Education in the Postliterate Age: Get Ready, the Future’s Already Here!

A recent Harvard Magazine article entitled “Professor Video” declares, “Images now dominate a new style of teaching in which visual, audio, and interactive formats rule, often trumping words [textbooks and lectures] as the dominant means of communication. . . . [N]ew technologies, and a generation reared on them, are propelling the modes of teaching toward nonverbal media and briefer, more compact transactions.” Harvard, like many universities in electronically developed countries worldwide, is already rapidly replacing books and lectures with interactive instructional videos and audio podcasts. Instead of handing in term papers, students get graded on video clips they’ve made with digital cameras, cell phones, or computer webcams. Studies show that, while students’ reading and writing scores are falling, their IQs are rising. We are living in the midst of a monumental shift in how we educate and in how we understand both what education is and what it should be. What student learning outcomes (SLOs) do we want to produce, what curricula do we need to design to achieve those SLOs, and what information technology do we need to make available to students to support their learning? Listen to the experts, and share your thoughts on this vital issue.

Who should attend: Anyone—from those working in education, business, and government to parents, grandparents, and students themselves—who want to be involved in understanding today’s education.

What you’ll learn: Attendees will get updated on how emerging technologies are replacing the traditional classroom/lecture/textbook approach to education and will take away ideas about how this shift will impact everyone and every aspect of society.

How this new knowledge can be applied: Attendees can use this panel discussion to decide how to define their work/production methods so that they coincide with the skills that young people entering the workforce possess. If your newly-hired people possess excellent visual and auditory skills, but not reading-writing skills, then you need to shift your method of operations away from text documents and toward visual and audio information access.

William Crossman, founder/director, CompSpeak 2050 Institute for the Study of Talking Computers and Oral Cultures, Oakland, California

Stacey Aldrich, state librarian of California; board of directors, Association of Professional Futurists; respected library futurist, Sacramento, California

key words: education, technology, learning, literacy, society

issue areas: Learning and Education