WEBVTT 00:00:01.019 --> 00:00:04.170 "This is the first generation of people that work, play, think and learn differently than their parents. 00:00:04.170 --> 00:00:07.970 They are the first generation to not be afraid of technology. It’s like the air to them." - Don Tapscott 00:00:14.507 --> 00:00:17.831 Everything looks bigger than life when you are five. 00:00:17.831 --> 00:00:24.459 So everything was big, everything was strange, and I remember feeling a bit scared. 00:00:24.459 --> 00:00:29.715 Like many children, I remember my school years fondly but the bits I remember fondly aren't 00:00:29.715 --> 00:00:31.340 the bits I should have remembered. 00:00:31.340 --> 00:00:37.925 I remember the play and the sport and the naughtiness and the playfulness and the mischief. 00:00:37.925 --> 00:00:40.684 In fact, I remember the bits that were non-standard. 00:00:40.684 --> 00:00:45.300 It's an incredible privilege for me to have had education be such 00:00:45.300 --> 00:00:49.771 an important and present part of my life. 00:00:49.771 --> 00:00:57.823 I remember being bored a lot. It didn't bring out the best in me, I got through it anyhow. 00:00:57.823 --> 00:01:02.317 I wasn't a great fit or the system wasn't a great fit for me. 00:01:02.317 --> 00:01:04.529 It's kind of crazy when you think about it. 00:01:04.529 --> 00:01:08.022 That we take all these children and we force them to try to adapt to this really complex 00:01:08.022 --> 00:01:12.046 bureaucracy system, the system should adapt to them. 00:01:12.046 --> 00:01:18.229 The origins of traditional education lie inside the military, to a large extent. 00:01:18.229 --> 00:01:23.799 They needed identical people; soldiers, administrators, and so on, so they produced this system. 00:01:23.799 --> 00:01:27.193 When the industrial revolution happened they do wanted 00:01:27.193 --> 00:01:29.850 identical people in their assembly lines. 00:01:29.850 --> 00:01:33.096 Even with consumers, they wanted consumers to be identical 00:01:33.096 --> 00:01:35.005 so that everybody would buy the same things. 00:01:35.005 --> 00:01:39.031 So if you look at school that way, if you look at the fact that we process twenty or 00:01:39.031 --> 00:01:42.707 thirty kids at a time, in a batch, just like in the factory. 00:01:42.707 --> 00:01:45.580 If you look at the fact that if you fail third grade, what do you do? 00:01:45.580 --> 00:01:48.061 We hold you back and we reprocess you. 00:01:48.061 --> 00:01:53.287 All matching with the factory works, we built it on purpose. 00:01:53.287 --> 00:01:56.689 And it was really useful for its function. 00:01:56.689 --> 00:02:00.668 But we don't have a shortage of factory workers any more. 00:02:00.668 --> 00:02:04.009 We are probably at the death of education right now. 00:02:04.009 --> 00:02:10.329 I think the structures and strictures of school, of learning from nine till three, 00:02:10.329 --> 00:02:12.799 working on your own, not working with others. 00:02:12.799 --> 00:02:21.800 I think that's dead or dying. And I think learning is just beginning. 00:02:22.655 --> 00:02:26.994 THE FUTURE OF LEARNING 00:02:45.120 --> 00:02:49.631 I had ADD when I was growing up, like so many people now do. 00:02:49.631 --> 00:02:53.863 And there's this feeling that there is something broken about the kid, 00:02:53.863 --> 00:02:58.016 because the kid doesn't conform to the system. 00:02:58.016 --> 00:03:03.451 So what we do is we medicate children to fit into the system, as opposed to saying; 00:03:03.451 --> 00:03:07.023 wait, the system is here for the kids. 00:03:07.023 --> 00:03:12.029 And there are lots of people who can quite easily sit still for eight hours 00:03:12.029 --> 00:03:14.345 and take notes, and then two weeks later say back 00:03:14.345 --> 00:03:16.210 what they wrote down. 00:03:16.210 --> 00:03:20.204 But there is also this huge population of extraordinarily talented 00:03:20.204 --> 00:03:24.755 and engaged people who can't learn that way. 00:03:24.755 --> 00:03:30.084 There's a very big difference between accessed information and school, 00:03:30.084 --> 00:03:31.838 they used to be the same thing. 