IAE Blog

Recently I have been thinking and writing about possible futures of education. This naturally required that I think about and forecast still more broadly-based futures reflecting possible major changes in our world, changes that will strongly impact the future of education.

This IAE Blog lists and comments on forecasts for 15 areas that I believe to be quite relevant to our educational systems. For each item in my current list, I have provided a brief comment about its possible impact on our PreK-12 schools in the coming decades. My list is in alphabetical order.

My report card at the end of my first grade of school indicated, “David reads widely and understandingly.” I have had more than 75 additional years of experience at that activity, and it is a very pleasurable part of my life. Recently I read a short article that I want to share with you, How A.I. Ate the Colonel (Chang, 3/28/2019).

China is in the process of implementing  a facial recognition system that contains every person in China. The system is now good enough to be widely used, both for surveillance purposes and for everyday transactions in stores. Here is a quote from Chang’s article:

     "...human brains have become equipped with add-ons, thinking tools by the thousands, that multiply our brains' cognitive powers by many orders of magnitude." (Daniel Clement Dennett III; American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist; 1942-.) [Bold added for emphasis.]

     "We must preserve the power of intrinsic motivation, dignity, cooperation, curiosity, joy in learning, that people are born with." (W. Edwards Deming; American international business consultant and statistician; 1900-1993.) [Bold added for emphasis.]

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.” (Aristotle; Greek philosopher; 384 BC–322 BC.)

I published the first Information Age Education blog entry on August 10, 2010. There are now 422 entries in this collection (Moursund, IAE Blog, link). By the end of 2018, this blog series had accumulated than 3.8 million page-views. It had more than 250,000 page-views in 2018.

“There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” (Henry Louis “H.L.” Mencken; American journalist, essayist, editor; 1880-1956.)

I am a regular reader of New Scientist, a weekly British magazine that covers a wide range of science-oriented topics. I think it is a very good publication. The following short article is quoted  from the In Brief section of a recent issue (New Scientist, 6/6/2018). It provides a frightening glimpse into the growing artificial intelligence capabilities and possible uses of computers.