* In his book “ The fourth Education revolution”, Sir Anthony Seldon states that there have been only 3 education revolutions in the long history of humanity, the most recent one having been brought about by the printing press, about 400 years back.
* Both Sir Anthony Seldon and Sir Ken Robinson ( https://www.ted.com/talks sir_ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms ) have attributed the current dominant education model to the factory model of the Industrial Age.
* The current driver for education is ‘education for employment’ that arose during the Industrial age, with a greater demand for skills that led to better employability. The recent illustrations of this are the demand in skills for the IT age, the AI age and now the coming age of Quantum Technologies.
* One of the unintended consequence of this model of education was what is called ‘overfitting’ in the context of machine learning. This led Guy Claxton ( https://youtu.be/JxWybvns1jg) to suggest the building of ‘ learning power’ rather than rote learning of specific chunks of content (syllabus) in subjects which results in ‘taughtitis’.
* One of the effects of recent advances in medicine and technologies for healthcare is that longevity is increasing and both the lifespan as well as the health-span are now more than they were a few decades ago. There is a rise in centenarians – people who are 100 years old or more. The global population is moving from a young population towards an ageing population with each new generation projected to live longer than the last.
* This is changing the goal of education from finding an immediate job and a career path to a lifelong pursuit of learning to carve out a niche for oneself in the ‘gig’ economy and lead a long and fulfilling life.
* Socrates had said long ago that ‘an unexamined life is not worth living’. Frederich Nietzsche exhorted us to be Ubermensch and Swami Vivekananda said “ Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached”. More recently Yuval Noah Harari (https://youtu.be/OMDlfNWM1fA ) warned us against falling into the ‘useless class’.
* People who live longer and more fulfilled lives are life-long learners with strong social support systems, cultivating rewarding relationships, being happy and content with who they are and what they have, adopting healthy diets, maintaining better mental and physical health, ensuring overall well-being, and being intellectually active.
* The only path to achieving the goal of a fulfilling life is to have fulfilling relationships, and those relationships can only be created by consistently connecting through meaningful interactions. And one of the best ways to do this is to become part of a lifelong learning community that you create and nurture.
Prof. M.M.Pant has a Ph.D in Computational Physics, along with a Professional Law Degree, and has been a practitioner in the fields of Law, IT enabled education and IT implementation.
Drawing upon his experience in world class international institutions and having taught in various modes of Face-to-Face, Distance Learning and Technology Enhanced Training, Prof. Pant is now exploring the nature of institutions which will be successors to the IITs, which represented the 1960s, IIMs, which represented the 1970 and Open Universities which were the rage of 1980s & 90s.
He believes that the convergence between various media and technologies would fundamentally alter the way learning would be created, packaged, and delivered to learners. His current activities are all directed toward actual implementation of these new age educational initiatives that transform education in the post Internet post WTO era..
Prof. Pant, has been a Former Pro-Vice Chancellor, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and has been on the faculty of IIT – Kanpur (the premier Engineering institution in India), MLNR Engineering College and Faculty & Visiting Professor - University of Western Ontario-Canada.
He has been visiting scientist to research centers in Italy, England, Germany & Sweden and has delivered international lectures with about 80 papers published.
During his association of almost 15 years with the IGNOU, Prof. Pant has served as the Director Computing and has been the Member of All Bodies (i.e. School boards, Academic council, Planning board, Finance committee and the Board of management).
With his interest in Law, backed with practice of Law in a High Court, and his basic training in Science and IT, Prof. Pant has been particularly interested in the Cyber Law, Patent & trade mark issues, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) issues etc. and has been involved with many activities, conferences on “Law & IT”
Prof. Pant is presently;
• Advisor to Media Lab Asia - Chairman of working group on ICT for Education, chairman of PRSG handling projects on ICT for education.
• Lead Consultant for an ADB funded project for ICT in Basic Education in Uzbekistan
• Member of the drafting Group for India’s National Policy on ICT in education
• Chairman of the group creating books for class 11 and 12 students on ‘Computers and Communication Technology’ appointed by the NCERT
• Preparing a ‘Theme Paper” for the NCTE in the area of ICT and Teacher Training
• Advisor and mentor to several leading Indian and Multi-national Companies in the area of education.
Prof. Pant has in the recent past been ;
• Member – Board of Management – I I T, Delhi for 6 years (two consecutive terms)
• One-man committee to create the Project Report & Legislation for Delhi IT-enabled Open University
• Advisor to the Delhi Government on Asian Network of Major Cities Project (ANMC-21) distance learning project in association with Tokyo Metropolitan Government.
• Chairman Board of Studies, All India Management Association
With his mission to create and implement new business opportunities in the area of e-learning & learning facilitation, Prof. Pant has promoted Planet EDU Pvt. Ltd., as its Founder & Chairman, along with a team of highly experienced and skilled professionals from Education & Training, Operations, IT and Finance.
