My friend seemed not quite convinced yet and he said:” It is easy for anybody to use India as an example but don’t you think it was a special case?’ I told him that it is not a special case and the lesson in India can be applied to other agriculture society as well if it starts with education. I believe the establishment of a high-quality education system can bring significant change in economy of developing country but this increasing importance of knowledge for economic development can also produce inequality between developing and developed countries if no action is taken. Without a good education, the gap will continue to grow larger and it will be difficult to fix. Since knowledge and technology are changing very fast, the key aspect of education should also be focused on lifelong learning to keep people current with changes. The tradition way of providing education as a set of basic knowledge to qualify people for their jobs is obsolete and must be changed to focus on giving people access to an ever-growing knowledge. Primary education should be the key focus because it is the foundation for any advanced development. If student has not mastered the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic, it will be hard for them to engage in continued learning as in lifelong learning. Secondary and tertiary education, which builds on the primary level, must also be improved based on a comprehensive plan where students could be given options for education and employment that enable them to contribute to economic growth and development.

Since education is a key component of economic prosperity, education systems must be viewed in the context of the skills needed in industry rather than a basic knowledge dictated by people in academia. Therefore the collaboration between industry and education institutions is essential. In a knowledge society, industry plays an increasing role in determine what is needed and what is not based on their needs. In developed countries, private schools have an important role in the education system because they are in a better position than public schools to develop training for the specific needs of the industry. People often ask why most of the top universities in the U.S are private schools? The simple answer could be they all receive significant fundings from industry because their education programs are tailored to meet the need of the industry. With fundings private schools can hire the best professors, establishes the best research laboratories, creates the best curricula and recruits the best students. In this kind of relationship, industry can require private schools to establish programs to help people become self-motivated lifelong learners in respond to the increasing need in industry for certain skills and knowledge. For better efficiency, many private schools have utilized modern computing and communication technologies to enable students to access specialized knowledge quickly, in a self-reliant manner. This includes the opportunities offered by e-learning in the transfer of knowledge between schools and industry. In this practical collaboration, students can interact with other students in other schools, work on joint projects for industry (Capstone type of projects), students can also learn at the workplace through a wide range of internships, and university-industry co-operation joint researches. However, this kind of approach will not work if students don’t feel a sense of urgency or a need to continue learning as opposed to just receive academic degrees. I think a lot of work needs to be done in raising awareness among students and society about how to become a knowledge society and the benefits of lifelong learning.

My friend seemed to agree so he asked: “In that case, what would you suggest?” I told him that we need to invest more in education and training and adjust the education systems to meet the needs of the industry and make lifelong learning a key aspect of education so people can help growing the economy and make it a knowledge economy.
————————————————————-
Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
————————————————————-
Source: SEGVN

Today education must focuses on the development of skills and abilities that allow everyone to build their own knowledge, to face new situations and resolve new problems by themselves. The greatest mistake is to believe that education is simply the acquisition of knowledge and this is the solution to all problems. Knowledge is nothing if we do not know how to use it properly, appropriately, ethically and correctly. Do not confuse knowledge with competence. Knowledge is what you know and competence is how you apply it. Competence can not be achieved without the corresponding knowledge but knowledge can exist without the competence as people call it “Wishful thinking”. In this case, people talk about knowledge but do not know how to apply it or do not want to use it. The goal of learning is know how to filter and organize available information and distinguish between the data and information that make up the knowledge.

The era of knowledge-based economy has opened up new challenge for the education system. Today society demands that everybody should have access to education throughout their lives. This is not just the traditional education where children go to schools from kindergarten to colleges but throughout their life or lifelong study. Educational systems must respond to these new demands and create the conditions for this kind of education to take place. As technologies changes every year so does education system must adjust or else they will be left behind.
This is why education should not just be a process of transfer knowledge but must focus on the ability to learn how to learn. The education system should broaden the practicability aspect rather than achieve the specialization of knowledge within rigid structures of modeling, theorization with “Book knowledge” and “Rote memorization”. We must educate our young people for their entire life because preparation for life is also preparation for the principles of good living such as ethics, citizenship and preservation of the environment. All of this implies great changes in the structure of educational system which until now has only focus on a certain period in people’s lives. The new education of the 21st century should be redesigned to achieve the need for life-long learning.

All changes require new attitudes and mentalities of its citizen. Strengthen the knowledge-based economy by means of better education and training are essential because without these elements, developing countries will continue to exist simply as those with many factories with miserable conditions of work, where incomes will be determined by cheap labor and people will work only on assembling high technology products and thus suffering ever-increasing technological backwardness in relation to the creation and innovation of technology products. Of course, education always come with a price but if you think education is expensive, try ignorant. Without a good education system, no country can prosper to this highly competitive world because if you do not improve, other countries will.
————————————————————
Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
————————————————————
Source: SEGVN

Would you recognize a significant IT business trend if you saw one? Over the years, many products, technologies and IT-related business trends have been hyped beyond their significance. But the killers are the ones that go unnoticed and wind up being transformational. It’s difficult to know the difference, but there’s an old journalism adage: Follow the money. With that in mind, here are five things to keep an eye on as we march toward 2011.

