Do you have a relevant place in this fast changing digital world?

The existence of an already new era, where systems learn and interact naturally with people to extend what either humans or machine could do on their own. Rather than being programmed to anticipate every possible answer or action needed to perform a function or set of tasks, cognitive systems are trained using artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to sense, predict, infer and, in some ways, think. This will unfold in years to come, helping human experts make better decisions in many capacities. Applying this to the marketing and communication will help better understanding, anticipating and responding to customers.

We are the denizens of a digital world!

We live and interact daily in a digital world. Hence, we are all digital citizens. But how we should act and behave in this world which is always not clear, especially to our students. And at our Digital Ready students can learn about digital citizenship and how they can be safe and secure, and how they can be smart participants, as well, in the digital world. They will have to gain an awareness of the rights and responsibilities of digital citizens, how they can personally fit into the digital world and how to embrace healthy attributes of a digital citizen.

• Contemporary technologies have transformed the way we live. With real-time global information constantly available, many of us routinely use smartphones or iPads. 
• Though, worldviews on the attributes of tech-gadgets may vary. Communication is now faster and more efficient for most technology users, yet for some aspects of the past, some professionals are still nostalgic about.

As wearable technology viz. Google Glass, fitness bands, Samsung Galaxy Gear become ubiquitous in 2014; the amount of data created will provide a treasure trove of insights for marketers. Not only does it let marketers know where their customers are but when and how fast. Community will become ever more important in 2014 and beyond. With the noise created by social media, meaningful relationship and context are being drowned out. Niche communities created around common interests will thrive so long as they have strong online/offline hybrid models that drive engagement.

Smartphones and tablets have effectively become the center and integrating components of consumers’ multi-platform lives. In that sense, though, mobile ismore than ‘the new desktop’, it has a role with far greater significance than simply serving as a substitute computing device. This shift is reflected in quantitative terms in the amount of time consumers spend on their mobile devices on a daily basis and qualitatively in the way these devices have effectively become the remote control for consumers’ lives and work.

Marketers will have to come to terms with disappearing social media. So much content shared today is private, and it often disappears, so marketers aren’t readily able to track and target such consumers or explore new, creative ways of reaching consumers who prioritize privacy.

No escape route!

• The competition in digital space continues to grow as marketers seek out real-time opportunities and intensify their speed of interacting in ‘that moment’. 
• The key disruptive digital trends successfully join the forces of mobile and social media together to reach audiences at the heart of their digital usage. Images and videos have become the go-to viral tactic, and will continue to expand as brands can use visuals to interact with their consumers and the newest group of influencers: the visual influencers. 

A recent report says: Just announced, Instagram is joining the playing field, alongside other messaging apps like Snapchat and WhatsApp, to compete for the main communication channel for consumers to share personable moments. Social networks are hungry for challenges and eager to disrupt the current trends to start a new innovation.

Pay heed to what you are about to read!

Having said all of that, let us for the next few moments mull over this integral question: where are we in this endless gamut of digital surroundings? Surely, if we do not gear up now, time would never be too far when students of today would sadly be left too far behind in this fast transforming digital world! Now do yourself a favor: ask yourself where you are in this fast changing digital planet?

We are going to see a huge increase in location-based marketing. With the rapid proliferation of devices, and the explosion of the Internet of Things, people will be carrying, utilizing, and depending on their devices more than ever. As part of the increased dependency, there is an increased expectation of services and personalization. 

The future will witness a sea change!

The future shape of the academy is hard to predict, except to acknowledge that it is unlikely to remain static. Professions are being rapidly reconfigured, but many changes are not happening quickly enough. In the realm of the digital, for example, where there are some understandings that digital work demands new configurations of review, there is still insufficient awareness that these processes have already been changed in substantial ways.

Why teach 21st century skills, if students are already living in a digital world? The answer is that just because they live in a digital world doesn’t mean they fully understand it, nor can we assume that they have the skills to respond to the huge amount of information and stimuli constantly bombarding them.

Students are able to quickly find information using a variety of online sources like Wikipedia or the Google, and they can easily crowd-source information or correspond with experts on the other side of the world. Many, however, lack information or digital literacy: the ability to tell what makes a source reliable versus questionable at best.

Few understand that what they post about themselves and others on Facebook are essentially a permanent record. Fewer still understand the implications of that company’s or for that matter of any others’ privacy policies. Most fail to understand when they are being advertised to versus when they are receiving unbiased information.

In short, while students often know how to ‘work’ the Internet and various applications, mining them for entertainment potential or the basic information needed for a report or project, few understand the building blocks of our digital world and how to manipulate them and avoid, in turn, being manipulated. Teaching 21st century skills includes critical thinking, like: ‘How reliable is this source and why do I think this way?’ ‘Is this advertorial content or an opinion piece?’ They should also gain the ability to operate this digital environment through the logic of programming languages, web-design and similar. Our continued inability to teach widespread competency and literacy pertaining to the digital world has major implications for the lives of nearly all the students.

The clarion call: Digital Ready is ready to help you!

Our teachings of upgraded skills for the job market is not just about flinging more ideas or more tablets or more smart boards at schools, then crossing fingers and hoping. It’s about bringing better ideas to market. And the way to get better ideas is not to ask one set of stakeholders their opinion about what might work well, but to engage the many stakeholders in an ongoing conversation about our fast-changing world and what skills and competencies our Indian students will need, to stake their claim for a relevant place in this digital world.

You are more than welcome to take help or consultation from us at any time. Just click below and enroll with Digital Ready today!