2045 Future Learning Adult Section

  “2045 Ideathon on Learning in the Future, Adult Section.”

Held the morning after the children's section, and organized by Digital Textbook Teaching Council (DiTT), in cooperation with the NPO, "CANVAS". We had various kinds of people participate, from teachers, related industries, to ordinary people.

Just like with the children we started by asking, “What are the current problems with schooling?”

“The education gap.” “A lack of creativity.” “Bullying.” “Teacher shortage.” “The classes are not interactive.” “Standardization.” “The weak ties to society.” “A lack of discretion” “Regional disparities.” “Sharing of work with cram schools.”

...we got many replies.

  Four groups offered proposals.

First, “A virtual sharehouse.” The creation of a virtual community where you can learn the things you want to learn with others.

That would mean the re-emergence of Edo-period Buddhist temple schools through IT. This is a proposal that we could enact immediately without waiting for 2045.

 “Database platform.” “A style of education where you teach information all at once.” Where you accommodate the interests and experiences of each student into your approach to teaching.

→That would mean that a teacher's role would change from distributing knowledge to support and facilitation.

  And then, “Robot communication.” A system of learning in coexistence with robots, based on a new three principles along the lines of “Robots cannot harm humans.”

→Considering that the children proposed “one robot per child”, this is an indispensible item.

　

  Now, in comparison to the children's section, these responses are much more mature. There are no proposals such as,  “A crayon that can color in the air.” “The strongest suit.” “A slide that will take you too and from school.” Or any similar proposal that would surely be a problem for the engineers. Nor any proposals that would cause problems for teachers like, “A school without classes.” or “A school without teachers.”

  To that extent, there were many proposed education environments that seem like they could be developed immediately, without waiting for 2045. Everyone who participated in this event was so optimistic that it made me want to say, “Let’s do these things now.”

  However, outside of the proposals that we gathered, there were also a lot of ideas that made me think “I see, I’d like to give this some more consideration.” For example with, "One person and one database." It will probably be important to collect academic history, and interesting items etc. accrued over a lifetime in a database that could be used for data matching and by big data.

  If it were possible to download information to the brain, one can imagine the kinds of ideas that would be formulated by businesses, for instance, a “100TB/10 million yen Tokyo University pack”.

 →Putting aside the issue of whether that's even possible, we can assume that this would lead to the establishment of an enormous education business. Will the basic free pack be tax exempt?

  There was a woman who expressed the idea that she’d like to “build things with Hitler.”

This is an idea of learning where you interact quasi-virtually with people from history who are antisocial or mysterious. In other words, with people who have strange ideas or ways of life.

→I wonder whether this will be possible in 2045. And I think this idea is worth realizing.

　

  A related idea is the idea that if we depend on machines to bestow knowledge to us, the learning we need is somewhere else. And that is not just limited to creativity or communication skills, but will give us a stronger will to live.

  There were also people who asked questions such as, “When there is a power outage after a natural disaster, some children continue to play and have fun and other children panic, but what is the difference between these two children?”

and “Where will we derive the will to live, in a society with AI or robots?” These are the kinds of things adults should be thinking about.

 Children could be sent to a marginal village at the age of 10, and then sent  back to school, at 15 they should enter society, re-learn everything, the whole time being supported by AI. Putting aside the pros and cons of such an aim or plan, I share the opinion that we should emphasize,  “re-learning” and “lifelong learning.”

Let’s continue to think about things like these.