00:03:31.838 --> 00:03:39.489 Information is there online to anyone of the billion people who have access to the Internet. 00:03:39.489 --> 00:03:43.604 So what that means is if we give access to a four year old or an eight year old or a 00:03:43.604 --> 00:03:49.058 twelve year old, they will get the information if they want it. 00:03:49.058 --> 00:03:55.434 Knowing something is probably an obsolete idea. 00:03:55.434 --> 00:03:58.781 You don't actually need to know anything, you can find out at the point 00:03:58.781 --> 00:04:01.151 when you need to know it. 00:04:01.151 --> 00:04:07.545 It's the teacher's job to point young minds towards the right kind of question. 00:04:07.545 --> 00:04:12.379 A teacher doesn't need to give any answers, because answers are everywhere. 00:04:12.379 --> 00:04:19.545 And we know now from years of measurements that learners who find the answers for themselves 00:04:19.545 --> 00:04:23.542 retain it better than if they're told the answer. 00:04:23.542 --> 00:04:28.516 Education is being very slow to look at data, to look at numbers, 00:04:28.516 --> 00:04:31.036 to look at analysis and what's actually happening. 00:04:31.036 --> 00:04:33.559 We measure a test here, and an exam there, 00:04:33.559 --> 00:04:36.823 but the details of what's happening we don't really have. 00:04:36.823 --> 00:04:41.043 That will be, for sure, the next important thing in our pockets, 00:04:41.043 --> 00:04:43.003 our ability to analyze wherever you are. 00:04:43.003 --> 00:04:46.069 Some of the people watching this will already be analyzing their health 00:04:46.069 --> 00:04:47.527 and their wellbeing and their sport. 00:04:47.527 --> 00:04:50.032 They will be analyzing their learning too soon. 00:04:50.032 --> 00:04:52.759 And then we'll be really good at it. 00:05:04.498 --> 00:05:08.437 Knewton is a data-mining and adaptive learning platform 00:05:08.437 --> 00:05:12.039 that allows anybody, anywhere to upload content. 00:05:12.039 --> 00:05:15.428 They could be a publisher, an individual teacher, or anything in-between. 00:05:15.428 --> 00:05:22.002 And produce a course that will be uniquely personalized to each student based on 00:05:22.002 --> 00:05:26.459 what she knows and how she learns best. 00:05:26.459 --> 00:05:30.016 The textbook of the future is going to be delivered on connected devices. 00:05:30.016 --> 00:05:34.065 What that means is the incredible amount of data that students have always produced, 00:05:34.065 --> 00:05:37.403 when they studied, are now capturable and useable. 00:05:37.403 --> 00:05:41.701 So Knewton and any product built on Knewton can figure out things like; you learn math 00:05:41.701 --> 00:05:46.013 best in the morning between 08:32 and 09:14 am. 00:05:46.013 --> 00:05:48.008 You learn science best in 40 minute bite sizes. 00:05:48.008 --> 00:05:51.289 At the 42 minute mark your click rate always begins to decline, we should pull that from 00:05:51.289 --> 00:05:54.061 you then and move you to something else to keep you engaged. 00:05:54.061 --> 00:05:57.018 That 35 minute burst you do at lunch everyday you're not retaining any of that just 00:05:57.018 --> 00:06:01.009 hang out with your friends and do that stuff in the afternoon instead when you learn better. 00:06:01.009 --> 00:06:05.006 You learn this stuff best with short questions; 00:06:05.006 --> 00:06:05.055 this stuff best with complicated, difficult questions. 00:06:05.055 --> 00:06:08.052 We should return this type of material to you four days later for optimal retention. 00:06:08.052 --> 00:06:11.077 And here's exactly the things you're going to struggle with your homework tonight because 00:06:11.077 --> 00:06:15.569 you haven't learned some of the concepts that are embedded in that material. 00:06:15.569 --> 00:06:19.091 And we can go in real-time and grab you the perfect little bit of content, from last month, 00:06:19.091 --> 00:06:23.919 or last year, and put that seamlessly in front of you so that you don't struggle. 00:06:23.919 --> 00:06:29.943 We can predict failure in advance and prevent it from happening. 