Consider these points on education and technology:

UNESCO and UNICEF report that almost 70 million children are out of school globally, with millions more leaving school early without acquiring the knowledge and skills that are crucial for a decent livelihood, and about 800 million adults lacking basic literacy skills. In the US, one out of four high school students never graduates.

Doubling the broadband speed of an economy increases GDP by 0.3 percent, according to research conducted by Ericsson, Arthur D. Little and the University of Chalmers. The same research found that for every 1,000 broadband connections, 80 new Internet jobs are created. For every ten percent of mobile broadband penetration, an economy adds one percent sustainable GDP.

An October 2011 report from the UN's Broadband Commission for Digital Development found that 30 percent of people worldwide are Internet users. In developed countries, around half the population has mobile broadband and about a quarter has fixed (wired) broadband. In developing countries, however, the figures are a small fraction of these, at 5.4 percent for mobile broadband and 4.4 percent for fixed (estimated, end 2010).

Online education is growing. The Khan Academy is the largest free online school in the world, with one million students a month viewing 100 – 200,000 videos per day on YouTube. According to iNACOL, China’s first online school was created in 1996; today it has expanded to  more than 200 online schools with enrollments exceeding 600,000 students.

A statement put out by the NEST Forum's organizers read: "Despite huge advances in technology, many educators have expressed frustration at how these innovations have failed to translate into improvements in critical thinking and deeper learning. Many promises have been made and left unfulfilled, while computers and connected learning systems remain underutilized. In some cases, technology is even seen as a threat to the roles of teachers rather than a supporting tool. In short, there are still mixed views on the potential of the ICT sector to improve learning. At the same time, many experts are in agreement that the next generation of workers and citizens will require social and cognitive skills not currently being taught in the old-style educational models. In other words, there is a great need to rethink conventional education."

One of those who has put forward ideas which are in opposition to conventional education methods is Newcastle University Professor Sugata Mitra. He has been conducting experiments with several models of self-teaching, through his Hole-in-the-Wall project (www.hole-in-the-wall.com), as well as through experiments with Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs). Having succeeded in helping Tamil-speaking children teach themselves the basic concepts of biotechnology — in English, and without teacher assistance — Mitra is openly challenging the wisdom of education that requires a teacher to stand in the front of a classroom to share knowledge.

Mitra is a leading proponent of Minimally Invasive Education (MIE). At NEST he advised that if  we are evaluating students based on their ability to memorize basic facts, as we often have in the past, then we are teaching yet another skill that computers have made practically useless. Instead, we need to reconsider the aims of our education and assessment methods altogether.

While Mitra believes that children do not need to be led by teachers to learn effectively, many of the participants at NEST disagreed. Sir Harry Kroto, a Nobel prize laureate in Chemistry, has interviewed 50 other Nobel Laureates, and noted that: “All but one of them says a teacher had a great influence on their lives.” Teachers with updated skills in new technologies may still be a part of the new educational order, but textbooks are increasingly irrelevant. According to Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, “the textbook is dead. It is no longer the basic building block of education.” In short, many traditional learning tools are now being rendered obsolete, a view shared by many of the NEST Forum's participants.   

Hans Vestberg, President and CEO of Ericsson, said there would be immediate results from the forum. "There is a great need for us to compile and share the already-existing examples of how broadband is changing education in the world. We will set about gathering those examples right away. We all need to have better metrics to describe the powerful relationship between education and ICT. In the past we have measured connectivity's impact on GDP and jobs. Together with Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, we will start the work to develop the methods and metrics to show this. This will help bring the opportunities of utilizing technology in extending the reach of education to the attention of policymakers."