Educational revolution in the age of large data

"Many disasters in human history stem from the fact that social change is always far behind technological change." This is understandable, because it is natural to welcome and adopt new technologies that improve productivity and living standards, but refuse to accept the social changes brought about by new technologies--because it is always unpleasant to adopt ideas, new systems and new practices. "--Stavrianos's history of the World

In today's information age, cloud technology, Internet of things and large data technologies based on both are driving changes in education. The future education in the Internet and other technologies become more and more personalized, through the application of large data technology will be conducive to personalized education, standardized learning content by students from the organization of learning, schools and teachers pay more attention to the personalized training of students, teachers from the teaching to gradually change into a student. In the coming big Data age, the Internet education and school education will gradually separate, more interaction, personalized service and flexible academic system will make the school new life.

Future education

Two things are always depressing for pros: The Future of science and technology is never predicted by scientists, and the masters of education are often not of educational origin. If we were to make a third in 2013, it would be: to be able to predict technology accurately and predict education accurately, this person is neither a science nor an education, and this person is called Toffler.

In 1970, Toffler wrote the first bestseller, "The Impact of the future," in the book Toffler not only criticized the Hutchins-oriented education for the past, supported the reality-oriented education represented by Dewey, and creatively proposed a clear future-oriented education: small-class, multiple-division, home schooling trends, Online and multi-media education, returning to the community, developing students ' ability to adapt to temporary organizations, developing people who can make significant judgments, people who are making a detour in a new environment, agile people who discover new relationships in a changing reality, and common skills in future iterations, probabilities, and long-term assumptions.

43 years from now, based on the mature application of cloud, IoT, database technology and social network technology, Toffler's idea of perceptual foresight was clearly displayed in front of us: information is not only a visual and sensory thing, but also a captured, quantifiable and transitive number. So from the 1970 to the present, education quietly a revolution, the word Education Revolution, is what Toffler first said, and today, we have been clear about the real reason for this revolution: that is, big data.

I have repeatedly mentioned the difference between "data" and "number" in various places. For a simple example: A student scored 78 points, this is only a "number", if the factors behind the 78 points taken into account: family background, efforts, learning attitude, intelligence, and so on, and 78 points together, this becomes the "data." The biggest difference between the educational changes that are taking place and the previous distance education and online courses is that the former is only a "number", the latter is "data"-the focus of data on the Internet, cloud computing and other integrated technology based on the maturity of the data is a process and comprehensive consideration, it is more able to consider the real world behind the logical relationship.

Thanks to the rapid development of the Internet, the number of home schooling has grown rapidly to more than 5% in the more than 10 years since 1997, the children's academic performance and participation in the community over 30% of the same age public schools, education is no longer what every student must accept, the role of the Internet is indeed increasing, increasing. However, it is wrong to assert that future education will disappear. Just as with the popularization of printing, the proportion of teachers is not reduced but a large increase, the emergence of a lot of information rubbish, but need more teachers to guide. The future of education in the promotion of Internet education, will be more personalized and more popular, but the definition and connotation of teachers and schools need to reposition.

Cloud technology, Internet of things and large data based on cloud technology and IoT are the technical driving forces of educational change. Knowledge will be ubiquitous in the process of crossing the great data age and the knowledge age. At present, as far as the knowledge dissemination is concerned, educational resources are experiencing the era of open platform, open content and open campus, which is unprecedented. What will education be like in the future? The mainstream model is bound to be: Video becomes the main carrier, education resources are extremely rich, flip the classroom, study on demand, lifelong learning, not by age, and distance education will disappear; distance is no longer a problem, education takes place outside school, and so on.

Supporting Role of large data

The traditional education flourished in the industrialized age, and the school model mapped the economic batch mode of the industrialized concentrated logistics: ringtones, classes, standardized classrooms, unified teaching materials, and a time-programmed pipeline scene, which was used to standardize the production of talents in the industrial age. And the big data education will present another characteristic: flexible schooling, individualized counseling, community and family learning, everyone's success. The world may be so quiet many, and data will be hot shuttle in which, the relationship between people (teachers and students), will be through the relationship between people and technology to achieve, as in the Spring Festival in 2013, you want to New year, not through SMS, telephone, video, micro-letter, Can you go back to the age of 20 years ago when you rode a bike for half an hour? Large data age, whether you agree with the technology to enrich the human feelings, technology, let us never back to the past.

