Just as lab-grown gems have disrupted the fine jewelry industry, technology and appropriate use of technology have disrupted various industries, including education. Disruptions have become commonplace in today's fast-paced world, and what may be considered a disruption today could very well become the norm tomorrow. The disruptions we face today will shape the mentality of tomorrow. As we continue to adapt and evolve alongside technology and the market, it is crucial to embrace these disruptions and use them as opportunities for growth and progress.
The sourcing of rare earth metals and gems is a fascinating study that has implications for the disruptions happening in education. What used to cost thousands of dollars is now routinely mass produced in factories at a breakneck speed threatening the diamond industry on so many fronts. In Aja’s book, “Truth about Lies” one chapter is devoted to the myth of the diamond engagement rings. How much glitterati a modern groom can afford is often used by the mass media to put pressure on couples to own rocks that are increasingly becoming more commonplace.
Likewise in education. It is beyond the scope to this research to compare the widening income gap between cosmopolitans and heartlanders, between those with 5G and those with little or no access on the information super-highway. However, it is not difficult to observe the trends between mobile handphone subscribers vis-a-viz total population in a particular data network. Each major city could statistically be tracked by comparing scores somewhere between 0.1 and 0.9 where,
0.0 = no correlation between current mobile subscribers and % of the total population
0.1 = only elites have access to telco networks, a tiny minority of the population
0.5 = every other person is a mobile phone subscriber with multiple service providers
0.9 = fast, cheap and unlimited wifi available to all and adopted by all
Almost all the data shows that the personal mobile phone market has reached singularity (a point of no return). In most developed countries the ubiquity of coverage and ever-increasing data transfer speeds have become commonplace and taken for granted. Most young people today see food and shelter as secondary to wifi access they consider a basic human right.
PK - 236 mil
IN - 600 mil
TH - 54 mil
MY - 30 mil
VN - 66 mil
PH - 82 mil
INDO- 188 mil
SG - 5.42 mil
But digitalisation is only one aspect at the Family and Education gate. Another is the shift toward home-school and it’s corollary trend in challenged-based learning. A basic tenant of the home-schoolers is the idea of taking responsibility for our children’s education beyond and sometimes to the exclusion of the traditional classroom as prophesied by the hebrew prophets: “each one sitting under his own vine and fig (tree)” (Amos, Isaiah, et al.) a utopian vision of the future state with full optimisation of A.I. and other frontier technologies.
Likewise the transformation of early childhood education reflects these changes also. Witness the rise of alternative didactic methods including the customisation and optimisation of standards when it comes to testing for proficiency and establishing competence. In particular, challenged-based learning as proposed by a collaborative effort by many US schools in peer-learning approaches and hands-on, project-based learning using real-world fundamentals that could be immediately applied after graduation.
Note also the proliferation of professional certification courseware offered by tech giants including and especially Google’s investment into digital modular learning labs targetted at both the young and old, serving fresh grads as well as mid-level managers wanting to up-skill. And courseware is not restricted only to registered students but is available on an open source basis - what was once limited to only a very select market of learners has come into public domain if you know where to look.
Then there is are the micro-learning portals where for a small fee, almost anything under the sun is offered - short courses where highly-concentrated content is downloaded complete with workbooks, online communities in a profit-driven context. These are digital funnels that assist learners to gain mastery in usually “one thing” that will make the most difference in the shortest amount of time. This kind of scalable learning environments will produce disruptions to standardised testing and the traditional paradigm employed by didactics since time immemorial. Many such disruptions are taking place across various industries that are overturning the apple cart of higher education.
Miners regularly drill down thousands of meters to extract rare earth minerals and precious metals. The price of metal and gem extraction is based upon the determined efforts of a few opportunists and the many who buy into the myths that produce these industries. The diamond engagement ring myth is an interesting case study. Disruptions in the fine jewelry industry, such as the rise of lab-grown diamonds, are just one example of the many disruptions that are taking place across various industries.
These disruptions are also evident in the education sector, where online universities are offering higher order thinking skills that were previously only available through brick and mortar faculties with a more centralised one-to-many distribution of data sets. At higher levels of graduate learning, a less rigid, more decentralised model with a smaller teacher- student ratio and a greater emphasis on the flipped classroom allow learners from all over the world to come together and collaborate, creating a truly global learning environment.
These virtual remote campuses are using appropriate technologies to deliver their curriculum at significantly higher speeds and at almost zero cost to the student beyond what they would ordinarily pay for high speed internet connectivity. This is a huge advantage for students who may not have been able to afford to acquire a traditional first degree.
Overall, these disruptions reflect the ways in which appropriate technology has changed the landscape, whether real or perceived and the price we are willing to invest to pay to obtain what we desire or think is necessary to have in order to level-up in our own eyes or in the eyes of others.