1. The recession is transformational. Since late 2008, many companies facing reduced top-line growth have eked out profits with deep cuts. In many cases, those savings have been held aside, awaiting the right moment. Odds are, that moment will come in 2011. For IT shops, business growth could require new technology, but additional IT resources may not be added as quickly. Senior IT leaders should be planning now how to meet the demands of anxious CEOs with smaller staffs and shorter timelines.

2. The spotlight remains on cost-saving technologies. Given the recession, it’s no surprise that virtualization, the head-slappingly obvious money-saver that was hot well before the recession, is even hotter now. A year ago, Gartner named it the No.1 technology for 2010, based on a survey of CIOs. I’d put it there again for 2011, followed by cloud computing, software as a service and, to a lesser degree, business analytics.

In Computerworld’s Forecast 2011 survey, respondents said cloud computing is the most overhyped technology, but they also said it’s No. 2 on the list of technologies with the most promise for 2011. Both sentiments are true. Cloud computing holds even more potential for cost savings than virtualization, but is it ready for prime time? And cost savings might not even be the cloud’s main advantage. Its biggest benefit might be the fact that it makes it possible to provision server and storage capacity quickly.

3. Mobile is exploding. Everyone can see this. But are IT shops focused on the management, support and security challenges that come with mobile computing? A huge percentage of employees are bringing personal quick-access storage devices to work and putting sensitive documents and e-mails on them. And here come tablets. Over 30 new tablets were announced or delivered in 2010, and they’re inexpensive enough that a lot of people are buying them.

4. Software is undergoing rapid change. Take the public-cloud phenomenon and stir in largely Web-based mobile applications, and you’ll see the start of a software trend that could transform the way we work. When you connect meaningful enterprise data to tablet computers served via your data center, private cloud or hybrid cloud, you’ve got a transformational technology. For years we’ve been trying to unchain knowledge workers from their desks so they can interact with one another and work wherever they go. There is a potential to create near-real-time business communication without us having to work at that full time. The days of large, monolithic, LAN-connected, proprietary enterprise apps are numbered.

5. Enterprise 2.0 will run its course. Crowdsourcing information (the real value of wed 2.0 for the enterprise) is a powerful tool. It’s a simple way to help us avoid starting every new undertaking from scratch. It shapes ideas and provides valuable insights. And it’s on its way to becoming pervasive. But it’s not a technology; it’s more like a business strategy. The hype surrounding Web 2.0 technologies will die down, and business use of these tools won’t be thought of as a key trend in 2011.

Scot Finnie, Computerworld’s editor in chief.

Source: Computerworld

By definition, a knowledge-based economy relies on the use of ideas rather than physical abilities and on the application of technology rather than the exploitation of cheap labor. It is an economy in which knowledge is created, acquired, transmitted, and used more effectively by individuals, companies, and communities to promote economic and social development. Today in industrial countries such as the U.S and Europe, knowledge-based industries are expanding rapidly where new technologies have been introduced, demand for high-skilled workers, particularly in information technology workers has increased significantly but at the same time, demand for lower-skilled workers has declined and this put a lot of pressure on the current education system of industrial countries to produce more high skilled people.

The information technology revolution has provided new opportunities for easy access to information from anywhere. It has also created new opportunities for generating and transferring information via the internet, the personal computer, and the mobile phone. Knowledge networks and sharing of information have expedited innovation and adaptation worldwide. Changes in information technology have revolutionized the transmission of information as semiconductors are getting faster, computer memories are expanding, and computing prices are falling. Data transmission costs have fallen dramatically and continue to fall, bandwidth is growing, and Internet hosts are multiplying in every country. Cellular phone usage is also growing worldwide, adding to the pace of and capacity for change and innovation. The information technology revolution has promoted more trading and business worldwide and countries that are able to integrate their economy into the world economy have experienced significant economic growth as in cases of India, China, Ireland and some Eastern European countries. The global economy also provided opportunities to smaller companies to take advantage quickly if they can adapt faster to changes comparing with larger companies because in this new knowledge-based economy, the bigger companies can not overcome the smaller one anymore but it is the faster will beat the slow.

Let me give you some examples: In the early day of the knowledge-based economy around 1990, it took six years to go from concept to production in the automobile industry but today that process takes just two years. Companies like Honda, Toyota create new cars every two years to compete with well established companies like GM, Ford, Mercedes, and Renault which introduce new cars every four to five years. Guess who come out as winners. The same thing happened in the mobile phone business, in the early day Motorola dominates this market by having a new phone every two years then Nokia created new phone every year and eventually took over the market. Today Samsung, LG, Sony and many Asian companies can produce ten to twenty new phones every six months and the competition for global cell phone market continue. How can they do things that fast? By having multiple teams working in incremental overlapping phases of building phone products and invest heavily in education and training or their workers. Many Asian companies such as Toyota, Honda, and Sony have invested significantly in education and training, they also invested a large part of their capital in research and development for the long term perspective where many U.S and European companies are so focus on the short term profits and do not consider education as the high priority.

A typical knowledge economy is based on four components:
1) A supportive government policy on economic to provide incentives for the efficient use of existing and new knowledge.
2) An educated and skilled workers to create, shares, and use knowledge for economic advantages
3) A dynamic information infrastructure to facilitate the effective communication, dissemination, and processing of information such as internet, mobile phones etc.
4) An efficient system of companies, university research centers and government agencies to tap into the growing global knowledge, assimilate and adapt it to local needs, and create new technology.
————————————————————
Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
————————————————————
Source: SEGVN