3FOOD

Third Industrial Revolution Consulting Group
As such, the incumbent role of government is to instill in each citizen the responsibility to take
advantage of these digital resources, tools, and networking opportunities to pursue selfmotivated
and directed learning that is essential for future proofing themselves in a world
fraught with sudden changes, constant uncertainties and unexpected surprises. Becoming
digitally savvy means taking the responsibility to enhance one’s personal human capital, while
engaging and networking with peers (both locally and globally) to cultivate social, civic, and
intellectual capital. By cultivating these new opportunities daily, each individual ensures skills
and competences are being cultivated for future proofing their odds of worth and insuring
against becoming a stranded asset.
The First and Second Industrial Revolutions enshrined a model of teaching designed to prepare
students to be skilled industrial workers. The classroom was transformed into a microcosm of
the factory. Students were thought of as analogous to machines. They were conditioned to
follow commands, learn by repetition, and perform efficiently. The teacher was akin to a
factory foreman, handing out standardized assignments that required set answers in a given
time frame. Learning was compartmentalized into isolated silos. Education was supposed to be
useful and pragmatic. The “why” of things was less discussed than the “how” of things. The goal
was to turn out productive employees.
The Third Industrial Revolution is altering the pedagogy of the classroom. The authoritarian,
top-down model of instruction is beginning to give way to a more collaborative learning
experience. Teachers are shifting from lecturers to facilitators. Imparting knowledge is
becoming less important than creating critical-learning skills. Students are encouraged to think
more holistically. A premium is placed on inquiry over memorization.
In the traditional industrial classroom, questioning the authority of the teacher is strictly
forbidden and sharing information and ideas among students is labeled cheating. Children
quickly learn that knowledge is power, and a valuable resource one acquires to secure an
advantage over others upon graduation in a fiercely competitive marketplace.
In the Digital Age, by contrast, students will come to think of knowledge as a shared experience
among a community of peers. Students learn together as a cohort in a shared knowledge
community. The teacher acts as a guide, setting up inquiries and allowing students to work in
small-group environments. The goal is to stimulate collaborative creativity, the kind young
people experience when engaged in many of the social spaces of the Internet. The shift from
hierarchical power, lodged in the hands of the teacher, to lateral power, established across a
learning community, is tantamount to a revolution in pedagogy.
While the conventional classroom treated knowledge as objective, isolated facts, in the
collaborative classroom, knowledge is equally regarded as the collective meanings we attach to
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