Me It's striking how things change over time, or between different places: customs, cultures, values, religions, and so on. And truly, those who know me and follow me know that I speak from experience. In recent years, I've witnessed how changes can occur in such rapid, diverse, and unexpected ways. In a future post, I'd like to explore these experiences from a more philosophical or profound perspective; today, I'm just mentioning them.
Un día estas en Lima tomandote un café peruano, disfrutando el atardecer mirando el mar, luego te encuentras en un hotel en Roma, desayunando en la zona de comida que se encuentra practicamente en la azotea a techo descubierto, disfrutando de un café italiano, contemplando la ciudad histórica, y luego te encuentras en un viaje de aniversario en Key West y antes de empezar el trajín turístico disfrutando de un tradicional café cubano. Cambia la vida, la gente se mueve, la historia sigue su curso, pero en todos los lugares que la Vida me ha dado la oportunidad de conocer, nunca ha faltado un rico café, que de hecho me acompaña hoy que escribo estas líneas, quizás escritas con alguna torpeza, pero con el ánimo de compartir los devenires de mi aventura.
As I always reiterate, with these publications, I do not intend to put forward any proposal, nor how things should be done; that is what politicians and experts are for. I only want to share some ideas.
From the Blackboard to the Overhead Projector
To get down to business, when I started my teaching career, I was very young, already an engineering graduate. Of course, it helped that years before, while I was in university, I taught at a pre-university academy. Back then, there weren't any multimedia projectors; we used an overhead projector with plastic slides that had to be printed beforehand with whatever you wanted to project. If you needed 20 slides, you had to print 20 sheets of plastic; you couldn't edit them, and the students' materials were all printed. It was at one of the leading telecommunications research institutions, with the most advanced technology at the time. I remember that, as the teacher, I was younger than all my students; I'd even venture to say some were twice my age. By then, I already had some experience in the profession, certifications, and had traveled to international conferences. It was a great experience, and the students enjoyed it because the topics weren't yet well-known in the country. The only resistance I encountered came from my colleagues at the educational institution (who, by the way, were Baby Boomers).
In this post, I won't delve into generational changes, which, from my current perspective, are one of the pillars supporting traditional education. For now, we'll leave it at that.
Digital prevails
Years later, I had the opportunity to teach at three different universities and witness the evolution of educational approaches, curricular improvements, and the increasing impact of digital technology on higher education. I also had the opportunity to study abroad, which allowed me to gain firsthand insight into the gap between our country and other contexts.
One of the most interesting experiences I had was teaching in a blended learning format at the university level. In my opinion, this format is theoretically effective for students with professional experience, provided the teacher's key role is understood, and the student understands their active participation in the learning process. At that time, we were already using the Virtual Classroom, as this format has both a synchronous and an asynchronous component.
With the experience gained and training received, I was able to develop the structure and content of a Professional Diploma and Data Center courses at prestigious universities in Peru.
Platforms like Coursera and similar services were already well-established in the global market. Furthermore, they were being used by universities as elective courses, offering academic credits.
The final blow: AI incursions
In this context, the lockdown erupted, preventing in-person classes and forcing universities to move online. It's worth noting that previous initiatives to do so had been proposed, but as always, there were voices resistant to change. Now, everything has moved to the cloud.
In a drastic and dramatic way, the educational community had to accept technological innovations as support for the learning process.
After the health emergency passed, many with outdated thinking tried to return to the past, without realizing that the world had changed and would not go back, and when the voices from the caves seemed to prevail, Artificial Intelligence, the missing piece of the modern puzzle, appeared overwhelmingly in social reality.
Education has changed, but some still pretend to ignore it.
See you soon. I look forward to your comments.