00:06:29.943 --> 00:06:33.979 We're going to move from this kind of alienating and in some cases boring and in some cases 00:06:33.979 --> 00:06:36.668 frustrating model of everybody gets exactly the same stuff. 00:06:36.668 --> 00:06:38.575 They're getting it at the exact same time, the exact same order, 00:06:38.575 --> 00:06:40.836 and the exact same difficulty level. 00:06:40.836 --> 00:06:45.925 For half of the class it's too hard, for half of the class it's too boring. 00:06:45.925 --> 00:06:49.019 It's going to get the most advanced kids, the most stimulating material. 00:06:49.019 --> 00:06:52.199 It's going to get them to unlock their potential in a way that they're not today. 00:06:52.199 --> 00:06:55.639 But for every kid, no matter how much you are struggling, you've got a path to success. 00:06:55.639 --> 00:06:59.027 It might take you a little longer, but you'll have a path to success no matter what. 00:06:59.027 --> 00:07:03.058 And also the system gets smarter and smarter as more people use it. 00:07:03.058 --> 00:07:08.705 Strategies compete against each other to be replicated in the next generation, 00:07:08.705 --> 00:07:12.641 so the strategy that is the most effective for you, once we find that; 00:07:12.641 --> 00:07:17.695 any kid in the future will have that strategy teed up. 00:07:17.695 --> 00:07:20.719 It's a whole new thing. 00:07:20.719 --> 00:07:24.058 When the automobile was invented people weren't asking for the automobile 00:07:24.058 --> 00:07:26.394 they were asking for faster horses. 00:07:26.394 --> 00:07:30.592 And people aren't really asking for Knewton because they don't know what it is yet, 00:07:30.592 --> 00:07:34.625 but once they see it and experience it then they'll get it right away. 00:07:35.333 --> 00:07:38.723 THE SHIFT IN KNOWLEDGE 00:07:42.539 --> 00:07:47.006 People say that education moves very slowly. 00:07:47.006 --> 00:07:50.003 Suddenly you just need to be connected. 00:07:50.003 --> 00:07:56.037 That changes everything; it changes the basis on which you can make a contribution, 00:07:56.037 --> 00:07:59.629 your brain can make a contribution at a distance. 00:07:59.629 --> 00:08:06.349 It's one thing to sit here in the media lab and talk about the future. 00:08:06.349 --> 00:08:11.068 I often go into places that are about as different from a media lab as it can get. 00:08:11.068 --> 00:08:18.789 And I think to myself; what's the value of all my ideas over here. 00:08:18.789 --> 00:08:20.819 But, there is one great hope. 00:08:20.819 --> 00:08:26.879 Wherever I go, the very first thing that I ask, or I take out my phone to check for, 00:08:26.879 --> 00:08:31.217 is; do I have that little bit of bandwidth to give me GPRS, 00:08:31.217 --> 00:08:34.519 or something equivalent to that? 00:08:34.519 --> 00:08:41.919 And in the middle of jungles I find that sometimes it says connected 00:08:41.919 --> 00:08:47.076 And I know then that everything that I'm saying can go anywhere, 00:08:47.076 --> 00:08:48.062 and work exactly the same way. 00:08:48.062 --> 00:08:51.221 It's a question of time. 00:08:57.281 --> 00:09:01.532 CONNECT TO LEARN 00:09:04.934 --> 00:09:12.032 Connectivity is actually opening up the world. If you open up a village, for example Bonsaaso, 00:09:12.032 --> 00:09:17.808 and the students can actually now communicate with other students, say in London. 00:09:17.808 --> 00:09:21.738 It means they start seeing the world in a different way. 00:09:21.738 --> 00:09:26.063 Educate a youth, and you educate a nation. 00:09:26.063 --> 00:09:31.073 Connect to Learn is a partnership between Ericsson, together with AF Institute 00:09:31.073 --> 00:09:34.042 in Columbia University, and the Millennium Promise. 00:09:34.042 --> 00:09:39.529 It's twofold, it provides scholarships to girls, and Connect to Learn gives students 00:09:39.529 --> 00:09:47.928 computers and connectivity and shows them how to use it, and how to get information. 00:09:47.928 --> 00:09:52.014 Education was limited to what the teacher could tell the students, and the teacher was 00:09:52.014 --> 00:09:55.301 relying on a small textbook, or those few books, 00:09:55.301 --> 00:09:57.694 so the teacher was not getting very exposed. 