[Applause]
well there are many paths to success and
you’re going to hear a lot about them
today but what’s your individual path to
success is it a path that starts in next
September when you’ve just been made
redundant and you’re looking for
something now is that a path in Dublin
when you’re in Shannon you know what is
your individual path to success I
believe that the technology advances
that are taking place allow us to create
individual paths for you so that we can
customize learning to suit each
individual so we can build a path
together so consider for a minute that
if you’ve just been made redundant you
individually it happens all the time
each year in in Ireland and there’s
about 1 million transitions of people
moving from the job in one company to a
job in another company or from a job in
their company to another job in the same
company or being made redundant and
unfortunately looking for for a new job
and the average person has 10 job
changes in their in their life between
10 and 12 the average person has between
5 and 7 career changes in their life so
this is something that we all face at
some point or another it’s not like it
was once upon a time when if you were a
carpenter as my dad was a carpenter it
was expected that I would be a carpenter
and that’s what it would be all my life
or if you were is in this picture here
and a cobbler working with him a
craftsperson and you would learn from
that person and you would have complete
individualized personalized learning but
that changed with the Industrial
Revolution and the cobbler disappeared
and mass production resulted in
everybody having to go to a shop to buy
a shoe you don’t go to a cobbler to get
one personally made for yourself and the
same thing happened with education and
training where that sit by Nellie type
of role of craft person supporting the
young apprentice developing into their
career was replaced by mass education
but technology is changing again another
revolution and this time it’s a
revolution in mass customization and I
have a slide there from Ford that said
if mass-produced
seven and a half million Mustangs so far
so every single Mustang customized to
the individual BMW say that no two cars
that leave their plant or the same
anymore Adidas and Nike produce and
websites were as they say you designers
we make it and we deliver within three
or four weeks and that’s mass
customization across all the supply of
products and services some of these you
may not be aware of or some of them
you’ll hear about very soon and I’m sure
you’re familiar with Netflix where you
no longer have to get your TV times and
decides you know what programs you want
to watch and when you need to make time
available to watch that particular
program you decide for anyone to watch
it and where you want to watch it 3d
printers can print objects exactly as
you want them so you can design your own
shoes and print them yourself um there’s
two machines that I show there which is
the sprite and coca-cola vending
machines these are new machines that are
going to be all around the world shortly
despite machine for example allows you
to produce your individual drink and you
can customize the drink that you want
that machine can deliver over 1,000
ingredients to make the taste that you
specifically are looking for so if
that’s happening around the world
why isn’t happening with with education
why isn’t happening with training and
the types of customization that have
just displayed there fall into a number
different categories there’s
collaborative customization for an
institution can work with an individual
in producing the customized product for
them there’s adaptive customization
where things are just adapted to suit
what the person is looking for have a
slide there that shows a type of
transparent customization I think that’s
the kind of customization that should be
available in educational training where
it’s totally transparent to the
individual that they get a customized
learning experience based on their
individual needs you’re getting there at
the moment because of your interaction
with social media and if you use Gmail
for example Google will analyze the
words in your Gmail messages and
identify the things that you’re
interested in and automatically target
advertising at you so for example when I
was using Google Maps to find
root down here this morning I’ll end up
getting information about hotels in the
area and that kind of transparent
customization is happening to us all the
time but it’s not having an education
we’re still have that kind of product
approach to to education and training
with people that having to attend that
course in Dublin or that course it
starts in September but we’re all
different I mean we will hear a lot of
stories today about where people are
coming from or where they’re trying to
get to and I believe that technology can
support each individual in getting from
where they are to where they want to go
to were totally personalized in device
individualized our learner centered
approaches I have some experience with
this in 1999 I was working as an
instructor in in force at the time
in-camera and we had a demand for
companies Intel hewlett-packard IBM
manufacturing companies that were
setting up in the country at the time
and we were recruiting what they thought
were multi skilled maintenance
individuals but Ireland at the time a
tradition of training electricians to do
electrical work and fitters to do
mechanical work and the companies that
were looking for multi skilled people
used us to train the electrical staff in
mechanical skills and mechanical staff
in electrical skills but as soon as we
started training individuals they got
jobs straight away before they finished
their training even even when the
company heard that they were on a
training course they got a job it was so
successful that you know we obviously
had a difficulty if we started with a
group of 20 people very quickly we ended
up with two or three people and we had
to support them and in continuing to the
end of the course so we developed a
model of flexible training that resulted
in training being available any time his
face became available so if one person
finished another person could start or
somebody got a job and that created his
face and another person could could come
in that kind of individual personalized
learning and was difficult at the time
we didn’t have the kind of technical
technology supports I have a graph there
that shows to spend on technology
infrastructure and
the time we had just reached a billion
euro spend in technologies for for
learning and so we were part of
something that was happening at the time