Compared with the traditional data, the large data has the characteristics of unstructured, distributed, huge data, data analysis from expert layer to user layer, and a large number of visual display methods, which adapt to the individualized and humanized learning changes. The current discussion of educational reform is too focused on online education (remote, flat, electronic, digital), just as any technology makes people think of the first is lazy philosophy, the automation era is the first to think of Chaplin's automatic feeding machine, the multimedia era people think of the first game. Online education itself is difficult to change learning, in this revolution of education, the education caused by online education from digital support to data support changes (education environment, experimental scenes, spatio-temporal change, learning changes, educational management changes, etc.), is indeed a huge gold mine that many people do not care about.

The design of educational environment, the arrangement of educational experiment scene, the change of educational time and space, the change of learning scene, the collection and decision of educational management data, these things which used to be inspired by the head or idea and experience in the past have become a kind of behavioral science of data support under the background of cloud, IoT and large data.

In Pennsylvania, there is a website called Edline, the student's every homework, every exam recorded online, complete the student's daily GPA accumulation, the site's technology is not difficult, but can persist in data accumulation, for students, parents and education management is very important, we all know, The United States college entrance GPA is very important. This GPA, coupled with the analysis of the students ' sat and act, and the information about the volunteers ' activities, determines the university's whereabouts.

After economics, education will no longer be a subject of social science and moral conscience inherited by ideas and experiences, and education in the era of large data will become a real empirical science.

Donghua University in Shanghai, the school is to more than 10 colleges and dozens of laboratories management, through the Internet of things and cloud technology to connect the experimental system, the realization of laboratory data integration, analysis, visualization, report, relying on data, no longer rely on people to report.

The current economy, has entered the post-industrial era of large data: economic structure to the service economy, a large-scale shift in labor services, career distribution from the factory to the office, the social focus from around production to revolve around innovation, at the same time, the mainstream social relations between man and machine gradually turn to the relationship between people and data After a few years of social competition is centred on service and innovation, yet our education revolves around reducing the curse of mistakes and standardization. Large data education offers another possibility that standardized education will shift to the web and that talent training and personalization will be borne mainly by schools: smaller classes, more and more close schools, more and more focused education support, more and more personalized training, will make education out of the industrialized age. "Why do math classes every day, and dance, music, and P.E. classes once a week?" "The question of Robinson has gradually improved, with targeted and pluralistic educational goals being universally recognized, especially in private schools."

The challenge of Big data

The Indian educational scientist, Tes Mitra, is a landmark figure. In the 1999, he went to many remote villages in India, where people neither knew English nor saw computers. The Tes Mitra on the walls of children's often crowded streets, with a mouse and a computer screen connected to the Internet. A few months later, the experiment showed that the children were self-taught and learned to use the computer. In the next more than 10 years, Tes Mitra in India, South Africa, Cambodia, the United Kingdom, Italy and other fields also carried out a similar biology, mathematics, language and other content of educational experiments. It turns out that without the need for teachers or scientists to enter into the logic and procedures, learners can independently complete the study, which is "self-organization learning." Thus, Tes Mitra the constructivism of education: education is an self-organization behavior.

Recognizing that "learning is a self-organizing act", the role of teachers and teaching institutions should be repositioned. With the popularization of Internet and the further opening of network resources, online education can not merely move the traditional classroom to the Internet, which may be more contrary to the rule of learning. The NMC (New Media Education Alliance) has summed up many human learning behaviors on the basis of relevant historical research: social learning, visual learning, mobile learning, game learning, teaching and learning, each learning method, in the information and knowledge of the carrier, basically have the corresponding technical basis. In other words, technology can both expand the way people learn and may limit the way they learn. Once new technologies emerge, these new technologies change the way information and knowledge are transmitted, and the ways in which human learning can be changed are correspondingly fundamental. In the Internet age, open society and resources will further liberate people's learning, more and more people do not have to stay in school passively accept learning, they will be self-organizing learning to play incisively and vividly.

A wave of new online education in the United States, those college professors with huge fans who can easily get tens of millions of of dollars in venture capital are a huge challenge to the traditional universities, and it is in this context that the nerve of university reform has been driven: if you don't follow the trend, the campus will not be the best place for teachers. However, if education is to be truly new, not only in online education, but in the traditional concept of education changes: the function of teachers should be low-level and can be copied, to the big investment in the film model to do, and the future, teachers will become coaches, teachers and students will go to the training field, how from the traditional basketball court, Become the "home" of the new technology armed with a light illusion.