00:09:57.694 --> 00:10:04.435 Now you are able to access a lot of information and the children start chatting 00:10:04.435 --> 00:10:08.763 and exchanging information, you can see that there is much more things for them 00:10:08.763 --> 00:10:11.026 to talk about because they feel like they are more exposed. 00:10:11.026 --> 00:10:13.529 And the children are more confident. 00:10:13.529 --> 00:10:18.493 They have the energy, they have quite a lifespan ahead of them 00:10:18.493 --> 00:10:21.038 and they are about to start thinking bigger. 00:10:21.038 --> 00:10:25.006 If you bring connectivity to them, they are actually able to do transactions and they 00:10:25.006 --> 00:10:28.011 can start small businesses, which will uplift them. 00:10:28.011 --> 00:10:36.512 So I'd say it's actually opening up our villages, our country, and the whole continent. 00:10:36.512 --> 00:10:43.343 We're rolling it out in as many countries as possible in Africa, and also in South America. 00:10:43.343 --> 00:10:47.666 It has the potential to be upscaled to any country. 00:10:57.743 --> 00:11:02.428 A FLAWED SYSTEM? 00:11:05.922 --> 00:11:09.039 The way we solve interesting problems is we fail and we fail 00:11:09.039 --> 00:11:10.708 and we fail and we fail, until we succeed. 00:11:10.708 --> 00:11:16.029 And if you've talked to people who have succeeded, what they almost all have in common is 00:11:16.029 --> 00:11:18.573 that they've failed a hundred times before they succeeded. 00:11:18.573 --> 00:11:23.386 And what separates them, from people who aren't successful, isn't that they succeeded, 00:11:23.386 --> 00:11:28.570 it's that they failed more that the other people did. 00:11:28.570 --> 00:11:33.537 I'm not sure it's okay for the schools to say; we have to optimize, 00:11:33.537 --> 00:11:39.007 to process as many people as we can to match this testing regime. 00:11:39.007 --> 00:11:45.011 You can't imagine, in a world where you sit down to do an exam and you ask yourself 00:11:45.011 --> 00:11:49.004 the question; I hope there are no surprises on the exam paper. 00:11:49.004 --> 00:11:51.708 And your teachers think; I hope I prepared him for everything. 00:11:51.708 --> 00:11:54.830 How would that prepare you then to go out into a world 00:11:54.830 --> 00:11:57.077 that everyday is going to surprise you. 00:11:57.077 --> 00:12:00.980 It's full of the surprises of the economy, of society, 00:12:00.980 --> 00:12:03.404 of politics, of invention, of technology. 00:12:03.404 --> 00:12:05.068 Everyday is a surprise. 00:12:05.068 --> 00:12:10.453 Learning prepares you to cope with the surprises, education prepares you to cope with certainty, 00:12:10.453 --> 00:12:14.089 there is no certainty. 00:12:14.089 --> 00:12:23.007 The teacher stands between the child and the formal education. 00:12:23.007 --> 00:12:25.012 Trying to make the child face that system. 00:12:25.012 --> 00:12:32.099 And until that system breaks down, or disappears, she has an incredibly difficult job of keeping 00:12:32.099 --> 00:12:37.038 the child's curiosity alive, while at the same time saying; listen, by the time you 00:12:37.038 --> 00:12:42.097 are sixteen, you'll have to start memorizing certain things, so that you can go and sit 00:12:42.097 --> 00:12:48.007 for the examination, clear it, and get out of school properly. 00:12:48.007 --> 00:12:51.038 No one I know takes standardized tests for a living. 00:12:51.038 --> 00:12:55.047 So why are we using standardized test to see if you are going to be good when we don't 00:12:55.047 --> 00:12:57.062 have standardized tests after you take it. 00:12:57.062 --> 00:13:03.076 It's infected the entire marketing eco-system of education, because famous colleges are 00:13:03.076 --> 00:13:07.054 famous because they are picky about your SAT scores. 00:13:07.054 --> 00:13:10.045 Parents want their kids to go to a famous college. 00:13:10.045 --> 00:13:15.081 Parents push their school to create kids who will get into 00:13:15.081 --> 00:13:17.036 a famous college by doing well on the SAT. 00:13:17.036 --> 00:13:21.589 All which is corrupting the entire reason we have education in the first place. 