Technology poses a real challenge to education, both in terms of learning and of teaching.

1. A futuristic
vision on
learning and
teaching
by
Michel Smouts

2. Dogma’s
 Everybody can learn everything
 If he gets enough time
 When somebody (something) tells him how far more he
has to go
 We don’t have to learn everything any more
 We should store the knowledge in our brain as
compactly as possible
 We need to learn everything five time to record it
 EQ is more important than IQ

3. Technology that will become
available
 Cheaper communication over longer distances
 Larger storage devices
 Better language translation software
 Eye-movement, fingerprint detection
 Glasses instead of tablets
 Text to speech/speech to text
 Video management
 Summarising software
 More and better integrated apps

4. If we improve teaching,
learning will be improved.
But let us improve learning
and adapt teaching to the
improved learning.

5. Courses
 I assume that all courses are available in an electronic
form
 Spoken by the best speakers
 Controlled by colleague teachers
 Continuously updated
 Extendable as exercises by the students

6. Let us focus on the student
 Every person has a growth curve
 Not every person is growing at the same speed
 By growing we mean the evolution over time of all the
human capabilities, including and most importantly
those of the brain.
 Technology has to help the student to find out at which
point on the growth curve he is currently located

7. Technology has to
compensate for the
deficiencies of the human
being.
 Our attention is often interrupted
 Our profile is misunderstood
 Our persistence isn’t optimum
 Our confidence is gone
 Our energy is devoted to other topics

8. Technology has to give
control to the student
 He should be able to repeat as often as needed
 He should not get lost in the multitude of books and
documents on the subject
 He should be able to slow down when needed
 He should not be able to lose information
 He should not be rehearsing his own faulty information
in the workbooks

9. Technology has to provide an
individual coach to the
student
 Correct his spoken language
 Correct his exercises
 Keep track of his overall progress
 Encourage him to continue
 Explain how close he is to the end result and calculate
how much more time should be spent on this topic

10. Our brain deserves a clean,
consistent, structured picture
 Technology should guard history and future
 Infinite books are needed to remember all what was
learned
 Topics selected by the student have to find a place
 Corrected exercises are kept
 Overall structure is highlighted

11. The 21st century requires
other capabilities than the 20th
century
 More knowledge has to be acquired
 Some knowledge can not be known anymore in the same
depth
 All the tools that technology offers, should be used to
acquire knowledge
 Acquired personal knowledge has to be conserved over time
 Reproduction of knowledge should be with all available tools

12. What about the teacher
 He is the global coach
 He uses the electronically recorded lessons or not.
 He pinpoints difficulties when needed
 He is informed about each of the individual capabilities
of his students, much faster and much more in detail
 He doesn’t have to correct individual faults anymore
but he watches out for structural deficiencies

13. The teacher
 Is a facilitator more than a repetition machine
 He doesn’t have to be able to present all the topics
anymore. He can leave some to the students for their
investigations
 He is a methods-instructor. Not coupled to any topic he
checks the progress per student in “learning by heart”
and “thinking”, for which special courses are available

14. Smart book concept
 A printed handbook has deficiencies
 It has a lifetime of several years, thus it gets out of date
 It has a weight
 It contains information which is not useful
 It contains errors, which cannot be corrected easily
 It needs a separate workbook
 It cannot continuously repeat information
 It cannot be manipulated by the student
 It cannot speak, listen, nor translate.

15. Smart book concept
 A smart e-book
 Has no weight
 Is infinite in number of pages
 Can be updated on the spot if necessary
 Can talk and listen
 Can correct errors of a person
 Can convert handwritten comments to printed text
 Can translate when required
 Can follow the eye movement and therefore
 Watch our attention
 Encourage or suggest to rest
 Pause

16. By when and how can we
achieve all this
 My estimate is 2035
 By then the technology will be available at an
affordable price
 All the handbooks have to be made available
electronically and be converted to smart e-books
 Extra software will have to be written to insert all the
flexibilities mentioned above
 All will have to be integrated. It will not work with some
loose apps here and there.

17. Consequences
 Efficiency of the student is improved
 Some boring work is taken away from the teacher
 Quality of schools is improved
 Focus on preparation for the future job
 Duration of education?
 Distant teaching
 Distant learning

18. You want to know more?
 I have written a book about this subject:
“Education Challenged by Technology”
It is available from Smashwords.com, Kobo.com, Apple,
Gardners, Barnes&Noble and Odilo.
It is currently available in Dutch and in English.
Thanks for reading my presentation,
Michel Smouts