I had a wonderful opportunity to visit the USA with our US project manager Maria Pienaar, who had organised a very diverse programme in NYC, Washington DC and Silicon Valley, California. The final icing on the cake was the Cicero conference at Stanford University, where I had to opportunity to meet a bunch of top guys in the field - it is definitely great to meet people much smarter than myself!
We met policy makers, thought leaders, edutech companies, professors and researchers, who openly shared their views of the US education and learning trends and challenges. And Finland with PISA results was on everybody's lips - the BIG question remains how could Finland really monetize on the farspread reputation of being exceptional?
The system in the USA is very fragmented. The major decision makers in K-12 are the 14 000 school districts which can make decisions in a rather independent manner. One big bottleneck in the formal education is the low prestige of teaching profession, which makes that the smartest brains do not end up being teachers. However, there are lots of really innovative advanced schools so the reality, as always in big countries, is not that black-and-white.
Blended learning seems to be the order of the day: everyone was talking about it. However, at the same time there are expert voices saying that there is a lot of hype on e-learning, virtual learning and technology's role in learning. Globally it is important to understand that technology per se will never transform learning; the transformation needs to be much deeper than just introducing devices for students. - Digitalisation of learning material and content is major trend; according to a source in five year's time 90 per cent of the material will be in digital format. This trend means a huge shift in traditional publishing industry's revenue model!
Vocational education and life long learning are not only future trends but also part of the existing reality. The changes in traditional industry structure creates huge need to reskill and upskill large numberf of citizens of diverse age groups.
Again, the discussion was often flowing on the scalability of business - it is evident that new, innovative business models are required. This is particularly true for Finland - how could a small country otherwise offer expertise and know-how e.g. in teacher training?
