International Teacher Education Conference 2014 1

International Teacher Education Conference 2014
educational resource after announcing in 2001 that it was going to put MIT's entire course catalogue online.
Since then, the number of open educational resources has been increasing, e.g., the European Union launched
the Open Education Europa portal in 2013 (http://www.openeducationeuropa.eu/), which will provide a gateway
to high-quality OER produced in Europe, in their original language. Also, Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOC) are a recent development, where MOOC promoters such as Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/) and
OpenLearn (http://www.open.edu/openlearn/about-openlearn/try) offer a wide range of educational programmes
from leading universities online for free. Lifelong learning and continuous updating of skills and knowledge in
the form of open educational resources and MOOC can be seen to promote informal learning. A challenge has
been the validation of informally acquired knowledge in a situation where learners need to complement and
supplement their formally acquired qualifications with vocational skill training. In future learning, recognition of
non-formal and informal learning outcomes is needed.
FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES FACILITATING LEARNING
The increase in the number of personal computers and the launch of the Internet have led to huge changes in
distance learning compared to the earlier usage of television, radio or cassette recordings. The decreasing size of
devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones has moved learning from classrooms and homes to vehicles,
workplaces, cafes and other places where people spend their time. Figure 2 illustrates the technical innovations
utilized to facilitate learning from 1980 to 2030.
Figure 2: Technical innovations from 1980 to 2030
The European Commission has created the Digital Agenda for Europe, which aims to reboot Europe's
economy and help its citizens and businesses to get the most out of digital technologies (European Commission,
2010c). Future technologies will be of great importance in facilitating learning, when learning moves from the
buildings of universities, institutions and schools to workplaces, cyberspaces and other learning spaces. Future
technologies are needed, in addition to informal and non-formal learning, in formal learning. To make sure the
work-based learning and competences acquired in working life are recognized, they need to be visible and
proved. In this process, ICT, in addition to future technologies, have a crucial role.
Globalization is one of the trends in education and future technologies are needed to connect people in
different parts of the world. One such technology is wearable computers, e.g., the usage of wearable devices
such as Google Glass (http://www.google.com/glass/start/). How could wearable devices be utilized in learning?
A student teacher and an instructor who are in different parts of the country or world could be connected via
virtual glasses. The context could be a classroom, where a student teacher is teaching. An instructor could, on his
or her computer screen, see what the teacher is seeing through the virtual glasses. Virtual glasses could also
enable tutoring of students abroad in real time. If the context is a laboratory, a teacher could instruct a student
with the help of virtual glasses while the student is practising their skills (Aarreniemi-Jokipelto, 2013b). Could
computers someday interact directly with the human brain? According to the HIVE (Hyper Interaction Viability
Experiments) project funded by the European Union, we will witness the coming of age of technologies for
fluent brain-computer and computer-mediated brain-to-brain interaction in the next 50 years (Hive, 2012).
In recent years, several novel technologies have been launched, but education has not been swift to adopt
them. These technologies could serve pedagogical requirements by enabling more senses to be used in learning,
and also by supporting different learning styles. Virtual spaces could be connected to traditional classrooms so
that participants can be seen sitting in the same classroom. Currently, this has not been the case, but instead
some of the students sit in the classroom and some watch the lesson on the wall via a data projector. Online
students have thus far not had the same possibilities to collaborate as students who are present in the classroom.
With the help of haptic technology it is possible to feel an object even if you are not in the same location as
the object. This could be used in a learning context when students need to know how an object feels. Currently,
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