but the take up was fairly slow and it
didn’t seem to happen and spending died
off but I’m not sure if you can see the
figures on this but last year there was
an incredible increase six and a half
billion euros of investment six and a
half billion euros of investment in
learning technologies that’s a
regulation around the world that the
infrastructure the resources are
available now to support learning with
technology so I’m going to give an
example of some of the ways that might
work and so the first set of tools are
associated with developing profile and
so profiling tools that can assist an
individual in identifying all of the
skills that I have more than just the CV
but building a poor profile of all of
the experiences and all of the things
that have done in the past that would be
useful to an employer employers are very
good at designing profiles they can give
you a profile of the individual that
they’re looking for
so by combining the two of those you can
build a picture of the gaps between for
an individual that’s coming from and
recognition of prior learning is
something that we talk about all the
time but one of the difficulties with
recognition of prior learning is that we
might have a person who’s coming into a
course and recognize all of the previous
learning that they have but we still
have to start them on day one and let
them repeat all the things that they’ve
done in the past and do the things that
I haven’t done until they’re finished
the course but to really take account of
recognition of prior learning you should
be able to shortcut a course for an
individual recognize the things that
they already know and to find the
objectives that they need to reach in
order to get to where they’re trying to
go to so that’s the first part of it in
building a profile and identifying the
objectives that an individual is trying
to achieve the second part is building
the content and resources that can
support the person bridging that gap and
again technology is fairly good now at
assembling that content
putting it together in the format that’s
individualized to that person but we
need a teacher or a support facilitator
to to manage that process and to support
the learner
you know you as an individual if I said
you know I’m gonna build your profile
and I’m gonna get this content and now
you’re going to just start learning it
just doesn’t happen like that you know
you need support and scaffolding is the
determinants used to describe the nature
of that support the scaffolding is a way
of putting a lot of support in place at
the start and building and learners
capacity to manage their own learning
and as a learner builds that capacity
the scaffolding can be removed you know
and the building then states and the
learner stays as an independent learner
learning analytics are a series of tools
and reports that are available to to
understand that learning process how
that scaffolding is is developing how
the learner is achieving their their
outcomes what the learner is actually
doing and report that back to the
facilitator to the teacher to help them
identify the things that they need to do
this means that the the tutor changes
their role from being that sage on the
stage this kind of presentation kind of
platform to being a guide on the side a
guide that’s supporting that individual
learning moving through their path
it sounds challenging and it is a
challenging role for for a teacher or a
trainer because at any point in time you
will have learners that are nearly
finished a program that are ready for
certification you have learners that are
just starting and need a lot of support
and you have learners that have just
they’ve reached a point where they just
can’t
and they can’t progress you know they
have a block in progressing through the
understanding of some subject or some
skill so the kite on the side supports a
learner through that process until
they’re ready to to be certified so we
need flexible certification systems we
can’t just wait for exams in August or
we can’t have exams of SEP times and
certification should be available when
the person is ready to be certified when
they’re finished their course so they
can progress to where they want to go to
as quickly as possible I have to
experience we know that sometimes that
individual path needs to be repeated
over and over again
some of the career changes that I had
and moved from being an electrician to
electronic technician to a computer
technician to being a software person to
being a trainer and and a manager I mean
these are were huge changes that didn’t
just result as a result of just some
small change like this you know as you
move into a job the forces continues and
continues and that’s what I’m talking
about when I say mass customization of
learning the things that need to be in
place in order for it to work are good
quality content and resources the
pedagogical competencies are that the
teaching competencies the skills of the
of the teacher trainer the technology
infrastructure to make sure that
everything is available and works and
programs designed so that they’re
flexible in the way that they’re they’re
designed that they can take account of
all of the individuals and where they’re
coming from and that assessments are
designs that are table have been taken
at anytime and then the structures need
to be in place so our institutions are
our centers they need to be set up in
such a way and I believe is possible to
do this that there are profiling places
that people can go to to a system in
identifying where they’re coming from
and a system Inc and identifying where
it is that you’re trying to get to and
that the structures aren’t and the
classroom based we’re just a podium on
the top and people sitting in a room but
there are learning spaces where people
can individually learn and be supported
by that’s guide on the side type of
approach so the secret really is to stop
thinking about teaching and learning and
the whole fet provision as product based
and think about you know courses that
are running in Dublin in September and
instead think of learning as a process
process that each individual has to go
through in order to meet the aim of
where they’re trying to get to just huge
might be research around the world on
this at the moment huge amount of money
being spent on I mentioned
six-and-a-half billion euros and there’s
a lot of stuff on the internet that you
can find to find out more about this I’m
not saying there’s not a challenge it’s
the challenges massive it’s a huge
culture change in the way that we
approach things but I think it can be
done I believe it can be done
and I believe that we should do it and
so let’s do [Applause]