00:13:21.589 --> 00:13:28.017 If we can get parents, and teachers, and kids, and administrators, to have this conversation, 00:13:28.017 --> 00:13:34.709 to just talk about it, then if at school board meetings, or if, at ten year reviews the questions 00:13:34.709 --> 00:13:40.004 we are asking are not; how did your students do on the SAT. 00:13:40.004 --> 00:13:45.339 But instead we say; the SAT makes no sense, famous colleges are a scam, 00:13:45.339 --> 00:13:49.079 we need to create a different thing and we can have this conversation. 00:13:49.079 --> 00:14:00.081 Then change will start to happen. 00:14:00.081 --> 00:14:10.068 Coursera is a social entrepreneurship company that enables the best universities to take 00:14:10.068 --> 00:14:14.072 their best courses and put them out there, so that everyone around the world with an 00:14:14.072 --> 00:14:23.004 Internet connection can benefit from having access to a great education. 00:14:23.004 --> 00:14:29.019 As of today, which is the end of September we have 1.5 million students from 196 countries, 00:14:29.019 --> 00:14:31.061 it's a little debatable how you count countries. 00:14:31.061 --> 00:14:36.043 We have 195 courses from 33 universities. 00:14:36.043 --> 00:14:42.899 Our larger courses have an enrollment of 130,000, our smaller courses have an enrollment of 00:14:42.899 --> 00:14:48.099 only about 10,000, of course they're still growing, most of them haven't launched yet. 00:14:48.099 --> 00:14:57.055 A medium class, when it launches, has about 50- 60,000 students registered. 00:14:57.055 --> 00:15:05.149 Scale is interesting because it allows us to offer a high quality product at a very 00:15:05.149 --> 00:15:10.329 low marginal cost per student, which is what allows us to take people who really can't 00:15:10.329 --> 00:15:14.829 pay for an education and to provide them a free education. 00:15:14.829 --> 00:15:21.339 Education for free at the highest quality because the costs are so low per student. 00:15:21.339 --> 00:15:25.529 The student experience in Coursera is that the course starts on a given day and each 00:15:25.529 --> 00:15:28.519 week a student has access to numerous pieces. 00:15:28.519 --> 00:15:33.001 One piece is video lecture, and it's interactive videos, you don't sit there for an hour just 00:15:33.001 --> 00:15:35.899 watching video, you get to interact with the video. 00:15:35.899 --> 00:15:40.057 There is rigorous meaningful assessments of different kinds, 00:15:40.057 --> 00:15:42.005 not just multiple choice but real exercises with real depth. 00:15:42.005 --> 00:15:47.041 And there is a community of students that you get to interact with to ask questions 00:15:47.041 --> 00:15:50.069 and have those questions answered by your fellow students. 00:15:50.069 --> 00:15:56.008 So that you get both a better learning experience via peer teaching as well as a social experience, 00:15:56.008 --> 00:16:03.032 where you feel like there is a community of learners surrounding this intellectual activity. 00:16:03.032 --> 00:16:07.024 People often ask us whether universities are a thing of the past, whether universities 00:16:07.024 --> 00:16:10.093 are going to die out, and I definitely do not think so. 00:16:10.093 --> 00:16:15.008 There is something tremendous about getting people together in a place 00:16:15.008 --> 00:16:17.024 where serendipitous interactions can happen. 00:16:17.024 --> 00:16:21.005 Where you can have face-to-face mentoring between an instructor and students 00:16:21.005 --> 00:16:25.099 where students can talk to each other, and create together, and learn to debate ideas. 00:16:25.099 --> 00:16:33.007 So this on-campus physical experience at the moment 00:16:33.007 --> 00:16:34.889 has no virtual substitute that is equally effective. 00:16:34.889 --> 00:16:42.037 Our goal here, and I think one needs to be pragmatic about this, is not to equalize necessarily 00:16:42.037 --> 00:16:48.779 the opportunity of students who currently don't have any access, and make it equal 00:16:48.779 --> 00:16:52.082 to what a fortunate Princeton student might have. 00:16:52.082 --> 00:16:55.073 Because that might be a really worthy goal, but it's not something 00:16:55.073 --> 00:16:57.075 that we can necessarily can achieve in the short time frame. 