TOADTalk: The Future of Learning and Work

“Sixty-five percent of you will work in jobs that don’t currently exist,” Ms. Hawkins told the students gathered at Assembly.
Once again, the All-School Assembly launched with the Teacher On Active Duty (TOAD) sharing something of interest to her. These talks help the community get to know one of our own a little better. Renee Hawkins, whose TOADTalk is featured below, joined the Thacher faculty last year. Along with her role as director or library services and educational technology, Ms. Hawkins is on the Casa dorm staff and advises a group of freshman girls.

I recently attended a conference of technology directors and educators—one of my favorites. There are lots of opportunities for learning, but my favorite sessions by far are those dealing with the future because I like to know what I am getting you into, right?

The hot topics at the conference were...
  1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robots
  2. Learning and the future of education
  3. The future of work

Artificial Intelligence

I’m going to start with a story from one of our keynote speakers. Dr. Ayanna Howard is an African American robotics engineer. In the past, she worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she developed the next generation of the Mars Rover. Today, among other things, she is the director of the Human-Automation Systems Lab at Georgia Tech. She was inspired by the TV show, The Bionic Woman, and she has had a lifelong interest in robotics.

At some point, she did a Senior Ex (just kidding, but it involved research) and concluded three things:
  • There are 150 million children with disabilities worldwide
  • 19 percent of people in the US have a disability
  • If you live past 70, you will live eight years with a disability.
So, she began to explore the intersection of medicine and robotics. That’s not new...but today she works with an ethnically-diverse team of engineers, programmers, doctors, and therapists. She develops robots that work with children with disabilities. She invented this science and therapy. Ms. Howard illustrated some of the amazing work AI and robotics are doing to improve our world.

The Future of Learning

George Siemens is the executive director of the Learning Innovation and Networked Knowledge Research Lab at the University of Texas, Arlington. Years ago, he and a colleague, Stephen Downes, designed and taught the first MOOC (Massive Open Online Course).

Because of the digitization of knowledge, Siemens claims that “we are in a Post Learning era.” Technology is “out learning us.” AI for example, learns faster than human beings. That’s just a fact—computers are designed to do mundane tasks faster than we can. But the most significant drawback is that machine learning / Artificial Intelligence is only as good as those people programming it. AI lacks things like judgment, empathy, common sense, compassion—the things that make us human.

So this makes me wonder: if all knowledge is digitized and we can Google answers, what implications does that have for learning?

The Future of Work

Raise your hand if you were born between 1995-2010.
Hello Generation Z!
  • According to IQ scores, you are smarter than previous generations
  • You are not a fan of email
  • You like flexibility
  • You are multitaskers
  • and you like hands-on learning.
One of the most significant facts about Generation Z is that 65 percent of you will work in jobs that don’t currently exist.

McKinsey Global Institute predicts that by 2030 (11 years from now) half of the American workforce will have to switch to new occupations. Richard Riley, the former secretary of education, says that students need to be prepared for jobs that do not yet exist...using technologies that have not yet been invented...in order to solve problems that we don’t yet even know are problems. Check out willrobotstakemyjob.com if you are wondering about the viability of your ideal job after college.

How do we prepare for this future? We need to think outside the box when it comes to the future and our place in it. Asking “What do you want to be when you grow up?” may no longer be the right question (after all, 65 percent of you won’t know what that is). Because of anticipated disruptions caused by AI, robotics, IoT (the Internet of Things), and a host of other things like climate change and food insecurity, maybe we should be asking you, “What problems will you solve? What new questions will you find answers to?”

Where do we learn to do that? Let me direct your attention to the senior section. We just celebrated a remarkable achievement. The Senior Exhibition is truly a celebration of ideas.
  • 6   Science related topics
  • 17 Social science and psychology
  • 6   Health care
  • 3   Humanities
  • 5   Environment, sustainability, and food safety and security
  • 11 Government and politics
  • 5   Equity and justice
  • 3   Education systems
  • 7   Business and finance
These are issues with future ramifications. I know that when we repeat something over and over, like the Senior Ex experience, it is easy to become complacent—been there, done that—and it’s possible that we don’t take it as seriously as we have in the past. But I believe that the Senior Ex experience is a template for radical problem-solving, an opportunity for moonshot thinking, and that is what we need to practice. Because the world isn’t getting less complicated; we can’t clearly see what the future looks like.

The process of asking questions, finding answers, and sharing it with others is the secret to navigating that future. On top of that, I have always believed that knowing something deeply is kind of like having a superpower. Seniors have experienced it and juniors, you are on deck.

So I challenge you to start asking yourselves, “What am I curious about, or what problems do I want to solve?”  Because the future is exciting. But the challenges are many and we’re counting on you.
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