Quo vadis education in the era of automation
Staff - Faculty of Informatics
Date: 30 April 2024 / 10:30 - 11:30
USI East Campus, Room D0.03
Speaker: Prof. Juraj Hromkovic, ETH Zürich
Abstract: Current education focuses on teaching products of science and technology as facts, models, methods, and equipment – and applying them to solve different tasks following a given pattern. Due to computer science, most of these solving task procedure nowadays can be automized, and the technology can perform them faster and more reliable. Acting by following a given pattern is the snow of yesterday that is losing its educational value faster and faster. Future education has to change its focus on supporting students in exploring those dimensions of human beings in which technology cannot compete humans, mainly creativity, phantasy and critical thinking. In this lecture we show how this goal can be implemented in our educational system.
Motto – Albert Einstein:
'The goal of the education is not to fill the heads with facts, but to teach to think.'
Biography:
Juraj Hromkovic studied in the former Czechoslovakia and since 1989 has been professor with 5 universities, the last 20 years with ETH Zurich. His research interest was in mathematical foundations of computer science, especially in algorithmics, complexity theory and networking, as well as in computer science education . He wrote more than 40 books that were published in 8 different languages. 20 years ago, he founded the center for computer science education (ABZ) at ETH that focusses on introducing the subject informatics into schools. In the last years more than 4000 teachers have been trained in ABZ and more than 600 classes have been involved in school projects. At ABZ 18 textbooks and 25 interactive environments for teaching informatics from kindergarten to high school have been developed.
Juraj Hromkovic is a member of Academia Europaea and of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. For his work he received two state awards – “Goodwill Envoy” from the Slovak prime minister and “Pribina Cross of the first order (highest accolade) “ from the President of Slovak Republic.
Host: Prof. Monica Landoni, Prof. Matthias Hauswirth