In the information technology revolution today, discipline and indoctrination are in retreat, support and service in advance. The essence of education is the support and service to learners, not the discipline and enlightenment of them. As the creatures of the universe, human beings have the ability of logical inference and self-organization. The ability to explore this logic and self-organization is the right path. The educational revolution that is taking place is not to move the traditional classrooms online, but to let the new technology liberate people's ability to learn and talent. Students are liberated and human capital grows exponentially.

In the reform of education, the most serious problem is not the lack of educational resources, but the teachers who have no talent are still "working hard" in the wrong direction. The education sector will "shuffle", which is one of the key words I predict for the future. "This is a time of great change for educators," Sugat said. I have witnessed the shuffling of the forces of education. Perhaps we say the "educational revolution" is exaggerated, but changes are indeed changing. The pluralistic coexistence of teaching model is a long-standing phenomenon. But there is no doubt that the new technology has increased its competitors to teachers from the periphery. The application of new technology leads to the change of students ' psychological anticipation and learning habits, which promotes the transformation of teaching process from the core and the inside. Students have changed, not as good as before. This is not a bad thing, in the midst of this, I do not know how many opportunities and possibilities lurk waiting for someone to find out! ”

One of Sugat's views is very representative: "Can you imagine and confirm that what you teach and examine will work for the next 20 years?" "To this end, Sugat analysis, only three of the most basic things in the future of the Big Data era is the students to and must learn things:" First is reading, the second is search, the third is to distinguish the authenticity of the truth, "Speaking of mathematics, Sugat said:" Perhaps mathematics, will become a sport. " The basic ability and the special "sports" of each child constitute the future education in Sugat's mind, which may be mathematics, perhaps leadership, music, art and basketball. Mathematics may be a sport for every child, maybe a part of a professional athlete, but the mathematics of the big Data age will not be the basic standard and point of education.

The biggest problem with the big data age, as Toffler says, is the "channel crisis" from information overload. In the case of a single source of information, such as the score of the college Entrance examination, and the fixed review data, the best way to educate is to repeat and absorb the filtered coding information. The two key middle schools in Hubei province and Hebei Province in China have successfully catered to the baton of the college entrance examination under the old education system. We should note that these secondary schools are only suitable for information occlusion, not suitable for information overload city such as Beijing and Shanghai. In the era of large data information pressure brought by the application of network technology, how to search, read and discern information has become a big problem.

Meet the arrival of the big data age

With the high-speed innovation of hardware and the high intelligence of software, a new wave of education informatization has been pushed to us. As educators, how should we deal with them? Onlookers？ Waiting？ Resist？ Obviously, these are the next strategies that can only be crushed by the tide. Only by mastering the good "surfing" technology, with the corresponding pre-judgment ability, we can move on the waves, even on the wave of elegant dance.

At present, all over the country to promote education information work. Set up the Education Information Service public platform, carry out the experiment work of the digital campus, set up a variety of "digital learning" pilot schools, develop "micro curriculum", carry out "flip classroom" teaching research, one-on-one "e classroom" teaching practice ... This is a series of increasing measures. However, this road is not easy to go. To fully do the "spiral" of the preparation of the rise, the most important is the top design and ideas ahead. When some concepts, some points of view for the first time in front of us, the impact is not only "brainwashing" when the academics, more should be "awake brain" after the deep thinking.

Today in the information age, we should use large data to transform the problem of "information overload" into personalized education. For example, the same course, such as "Network Engineering", in the computer College, Information College, School of Management, huge knowledge of the push and information, if the use of large data applications push, to different requirements of the subject of a completely different content recommended, even in the face of the same discipline of different behavior habits of students, Also will be targeted to give a corresponding learning strategy. The knowledge system and knowledge point of human being have not changed under the background of large data, but students can get individualized guidance and endless resources matching through large data application.

What is left of the school that has lost the monopoly of knowledge? A church? The Hall? The alley? or the cafeteria? To answer this question, schools can be a hindrance to innovation. In the big Data age, Internet education and schooling will gradually be separated, just as cinemas and televisions incompatible at the initial stage of competition, and are ripe for their own. Reversing the classroom provides a new model for the coexistence of school education and Internet education, in fact, fewer classrooms and more laboratories, more contacts and fewer lectures, more interaction and less indoctrination, more personalized service and a more flexible school system will be the opportunity for future schools to benefit from Internet education.