Impact of Exponential Technologies on Education
Exponential technologies have transformed and implicated in various areas in our lives, in commercialisation, marketization, as well as in education. This tackles a number of questions, such as, to what extent has it been impacted?
However, changes in educational technology may not be experienced at the same level across the globe, there are many issues related to the consumption of using educational technology products where culture, politics, economics and society play a role, and that is as much about ideology as it is about innovation.
Today, exponential technologies are considered a key driver of development around the world. It reduced the physical restrictions in the ‘real’ world, and increased ‘virtual’ relations over material relations. (As we learned in the previous module by Dr. Hasan Youness about ‘virtual reality’ and ‘cyber-space’). There is no more talk about ‘distance’ or ‘Geography’ with technology. There is more talk about ‘space’ and ‘time’. Exponential technologies have a super power that exists regardless of our geographical location. Its dramatic transformation allows nowadays anyone to connect to virtually anyone else and eventually collaborate with anyone else. As a result, our lives would be richer. As Dr. Hasan Youness taught us about Netiquette: “Sharing knowledge would make the world a better place.” So, the more connected we are to people, far and wide, the more ideas and resources we have that help us expand our properties. That’s how rich we should be.
This is the growing importance of exponential technologies as a key power in education. It integrates in all aspects of learning from integration of computers in university classrooms to the online courses and trainings. It plays a role in the way knowledge is created and retrieved, and how students are engaged. It has a high intensity of information connectivity universal wise. That’s why exponential technologies are considered to be at the heart of all these recent changes in education.
At last, but not at least, I believe that technology is the face of culture itself where this ever expanding connectivity is actually recasting the educational system in a more open, democratic and ultimately empowering manner.
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Hello, Sabine! Thank you once again for your insightful answer.
As you have pointed out, exponential technologies have reduced physical restrictions in our professional and academic activities. 5G technology, in particular, makes it easier to share increasingly larger sizes and volumes of content and tools in shorter spans of time.
It was also a very relevant observation to note that education technology around the world is not experienced at the same rate for everyone. There is a gap in the least developed areas that constitutes a formidable challenge for the informatization of education and for populations in developing areas to access the tools and to become technologically literate at a level that will allow them to be competitive. As jobs, trade and banking becomes even more digitized, people left behind will be facing increasingly challenging obstacles. Ideology and government restrictions on accessing web content also plays a huge role, as we all know.
Once again, thank you for your answers and have a great week!