From the creation of Arpanet, the invention of electronic mail, the World Wide Web, the first browsers, Web 2.0 or social networks, to virtual training (e-learning) or more recently open learning (open learning), more than half a century has passed. But it has been in the last two years, as a result of covid-19, when the digital transformation has accelerated in all areas, and especially in education.
According to an IDC report sponsored by Microsoft, in 2019 43% of educational institutions were resistant to digital transformation. However, with the pandemic, the forced transition to virtuality accelerated the process of digitizing education. “Today it is not possible to think of higher education without technology, and there we have to see an opportunity for change, transformation and improvement, to analyze institutionally how we adapt to the new reality, to look for new structures and new teaching systems. ”, points out Josep M. Duart, Professor of Psychology Studies and Educational Sciences at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). Duart adds that: “We are beginning to talk about a hybrid university, that is, a new dynamic resulting from digital transformation, but it is also the result of the analysis of the reality in which each institution finds itself, and, based on it, specific strategies and action plans must be implemented”.
Another expert, Marc Prensky, founder of the Global Future Education Foundation, stated at the opening of the EdTech Congress Barcelona, the conference on educational innovation held at the end of April, that "we need technology that empowers students so that they can carry out projects that have a real impact." For Prensky “being empowered people will allow them to exercise greater control over their own environment and improve it”.
Experts agree that the digitization of education is here to stay, which implies not only introducing computers, mobile phones and other devices in the classroom, but also training students to make responsible and critical use of these new technologies. . This accompaniment by teachers and families is key, even more so if the forecasts of the cloud-based learning platform Docebo are met, who in 2021 predicted that learning supported by digital tools and resources would continue to increase by 10% per year until 2023.
In addition, it is essential to train the teaching staff since it depends on the teachers that the learning experience of young people is satisfactory. In this new era, teachers must leave behind their traditional role to become the catalyst for this learning, accompanying and guiding, but letting the student be the protagonist. A premise that is clearly seen in inverted classrooms or flipped rooms, which are increasingly common in Europe.
For Alfons Cornella, founder and president of Infonomia and the Institute of Next, training centers for digital natives "should be the opposite of what they find on mobile phones: spaces to think, not spaces to consume screens." Cornella, author of Educating Humans in a World of Intelligent Machines. 100 ideas and reflections on the new education that society needs (Profit Editorial), affirms that the classroom should be “the space in which to explore the possibilities of collaboration between people to devise creative solutions to problems. Places where you enjoy questioning what they tell us is unquestionable”.
To do this, this expert defends learning by projects, “because in the future what is not projects, with their multiple components of complexity and collaboration, will be done by machines. You have to train and train children and young people from projects, because that is what they will do in their professional lives. Understand how meaningful questions are asked, how teams are organized to explore ideas and solutions, how humans and machines are aligned to solve dilemmas and apply the answers. But the projects should be as real as possible.”
