(Article changed on January 2, 2014 at 14:12)
What Should My Child Learn While Growing Up in A World of Disruptive Technology?
Ali Hangan
2013 has been a banner year for technology from: Amazon's cyber Monday drone debut on 60 minutes to IBM's Watson on Jeopardy to the ubiquitous twitter-sphere there is a new cultural mojo of rapid, technological change entering into the American mainstream.
The new ethos of Common Core, a Federal education initiative to get schools teaching to a global standard, is a move in the right direction for education, but in an emerging world of constant technological change, schools will be limited to what they can teach in a single school year. Students will have to rely more on self-directed learning to adapt to a world of constant change taking place in the world of work and daily life.
One of the most popular and impactful technological disruptions in recent years is undoubtedly the cloud revolution with the Internet and mobile devices together, are reorganizing the world that we have always known. Look at the numbers. There are close to 2.7 billion Internet users and 1.5 billion mobile-device users in the world today. By the end of 2014, it is estimated that there will be more internet-enabled mobile devices than people. This puts an incredible amount of information at the hands of parents and children.
In the age of constant technological change, knowing the general principles of robotics systems, innovative technologies and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) will become a fundamental part of every student's educational experience. Here are three free online resources that can help students acquire these basic principles and skills on their own time:
Learn to Code: There are plenty of free online programs such as www.codeacademy.com that uses step-by-step lessons to teach basic coding from HTML to CSS to Java Script.
Take a MOOC course: The new word in Education is MOOC, short for Massive Open Online Course. MOOCs are free online courses offered by university professors and universities. Sites such as Udemy (www.udemy.com) and Khan Academy (www.khanacademy.org) offer various courses in computer programing, robots and STEM for different learning abilities.
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