Education is changing at high speed, some personal observations

Let me start with saying i am no expert or professional with regard to education & the internet. I am not telling anything new. Just a parent of two daughters of 6 and 8 who is wondering about the amazing speed at which i see education changing. And as this is an exponential development, the current speed of change is only a small sign of things to come. The first development i noticed was of what is called "Massive Open Online Courses" or MOOC's for short (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course) Both the number and quality of courses is growing at a rapid pace. Regardless whether they will fully replace traditional forms of education or not, it will fundamentally change university education as we know it. Add to that the further developing forms of videocommunication like Google Hangouts and you get the picture. For me personally it's not really practical to follow a MOOC's, simply no time available because of work. For myself i found something "lighter" with http://www.codecademy.com where i try to learn the very basics of Python programming, just for fun.

At the level of my own family i was this month confronted with the fact that my oldest daughter (8) is now using a tablet at her school for part of her work ( with tablets/apps from a dutch start-up: http://snappet.org/ )
Many parents around me are not fully aware of the changes that lie ahead, with full digitisation and personalisation of content in education. Many politicians, at least in the Netherlands, also do not show they are fully aware what's going on. A lot of work lies ahead. Maybe i should make a careerchange.

If you want a broader explanation about how public education is changing, i can really recommend this famous RSA-animate by Ken Robinson, http://goo.gl/kcq8Si

(image: Een schoolklas met een slapende schoolmeester, Jan Steen,1626-1679)