Talk at 4th GERA conference at Khalsa College of Education, Amritsar in November, 2015 on the theme "EDUCATION: WITHIN AND BEYOND THE CLASSROOM" by Honorary Member - 1 Lukas O Ritzel, Accenture, Guest Professor with HWZ, Grenoble Graduate School of Business, Harvard, Speaker TEDx, Lucerne http://thegera.in/ With help of some 3 brightest young India professionals which I am proud to know and call friends > Shweta, Gautam & Kaushal

1. Learning for digital natives
connected to life or do you know
about Ola cabs?
By Lukas Ritzel, Luzern, Switzerland, November 28,2015
Academic References: Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration,Grenoble
Graduate School of business, Harward extension, Asian Institute of Technology
Business References: Accenture Global Consultant
Highlights: Purple Cow award winner, TEDx speaker, management thinking mistakes app in store ..
And a lecture to bright people gathered today in India 1

2. Education for Life
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• Last year I talked about the internet filter,
mobile and augmented reality and there impact
to global education
• Today i want to get more into details on what
educators fail to prepare our kids for a
corporate business life

3. 3
Digital everywhere
The Filter Bubble spreading more and
more and nobody knows about it

4. 4
Digital everywhere
Mobile –phone Zombies

5. 5
Digital everywhere
From hackers who fight global
terrorist digital more effective than
governments with their war drones

6. 6
Digital everywhere
Instant viral spread of symbols of
peace and hope in times of sadness

7. 7
Digital everywhere
Digital game changers supporting
revolution and demonstrate
transparency

8. 8
Digital everywhere
Accenture has established a lead in Digital India, used to describe services such as
analytics, content management, social media and cloud services. Digital is the fastest-
growing and high-margin vertical, and has attracted the attention of all outsourcers

9. 9
Digital everywhere
Digital Education in India?

10. 10
Where else than in the classroom?

11. Digital India: Our Net connect is still below par
new report from the Broadband Commission for Digital Development
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12. Some lowdowns
• 1.2 -of every 100 Indian has a broadband subscription
• 99.6% rural households have no Internet access,
according to the National Sample Survey Organization.
• 34% of social media users in India are college
students.
• 75% of Indian users will access the Internet only
through mobile devices by the end of 2015, according
to the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).
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13. 4 solutions that can provide a way out, according
to the Centre for Internet and Society:
• Introduce Internet-based applications in areas
like agriculture and healthcare
• Increase digital literacy
• Reduce cost of Internet access
• Improve infrastructure for low-cost, high-
speed connectivity in semi-urban and rural
India.
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14. How can educators prepare our future thinkers
and professionals best?
• Don’t learn only facts and figures
• Update your topics to applied solution findings, to
international communications, encourage creativity and
making mistakes, include top breaking stories into classroom,
encourage entrepreneurship and learning by experience,
teach students to dream big, involve students into global
collaborative classroom projects.
• Learn how to search and find the answer right on the spot,
right when you need them
(side effect: more time for other skills to learn)
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15. How have you been so well prepared by your school(s) to be able to work so efficient
within a digital virtual environment (I mean not so much your technical skills but more
the soft skills like knowing how to email communicate, how to teamwork in a virtual
environment, how to work within a cultural diverse environment)
• Schools I attended encouraged learning by experimentation. Many experiments
required the use of technology from as basic as a microscope to as complex as an
8051 micro controller. This developed an appetite to learn new
instruments/gadgets and curiosity helped me master them. As digital
communication technology in India changed from 2G to 3G and now 4G, my
colleagues and I communicated with our global peers well and we were more
prepared to deal well in a virtual, culturally diverse environment.
• My school had lot of extracurricular activities like debate, extempore, sports at
regional and national level. So we were groomed to be ready for these activities.
We had hands on exposure to computers very early and good guidance from our
teachers on these subject. Since, I come from a convent school, English was my
language and it was polished by highly skilled teachers on our school.
• In my school/college we had lectures that were taken to improve the soft skills, to
make us understand how should we work and balance out things when we work in
teams.
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16. What could your school have done better to prepare you for
your job
• I am basically an introvert by nature. I wished my school would have
recognized this and pushed me harder to overcome this. I used to shy
away participation in stage events. Had, my school helped me in this in my
formative years, I might be at a different level today.
• Since, I have completed my higher studies outside India, I have seen and
felt the difference Web can make to an education system. When I was in
school, I was only taught in theory but Web has the capability to
practically demonstrate the theory through animations. It also gives a
student multiple perspective to a problem giving them the freedom to
build on their opinion.
• They might have taken some lectures about the way professional world
works. So as to just provide a brief overview about it.
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17. Think one level down, what do you believe should Indian average schools for
middle class Indians do better to prepare them for business life (not at the
level you work but just average business)
• So a majority of the average middle class Indian is imagined as an engineer
working for one of the IT majors like Infosys, TCS, CTS, Wripro or HCL.
There should be professional trainings in association with these tech-
organizations where in employees who are currently in a role which the
students would later take on - can educate them on the professional
ettiquette and methods of team-meetings/taking minutes of the meeting
and work on Microsoft excel which is heavily used across businesses.
• I think they need to take a more practical approach and not get go bogged
down on theory. It needs to have more case study kind of approach since
the formative years of kids so that kids can build on it.
• Internet has still not penetrated into the India Education system as it
should. Most parents/schools see it destructive weapon since nobody
really understands how it could be used, nobody has really thought about
revolutionizing the education system.
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18. How did you learn to get relevant information out of the web
• I was never taught - self learning and learning from peers.
Google search helped and when it didn’t work - tried to use a
different keyword combination (search query)
• I am a voracious reader, am I like learning new things. I have
been exposed to internet at a very early stage in my life and I
mostly learnt everything by trying it out or by enrolling for
online courses or asking questions in forums.
• Most of the times I have learnt it on my own by surfing.
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19. What should I tell to Global Educational Research
Association ?
• Schools/Colleges should start introducing internet education
on a big scale so that the students that step out in the
corporate world are confident enough that they can survive in
this world. Be it technical knowledge or be it the etiquettes
that one would require to communicate should all be
provided to all.
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Kaushal Shah, 23, working with me in my daily high paced and high volume
Accenture consulting job as my most important technical developer. The top
performing technical developer with an incredible strike rate of 99.68

20. What should I tell to Global Educational Research
Association ?
• I think today’s professors have to be very creative while
educating the digital generation and learn how could the
Internet be used for helping students understand better and
use those new channels constructively. Professors need to
help students think and develop their analytical skills. Rote
learning will not help in today’s digital era.
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Shweta Shenoy, 28, working with me in my daily high paced and high
volume Accenture consulting job as my offshore project manager one
of the top performers at Accenture P2C off-shore team level

21. What should I tell to Global Educational Research
Association ?
• First of all, Please upgrade your cell phones - from feature phones to
smartphones, someday try to use a MacBook and be genuinely curious
about technology - let students take over in the class and encourage them
about positively using tech to impact lives at a large scale. Don’t prepare
them for just small jobs - prepare them to be entrepreneurs.
• Please tell them what happened yesterday with Housing.com and Ola
cabs rather than telling them about some 50 year old textbook material.
The world is changing every minute – don’t be lost in the past.
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Gautam Jain, 25, my student at GGSB back in 2012
Today working at Google

22. अलविदा!
Lukas Ritzel – connect with me through LinkedIn
http://ch.linkedin.com/in/lukasritzel
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