Channel NewsAsia’s Perspectives presents a panel of distinguished experts and leading thinkers from Singapore, Asia and beyond who gather on a weekly basis to dissect current events. This afternoon, I attended the discussion for Episode 8, which is titled “Schools in the Cloud? Globalizasion, Innovation and the Future of Learning”. The panel comprises of Prof Tan Eng Chye, Deputy President of Academic Affairs and Provost of NUS, David Edwards, Head of Education, GEMS World Academy (Singapore), Richard Yen, Founder and Managing Director, Ednovation and Stephanie Hung, Senior Director, Public Sector Group, Microsoft Singapore. The panel discussed the impact of technology on the future of learning and what the future of education will be like. This is given the belief that an increasing focus on technology and online teaching will make it more difficult for students to form meaningful social networks and human interaction will diminish. The panelists shared interesting insights, ranging from the history of how technology has impact learning since the 90s, and also how computers might end up competing against humans. The discussion started off having Prof Tan sharing about how online Content Management Systems (CMS) was first introduced in schools, and also how blended learning, where part of instructors were migrated online and another part face-to-face, became prevalent. Stephanie also shared her views on how Microsoft software has shaped the new-age education. Software such as Skype help bridge gaps in education across borders in classrooms. Indeed, some courses that I have taken in Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) allow me to collaborate with partner universities and students from other countries from around the world. Office 365 for Education and OneNote helps facilitate content creation and collaboration between teachers and students, and establish an immediate feedback loop to harness the collective wisdom of the class. Stephanie also talked about the importance of building a capability on computational thinking, which is a thought process that allows one to break down problems and formulate solutions in a systematic approach, pretty much like how computers “think”. She mentioned that while computers can solve many problems, it is important to understand the limitations of computers, so that we humans can value add. This point reminded me of a vision shared by one of my CMU professors, Luis von Ahn, who aims to combine humans and computers to solve large-scale problems that neither can solve alone. According to an interview on Bigthink.com, Luis shared that “There are problems that computers cannot yet solve. It’s funny because some of these problems are very simple problems seemingly. For example, a computer cannot tell you what’s inside an image. They can tell you somethings but it can’t really quite tell you there’s a cat next to a dog and they’re both running. A computer can’t do that. Well humans, we can do it super easily.” Ultimately, he invented reCAPTCHA, which is a tool that determines if someone trying to obtain access is actually human and not a computer, and at the same time, helps digitise books! Richard connected with the audience as he shared his personal anecdote about his 4-year-old son, who actually learns about dinosaurs on his own using online resources. He brought up an important point to share that it is important for our educators to use creative methods to ignite the passion of students so that they would be inspired to learn. After all, the traditional method of learning from textbooks in the past is obsolete; with the Internet, resources are easily available online. Prof Tan also shared that automation is replacing people, thus it is important for students and educators to keep up with the times as we move up the value chain. David brought up an engaging discussion about how teachers and environment can affect and facilitate different types of learning. For instance, a good teacher knows how to make use of technology generate interest and gather feedback to facilitate learning. On the contrary, it may not be productive should an educator simply throws a student an iPad and expects the student to learn from course wares. Personally, I feel that a good educator should be able to use data analytics technology to easily identify their students’ strengths and weaknesses, and assign assignments based on areas they need more practice in. The audience also had the opportunity to ask questions and challenge the panelists with difficult questions. Some questions brought up revolved around character development, the number of women pursuing STEM in education, how to find the right balance between the use of technology. On top of these really great questions, there was a heated debate about the reasons of the rising cost of education. The panelists answered the questions really well, and provided many insights from different perspectives. Be sure to tune in to the episode on Channel NewsAsia on the 2 Sept 2015 (Tues) at 8pm. Fun Challenge: Try spotting me in the audience and identify the colour of my shirt! The first reader that drops me an email with the correct answer wins a prize :)
