Learning and working will be different in the future. Cut your own school-aged offspring some slack, because they’re right when they say, “I learn it my way.”
A father enters his daughter’s room. He is presented with a picture of horror, at least in his perception. The TV is on low, the music is loud, but the daughter is busy on two screens with a video and several parallel chats. “What are you doing?” exclaims the father in a mixture of incomprehension and fright. His daughter doesn’t even turn around to give her one-word answer, “Homework!”
Multitask and multi-fun
It is unmistakable that Generation Y and even more so Generation Z not only learn and converse differently than their elders, but that they will also work differently in the future. Already today, they are gradually entering companies as newcomers. In a few years, they will make up the majority of the workforce. They need variety and excitement. They are still enjoying the trial period with all the new impressions. If you then want to put them at a routine workstation where they are supposed to cleanly handle predefined processes with software that is more than ten years old, they will increasingly reap refusal and frustration. Those who don’t want to…, you might think, and let the experience seekers go, but in the course of demographic development there are fewer and fewer of them.
Imperceptibly, this change is also taking place in schools. More specifically, nor is it learning outside of school. Were you lucky enough to have a teacher who really won you over and got you excited about a subject? Were you and are you still good in a subject today because they had that luck? Do you still enjoy the high return on learning (retained knowledge through time invested) from this subject with this teacher? Were you even lucky enough to have been at a school where there were only such teachers? A school with all-star teachers? No? What a shame for you – and for your life! Conventional thinking lets the very approach of this vision fail because of money. Who can pay for such a school?
Is “School-Tube” the future of learning?
Imagine a school to which the best German-speaking teachers have been brought together. Not the best textbook readers, but the best explainers, motivators, and storytellers. They exist, these schools that are havens for the teaching stars of their field. Sofatutor is one of those: For 15 euros a month, less than the cost of a single hour of tutoring, a student can have polynomial division explained over and over again via video. A hundred times, if necessary. From a star. At school, on the other hand, he has only one performance per year – by an amateur actor!
Sofatutor doesn’t need any new technology to do this. It is a kind of Youtube in paid subscription. And yet Sofatutor is transforming learning. Students who always said of themselves, “I can do everything but math” become the math ace in their class. Learning becomes playful and interesting again. Teachers can focus more on what’s important. They can create the individual reference and, above all, provide the meta-competencies needed for the future.
The diversity of knowledge at the factual level is already impossible to keep track of. It is becoming increasingly important to be able to find one’s way in ever new complex situations, to understand and establish interdisciplinary connections and finally to obtain the necessary factual knowledge specifically from databases.
Sofatutor(sofatutor.de) is just one example of countless worldwide. Salman Khan runs an entirely free learning video platform(khanacademy.org). 136 million lessons have already been viewed. Apple’s iTunes brings the online courses of countless universities and institutes to the screen or tablet, mostly free of charge. Wikipedia has drastically changed the way we look things up and democratized knowledge. Yet it is still at the beginning of its potential. Similarly, video instruction, whether live or canned, will transform learning and education. The part of teaching, lectures and also seminars, which learners could only passively follow anyway, is gradually being replaced. In return, you can experience the world’s best teachers, regardless of your own school. Almost or completely free of charge.
Sofatutor & Co. open up a new path for pupils and students beyond old structures. Mothers and fathers will be less likely to marvel at their children learning in a way that suits their generation and with more joy. More knowledge and better understanding give reason to hope that these children will one day be able to solve the big problems better than we can. Education solves resource problems, eliminates hunger and thirst, makes people healthier and even more peaceful. Or, as Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus put it, “Every problem in this world can be solved by a smart business idea.”
Follow these links as well:
► The Future Strategy Program for SMEs
► Free video crash course THE FUTURE OF YOUR BUSINESS
► BUSINESS WARGAMING for robust business and future opportunities
► KEYNOTES by Pero Mićić for your employees and customers
Have a bright future!
