Digital together - prospects, challenges and opportunities

A comment from Rona van der Zander

"The future is about learning independently with joy (always on), designing creatively, acting sustainably and collaboratively, and using technology to do so. "

Lina is 9 years old and goes to a German elementary school.

What will their future look like in the digital world of work? How are we preparing them for it right now and what can we do even better?

Lina is growing up in the so-called "VUCA world". VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainy, Complexity and Ambiguity.

Lina's future is therefore characterized by constant, rapid change, complexity and uncertainty. The intervals between major innovations that radically change the way we live and work are becoming shorter and shorter. The half-life of knowledge continues to diminish - we need to keep learning and learning again. New technologies are changing the world of work. Many jobs are becoming superfluous, while at the same time completely new professions are emerging..

What does this mean for Lina? What will her work look like in the future?

For 65% of the children, we don't yet know what kind of professions they will go into later, what kind of jobs there will even be. But one thing is clear: it will be a future full of constant change. Lina will probably have up to 30 different jobs and seven different professions.

What skills does Lina need to find her way in such a VUCA world?

The World Economic Forum has identified the following as the "Top 10 Capabilities for 2025:

Analytical thinking and innovation
Active learning and learning strategies
Complex problem solving
Critical thinking and analysis
Creativity, originality and initiative
Leadership and social competence
Use, monitoring and control of technology
Technological development and programming
Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility
Argumentation, problem solving and idea generation

So on the one hand it's about technical know-how, on the other hand it's about very human skills.

"The future is about learning independently with joy (always on), being creative, sustainable, collaborative, and using technology."

Where and how do we prepare Lina for this?

In school? For the most part, our schools are still stuck in industrialization. It's all about imparting knowledge, learning by rote, and "consuming" problems that have already been solved.

So we need to rethink "school." Do delimited subjects still make sense in a time in which everything is networked and connected and changes constantly and quickly? Don't we have to think much more in terms of joint projects in which we are not bombarded head-on by "teachers", but in which "learning coaches" accompany us to find answers and approaches to solutions? How is Lina supposed to learn in a self-organized way when a timetable tells her every 45 minutes which topic is important right now? How is collaboration supposed to be lived when grades constantly exert pressure and comparison?

Digital content and technologies must also find their way into this new setting, of course: because that will be Lina's future

Relution plays an important role here. On the one hand, because Relution provides support and guard rails for secure use of the Internet. By using Relution, the privacy-compliant use of some applications becomes possible in the first place. On the other hand, Relution also helps to show the variety of possibilities. This is essential for the future. Through the curated content, teachers and learning facilitators can show what is possible. In this way, children like Lina can move from being "digital consumers" to "digital producers" and actively use the technical possibilities. The older and more experienced the children are, the more actively they must be involved in this process: What do I need to solve problems? What technical possibilities do I already know?

Of course, the VUCA world is also a great challenge for teachers. They have to be didactically fit, recognize relevant content and prepare the whole thing technically. Here, too, Relution can help: you don't have to study IT to prepare good digital lessons.

There are still many challenges along the way, but we are on our way - which gives hope that young people like Lina will become better and better prepared for the VUCA future and joyfully explore and help shape the digital future, with all its exciting possibilities.

Rona van der Zander is an expert in digitalization. Her core topics are change, future of work and innovation. She held the keynote at the Relution Summit 2022.