A well earn't rest from the kids today as my hubby took them to see his family. So I decided to indulge my online urges.
First Facebook catching up with friends and family, in my news feed I noticed a link to a blog post which caught my attention. In seconds I found myself engrossed in a economical, social and political debate. See link below.
Whilst it is quite high brow and hard going I found I got the main thread and as I read further, the commentators on the blog, my understanding grew. After a couple of hours I had linked to I-player to watch news commentary, twitter to connect to people and track threads of discussion, read other contributors blogs and viewed organisations websites. My knowledge and understanding of how society, power structures and economies have found themselves where we are today was expanded rapidly. History, politics, psychology, philosophy, economics etc all covered in the debate.
So why is this important?
With BBC 2 reporting this week that we would have to start saving £75 per month for each child from birth to save for University Fees I was left wondering, will university even be an option for my kids!
I went to university and benefited from a free education did it help? probably. Was it essential?No definitely not. I would always have worked and had worked before University, my degree did not get me through the door for any of my jobs. Every job I found myself, not through recruiters pushing out CVs with the minimum degree requirements on. Companies bought me, I don't think any knew i had a degree. I think they just assumed I had one.
What people bought was my confidence. This I owe mainly to my supportive family however in part University helped with time away from home growing up and taking responsibility for yourself. The lectures, no they didn't grow my confidence. It was people, relationships with others, they helped me to grow in self confidence. My lecturers were, at best, imparting new information to me which I could have read from a book, at worst disinterested and offered no stimulating debate or discussion on any subject. My peers on the other hand did.
Access to information was not as easy then as it is today we didn't have our own PCs let alone access to the internet which then was in its infancy. You had to know who to look up in periodicals and in the library, academic language needed explanation and your lecturers were the best source for this. So on we all trundled to our lectures, uninspired in the main by the University system, hoping that in 3 years we would get a job. The sad thing is it was a delusion, we got jobs because we were born into a generation fortunate enough to graduate into a growing economy fuelled by technology. Nearly all my peers from my course were employed in that sector as a result. Not because of our degrees, but because the sector was short of shiny young minds who knew how to use a computer!
There is so much more available at the click of a button now. Instead of being sat in a lecture theatre with 200 others listening to an uninspired lecturer with no debate. Our youth can be engaged in the latest thinking from all perspectives from academics to philosophers, from the inspired to the repressed, it's all online. In time Cloud Technology will be effectively organising and presenting the information / data in a way that we can collectively interact with it and share our interpretations and understandings on every subject imaginable, global online classrooms.
Our great global university and it costs nothing.
So is the question for us all not "what are we missing out on?" but "what is the future and how can we shape it?".
Here is an idea
Lets send all our kids to a Global Cloud University, pack them off with a laptop and backpack and instead of digs in dingy halls of residence, they can travel the world whilst they do it with the money you would have spent! Remote lecturers in the Cloud could set essays for our kids, they can log onto global debates on their chosen subjects, all whilst on their travels. At the same time seeing the world and learning life skills hopefully coming back with new perspectives to share and add to the cloud.
How can we track if they are learning or bumming about? At least with University we have a system which they are accountable to. The great thing about technology is that every day we become more global, we are re-creating physical systems, processes and organised structures online. For example if our students wanted a release for funds so they can travel to their next destination they need to complete their assignments it on time and attend online debates and work with a remote mentor on a regular basis.
That sounds like a positive evolution in education to me.
For another article which I felt gave a strong argument for why our personal demands in the West are responsible for the many of the global economic problems see
Is University education a right? Or do we just need to look at it differently, more creatively!
