Giving Compass' Take:

• Tom Vander Ark explains that educators must prepare their students for the wave of artificial intelligence, new data and robots that are being called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. 

• Before teachers can create lesson plans for this new world, they need to understand it themselves. How can funders support our educational system as it pivots to data and AI?

• Learn how computation skills are already being taught in kindergarten classrooms. 

Code that learns is reshaping life and work on planet earth–and it is doing so at an unprecedented speed. We’re a couple years into something new and different, a new era–one that follows the information age.

As discussed at CoSN last week, the World Economic Forum calls this shift the Fourth Industrial Revolution (the first three were driven by steam power, electricity, and the Internet). This one is powered by artificial intelligence, fed by data, and equipped by a growing army of robots.

In this new innovation age where we are all partners with smart machines, we see three new developmental priorities including:

  • Confidence in the face of complexity: a structured approach to problem-solving when facing adaptive challenges (often called design thinking or computational thinking)
  • The self-management, social awareness, and relational skills (often called social and emotional learning)
  • A mindset of growth (effort matters) and entrepreneurship (initiative matters) is key to contribution.

To flex these new muscles, learners need extended challenges — big integrated projects — that require initiative, design skills, collaboration, and public products. A growing coalition of schools calls this High-Quality Project Based Learning (HQPBL). Students learn problem-solving and critical thinking through real-world design challenges.

Learners need space to ask big questions, try new things, and to create. It is more important than ever to help students build confidence by experiencing success in a variety of settings — in problem-solving, in the sciences, in work settings, in publication, and in the performing arts.

We need a new high school credentialing system that conveys specific competencies and accomplishments to employers and postsecondary institutions, a system that is flexible and modular enough to works across different career pathways, and a credentialing system that allows learners to move through the system as they demonstrate mastery.

Read the full article about the fourth industrial revolution by Tom Vander Ark at Getting Smart.