Asking MoreEfficacy in Education

A New Era of Learning Efficacy on a Planet of Smarter Systems

Jon Iwata, IBM

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Efficacy in Education

Jon Iwata leads IBM’s Marketing, Communications and Citizenship organization

He led the creation of the highly acclaimed ‘Smarter Planet’ strategy, which is reshaping our understanding of how data and analytics can enable smarter decisions

A profound shift in our world is underway

The planet is becoming instrumented, interconnected and intelligent, with computation being infused into things nobody would think of as a computer

There are upwards of a trillion interconnected and intelligent objects and organisms on the planet –

what some call the Internet of Things

Among their components are a billion transistors for every human being on the planet…

…we are producing more transistors every year, and at a lower cost than grains of rice

Approximately 2.7 billion people are now connected, a number that is growing rapidly in every part of the world, in significant part thanks to the spread of mobile technology

It is estimated that there are more than 10 billion wireless devices out there today – a number that one research firm projects to triple by 2020

The result is a planet awash in information. Some call this ‘Big Data’.

How big is it? By one estimate, there will be 5,200 gigabytes of data for every human on the planet by 2020

Some are daunted by the sheer scope of this. Many are concerned – with good reason – about the issues it raises for privacy and security. Those questions are serious, and require serious technological and policy responses.

However, I believe the overall import of this new era is enormously hopeful

All were disruptive, but all fueled new wealth and societal progress,

once we learned how to translate them into new value

18th Century Steam

19th Century Electricity

20th Century Hydrocarbons

21st Century Data

The emergence of Big Data constitutes a vast new natural resource, which

promises to be for the 21st century what steam power was for the 18th,

electricity for the 19th and hydrocarbons for the 20th

We are entering a golden age of information science New computing capabilities can store, analyze and make sense of Big Data nearly instantaneously

All of this can happen far more efficiently, effectively and with broader access in the new architecture known as ‘The Cloud’

And, aided by the rapid spread of social media, the spread of these and other insights, ideas and deepened expertise becomes exponential, not linear

For instance, using IBM’s cognitive system called Watson, doctors today are dramatically expanding their access to the latest medical research, integrating it with patient test results and genetic information, and increasing confidence levels about diagnosis and treatment

We are also working with leaders in finance, retail, insurance and other industries to accelerate the discovery of precise answers to questions they could not even address before

This is enormously promising – and it is just the beginning When we infuse instrumentation, cognitive capabilities and social media into

our economic, societal and natural systems, we change not just how the world works, but how it learns

Every system becomes a learning system

This is a wholly new level of learning ‘efficacy’ We are far beyond mere measurement for outcomes. If we open our eyes to what is now possible, we can see a world taking shape before us that is literally being infused and transformed by knowledge

And once we see it, it is incumbent upon us to seize this transformation, and to come together to ensure that it happens in ways that are safe, secure and available to all.

Learning is no longer restricted to the formal and informal education industry

Every business, every industry and every individual will have to be constantly learning and improving to make the most of the opportunities provided by the data revolution

This learning can now be measured and adopted in ways that would previously have been considered the stuff of science fiction

We have the opportunity to make smarter decisions and drive learner outcomes based on both evidence and real time, individualized performance data

What does this mean for Pearson?Efficacy in Educationefficacy.pearson.com