To convocate with your high school class in 2030, you are in grade 4 now, in the year 2022. There are many concerns and even more opportunities awaiting the naive nine-year-old that is accustomed to mobile learning spaces and technology-driven learning. The formal grade K-12 years have become just that, a formality; albeit a formality with real consequences and a lack of solutions that bring us here today. With the push for smaller, more portable, faster, and more robust operating systems comes the side effects: the need for instant gratification, facilitator burnout, excessive heat radiation, and high product and operating costs creating even more social stratification than in past decades.
The future however looks a bit less dim. As new problems arise so does the opportunity to introduce innovative, green, and human-centred solutions to issues that affect access, equity, connectivity, and learning. These solutions are fueled regrettably by capitalism but with a social purpose and responsibility, allowing not just the biggest companies to compete but opening a new market of “lifelong” learning and innovation to take place. Since technology is not unique to education alone, nor is education bound by physical boundaries, it has allowed for sector-wide adoption of incrementally improving life for everyone, the reward is in sharing the solution, whether a digital product, ideology, or theory, learning no longer ends with parchment and the toss of a hat, but instead just begins.
This futuristic fiction is telling when you reflect on some of the histories and happenings of today’s education system and how in some cases it improves outcomes and in others invites additional issues into the already complicated landscape, such as mental health and environmental health which will become the two main themes I will explore.
References
Selwyn, N. (2021). Ed-Tech Within Limits: Anticipating educational technology in times of environmental crisis. E-Learning and Digital Media, 20427530211022951.
Selwyn, N., Pangrazio, L., Nemorin, S., & Perrotta, C. (2020). What might the school of 2030 be like? An exercise in social science fiction. Learning, Media and Technology, 45(1), 90-106.
Singh, S., Maughan, T. (2014, June 18). The future of ed tech is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. The future of ed tech is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. Futures Exchange. https://medium.com/futures-exchange/the-future-of-ed-tech-is-here-its-just-not-evenly-distributed-210778a423d7
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