00:16:57.075 --> 00:17:01.029 What we'd like to do, is we'd like to bring both of these up to considerably better than 00:17:01.029 --> 00:17:03.839 where they are now, even if they don't end up being equal. 00:17:03.839 --> 00:17:09.006 If we've improved a lot, of both the on-campus students, and the ones, 00:17:09.006 --> 00:17:21.001 who currently don't have access, I think we've done an amazing thing. 00:17:21.001 --> 00:17:23.052 So let me explain how revolutions work. 00:17:23.052 --> 00:17:27.419 Revolutions destroy the perfect and then they enable the impossible. 00:17:27.419 --> 00:17:30.066 They never go from everything is good to everything is good. 00:17:30.066 --> 00:17:33.063 There is a lot of noise in the middle. 00:17:33.063 --> 00:17:38.041 If we look at the music business; first it destroyed the record label business, the Internet. 00:17:38.041 --> 00:17:43.048 And only now is it enabling independent musicians to get heard. 00:17:43.048 --> 00:17:48.025 Education tends to move in stairstep functions, in terms of change, 00:17:48.025 --> 00:17:49.006 so when it does change, it explosively changes. 00:17:49.006 --> 00:17:54.046 The move from pre-printing press to post-printing press is a one-time transition 00:17:54.046 --> 00:17:56.065 in history of the world, in terms of education. 00:17:56.065 --> 00:17:59.075 Online education is going to be like that as well. And we want to make sure that, 00:17:59.075 --> 00:18:02.011 as a species, the human species gets it right. 00:18:02.011 --> 00:18:07.033 One of the revolutions that we're going to see is where less and less of education is 00:18:07.033 --> 00:18:12.028 about a conveyer of content, because that is going to be a commodity, and hopefully 00:18:12.028 --> 00:18:15.063 one that's going to be available to everyone around the world. 00:18:15.063 --> 00:18:21.001 And a lot more of what we think of as education is going to go back 00:18:21.001 --> 00:18:21.089 to its original roots of teaching. 00:18:21.089 --> 00:18:27.075 Where the instructor actually engages in a dialogue with the students and helps them 00:18:27.075 --> 00:18:31.099 develop thinking skills, problem solving skills, passion for the discipline. 00:18:31.099 --> 00:18:37.057 The kinds of things that are much easier to do in a face-to-face setting and a lot harder 00:18:37.057 --> 00:18:43.009 to do in an online format, but for which, really the college experience, as we know 00:18:43.009 --> 00:18:48.061 it; that it the right place where you'd like to put that kind of development of skills. 00:18:48.061 --> 00:18:54.035 Now what I want to see from schools is; get kids to want it. 00:18:54.035 --> 00:19:06.069 Create an environment where kids are restless until their need for information is satisfied. 00:19:06.069 --> 00:19:13.919 Every time I get a question right, I get immediate engagement. I think the teacher has to step 00:19:13.919 --> 00:19:22.051 back and say; today's topic is this. Open your notebook and figure it out for yourself. 00:19:22.051 --> 00:19:29.002 What we need are teachers who will look people in the eye, and believe in them, 00:19:29.002 --> 00:19:32.027 and push them forward, and it's hard to do that on the Internet. 00:19:32.027 --> 00:19:35.003 It really needs to be done in person. 00:19:35.003 --> 00:19:38.035 Schools decide to be better because they see children being better. 00:19:38.035 --> 00:19:40.095 And teachers... what does it say on teacher's t-shirts? 00:19:40.095 --> 00:19:44.004 It says: 'We're in it for the outcome, not the income!'. 00:19:44.004 --> 00:19:48.027 Teachers are there because they can see the change in their children. 00:19:48.027 --> 00:19:52.005 If you add up every child in history, more children will leave school 00:19:52.005 --> 00:19:56.013 in the next 30 years, than they've ever left school in history. 00:19:56.013 --> 00:20:03.025 If I was going to make one change, I'd make their schooling just a little bit better. 00:20:03.025 --> 99:59:59.999 And that would change history faster than anything else.