Three Things You Need to Know from the 2019 Google Education Report
Earlier this week, Google Education released a report titled “The Future of the Classroom: Emerging Trends in K-12 Education.”
The report highlights new directions that classrooms are taking and how we can better prepare students for a future in technology. At Thunkable we’ve seen these trends among our users and more broadly, in the growing no-code/low-code space.
Here are the Top Three Takeaways:
① Soft Skills on the Rise
To prepare students for the future, schools are now actively trying to incorporate social skills such as empathy, confidence and teamwork into traditional classroom subjects like Mathematics and English.
Why are teachers encouraging students to dig deep?
Research shows that higher levels of emotional intelligence are tied to stronger leadership and pressure coping mechanisms.
Soft skills are in high demand from employers, with 91% of CEOs globally indicating the need to strengthen their organization’s soft skills to parallel the digital skills.
From our education users, we have already seen a variety of empathy-based apps — or apps that focus on solving social problems and building community. As teachers continue to integrate social health into technology, we predict that there will be a major shift in how products are designed and how they impact society. These conversations are already taking place with products like Facebook.
Click here to see how high school students are creating apps on Thunkable that address problems in their communities and focus on building empathy.
② Future Leaders MUST understand technology
92% of jobs will require digital skills and 45% of jobs will require employees who can interact with digital systems and advanced technology.
There’s no question, students must develop a strong background in technology.
While not everyone needs to become a software engineer, technological literacy will be a requirement for the future workforce.
Thousands of professional non-developers around the world are using Thunkable to build apps for their offices, businesses and personal lives. Although these people are not software engineers, the ability to build an app has greatly increased their skillset. In some cases, app building has helped them improve the lives of thousands of people.
③ Collaborative Learning
Schools around the world are shifting to a student-led learning approach in the classroom.
Why?
Students who are self directed perform better than those who memorize facts from textbooks.
When this approach is applied to collaborative learning, students tend to gravitate towards their interests, bring out their best skills and teach others what they know.
We have found that collaborative learning is one of the most successful ways to building community and get started with new technology. The Thunkable community is a group of app builders from around the world who share their projects, experience, expertise and time — all to help other members build more powerful effective apps.
Not all platforms need a community forum, but it’s important to consider how collaborative learning could benefit your users. Expect to see more communities forming online to help with the introduction of new technologies.
In the world of technology, change is constant.
To keep up, classrooms are shifting their approach in teaching students how to be better colleagues, adapt to new technology and work collaboratively. These are all trends that we have seen emerging from our users — who make up a new class of mobile developers.
It’s important that technology companies recognize these trends, and empower people in a way that fits with times.
To get started on expanding your own skillset with app building, go to thunkable.com
