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Looking globally: the future of education
Looking globally: the future of education

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6 Summary

In this week you have explored some developments in technology that are happening now or very imminently, the impact they may have on the world (particularly on employment) and what role education can and should play in preparing for these changes.

Week 6 will support you in thinking critically about the ideas you have explored in the preceding weeks and in your own personal vision of an education system for the future.

Further reading

If you have found the issues discussed this week of particular interest, you may want to read further about the way technological developments are affecting society and hence the education needs to prepare the next generation. The following two articles might be of interest, both of which are openly available.

The first is about the way the ‘internet of things’ is affecting the way we learn.

Reference: Meola, A. (2016) ‘How IoT in education is changing the way we learn’, Business Insider UK, 20 December [Online]. Available at: http://uk.businessinsider.com/ internet-of-things-education-2016-9 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] (Accessed 16 July 2020).

The second is paper from a group of Chinese academics. It offers some early thoughts about the effect on children of schooling moving to online teaching and home schooling as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wang, G., Zhang, Y., Zhao, J., Zhang, J. and Jiang, F. (2020) ‘Mitigate the effects of home confinement on children during the COVID-19 outbreak’, The Lancet, 395(10228), pp. 945–7. [Online]. Available at: https://www.thelancet.com/ journals/ lancet/ article/ PIIS0140-6736(20)30547-X/ fulltext?fbclid=IwAR393Qg1UwsA8tLHX9xlJlwNzVqXbHtR1fBsTCMZ_pxBwVytKON2GzMv3KI (Accessed 16 July 2020)

If you would like further access to published research, and support in critically reading and reviewing such work to inform your own re-visioning of the purposes of education, why not consider the Open University’s new postgraduate module EE830 Learning and teaching: educating the next generation, which ran for the first time in October 2018. In this module we will be evaluating the sources of information available to us as educators, such as the article above, which is essentially advertising products linked to the lines of argument presented. We will be reviewing what counts as evidence and searching out peer reviewed publications which help us learn from studies internationally. If you are interested in signing up for this masters module, you can find more information at http://www.open.ac.uk/ postgraduate/ qualifications/ f70. If you have general enquiries about registering on the programme please email https://www.open.ac.uk/ contact or phone 0300 303 5303. If you have specific queries and would like to speak to a member of the academic team please email WELS-ECYS-Masters@open.ac.uk.