Curriculum:What to teach.

For humans to thrive in the age of smart machines, it is essential that they do not compete with machines.While the specifics vary, the general agreement is that repetition, patern-prediction and recognition, memorization, or any skills connected to collecting, storing, and retrieving information are in decline because of AI and related technologies.

Moreover,given the rapidity of changes we are already experiencing, it is clear that lifelong careers and traditional employment pathways will not exist in the way that they have for past generations. Jobs and the way we do business will change and the change will be fast.

On the rise is a set of contemporary skills which includes creativity,curiosity, critical thinking, entrepreneurship, collaboration,communication, growth mindset, global competence, and a host of skills with diferent names.Being unique and equipped with social-emotional intelligence are distinct human qualities that machines do not have. In an AI world, individual creativity, artistry and humanity will be important commodities that distinguish us from each other.

For this reason, schools can no longer pre-impose all that is needed for the future before students graduate and enter the world.Education must be seen as a pathway to ataining lifelong learning, satisfaction, happiness, well being, opportunity and contribution to humanity.

Schools therefore need to provide comprehensive access and deep exposure to all learning areas across all years in order to enable all students to make informed choices and develop their passions and unique talents.While helping students develop basic practical skills is still needed, education should also be about development of humanity in citizens of local, national, and global societies.

Pedagogy:How to teach.

Schools need to shift from direct instruction for its unproductive successes or short-term successes but long term damages.In its place should be new models of teaching and learning that are student-centered, inquiry-based, authentic, and purposeful.

The new pedagogiccal models should focus on student-initiated explorations of solutions to authentic and significant problems. They should help students develop abilities to handle the unknown and uncertain instead of requiring memorization of known solutions to known problems.

Learners need to be more actively engaged in their own learning.Students are diverse and have diferent levels of abilities and interests that may not align well with the content they are collectively supposed to learn in the classroom.

The movement towards a more personalized mode of learning needs students to become more active in understanding and charting their learning pathways.Teachers must pursue classroom diferentiation as students take a more active role in defining their learning and learning environments in collaboration with teachers.

Organization:Where and When to teach.

Although technology has made it possible for schools to offer online education for quite some time and the number of students taking online courses has been on the rise, it is not until the arrival of COVID-19 that the majority of education been offered through this mode.The covid-19 pandemic has ultimately changed one of the most important unwriten school rules: all students must be in one location for education to take place.

This massive online movement changed the typical. It has forced teachers to experience teaching without proximity to the students.This has given many teachers the opportunity to rethink the purpose of teaching and connecting with students.

The typical place of learning has been the classroom in a school and the learning time has been typically confined to classes.When students are not learning in classes inside a school, they are distributed in the community. They can interact with others through technologies. This can have significant impact on learning activities. If allowed or enabled by a teacher, students could be learning from online resources and experts anywhere in the world. Thus, the where of learning changes from the classroom to the world.Furthermore, the time of learning also changes.

When learning goes online and students are not or do not need to be in schools, their learning time vastly expands beyond the traditional school time.They can learn asynchronously at anytime. Equally important is that their learning time does not need to be synchronous with each other or with that of the teacher.To produce graduates literate in the workings of a globalized world, the education sector must redefine where and how education is offered.

When we hear the term Special Education, many of our thoughts go straight to those individuals with learning disabilities, cognitive functioning disabilities, and what not. However, we do also have to realize that Special Education encompasses a lot more than those individuals on one end of the spectrum so to speak. Educators and policy makers ofen over look the other end of the spectrum,the gifed and talented students.

Students placed in these programs do in fact fall under the umbrella of Special Education. While these students may not have learning disabilities, they still require resources outside of their generalized classrooms and enrichment that they cannot receive from the lead teacher in the classroom.

Gifed children can be described as those children who exhibit precocious development of mentalcapacity and learning potential as determined by competent professional evaluation to the extent that continued educational growth and stimulation could best be served by an academic environment beyond that ofered through a standard grade level curriculum.

However, most gifed students receive the majority of their education in a regular classroom, taught by teachers who have not been trained to teach high-ability students. For many gifed students,much of the time they spend in school is wasted; they have already mastered the material and are marking time until they are allowed to skip a grade or are permited to take college-level courses.