This week MyMachine Belgium organised a conference on the Future of Learning. This conference was held alongside the opening of the MyMachine Belgium 2018 Exhibition. The conference was attended by leading voices in education, industry and government in Belgium and was co-hosted with Agoria, the Belgian Association of Technology Industry.

MyMachine Global invited Mr. Tom Vander Ark as keynote to this event. As leading voice in education in the USA and far beyond, Tom Vander Ark zoomed in on how education will have to change to prepare students for the innovation economy. This is a new world emerging on the crossroads of artificial intelligence and enabling technologies and big data. Artificial intelligence is already everywhere in our lives, from the media to recreation, transport, security, energy, health, industry and energy and what not.

The World Economic Forum calls it the 4th Industrial Revolution. The first was mechanisation, the second mass production, the third computer and automation. The forth is all about cyber physical systems.

In this new innovation economy insights and applications evolve at such a high speed that, according to Vander Ark, it has become impossible to control these all alone. Jobs will change dramatically because of this growing digitalisation. The freelance economy will grow exponentially and at the same time there will be more focus on collaboration and achieving results in teams. Urbanisation, automation and globalisation and the clash of natural and man made systems will result in unprecedented waves of novelty and complexity.

The answer to this is, according to Tom Vander Ark, to give youngsters the possibility of learning ‘attack skills’ based upon design thinking. To make them learn how to earn taking initiative. And learning to collaborate. Learning these 21st century skills and participating in networks that provide models and tools, is a key enabler for people, industry, regions and countries to adapting to this rising innovation economy.  Vander Ark concluded that therefore schools and the education system need to be adapted. Young people need good guidance by their parents, teachers and professors. Young people need sustained relationships at home and school that support powerful learning & good decisions.

Tom Vander Ark concluded by saying that he admires the work of MyMachine, because it delivers to all of that. Participating in MyMachine gives young people the possibility to learn attack skills, collaborate, take initiative and all of this in a network with tools and models that work. MyMachine is the kind of methodology that gives young people confidence in complexity, initiative in opportunity and awareness in diversity.