and soft skills may appear in near future in the form of paid courses for segmented audience

AR is ushered in by the spread of digital media but it hasn’t been applied to education system. In digital media era, interactivity in classes are more emphasized. It is not limited to interpersonal relationship and interactions. Mobile application like “Life of a Monarch Butterfly” and “Earth AR” have delved into education. Through three-dimensional earth shown by AR technology, students can understand knowledge like revolving and polar days easily. In other words, it provides a low-cost and vivid way for teachers to teach students specific knowledge.  From my perspective, this trend may improve the quality of schools without enough funding.

Although I’m not sure about the prediction of 2042, one thing for sure is that, we have to catch up with those latest trends and always develop our own insights about them.  I appreciate this course that offers us a platform to discuss and talk about Information and communications technology very much!