The Knowledge Beacon: Promoting Lifelong Learning

In the year 2030, the United Nations was able to achieve the goal of complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education for all boys and girls. To the shock of everyone, this couldn’t lead to relevant and effective learning outcomes. A third of this literate audience was still deprived of the then required knowledge.

This problem was attributed to the fact that knowledge conveyed via formal education was not able to keep up with the knowledge required by an individual to sustain in the year 2030. The term ‘Lowest Literacy Quotie¹. nt’ (LLQ) was coined to determine the amount of knowledge required at any stage of life for a person to be termed as a literate individual. To counter this problem, solutions were developed based on the thought process of continuous and lifelong learning.

This critical analysis of the existing SDG Goal 4¹ showed that it had not taken into account the variability of minimum knowledge required by a person when concerning the process of learning. Though it does mention the concept of lifelong learning. Concerning this, something physical and tangible had to be created that could be with a person to track their knowledge growth while maintaining proper privacy norms. To solve this problem, a device from a past Bluetooth Beacon2 was reconstructed. Bluetooth beacons are a type of Bluetooth low energy device that broadcasts its identifier to nearby portable electronic devices. When a smartphone, tablet, or other device is in close proximity to a beacon, the technology allows it to perform actions. The traditional early 21st century beacons were deconstructed for concerns related to energy, privacy, durability and form factor.

Knowledge Beacon (KB) introduces a decentralized assistance for collecting data about people's knowledge in order to aid in the creation of a centralized database for checking people's literacy.

KB does not collect much private information and only checks for a person's basic and profession-related knowledge. A new Knowledge Ministry has been formed to assist KB, and it keeps track of the variability of necessary knowledge.

As an information transmission medium, KB uses high-value Bluetooth. This enables it to transmit information across distances of hundreds of kilometers to nearest towers with low power spectrum radiation. KB consists of recyclable light weight plastic and is supplied with multiple fitting variations for transport. These include badges, key chains, hand bands, stickers, etc. The KB top panel is a capacitive touch screen that can be used to turn KB off with only one touch.

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1 SDG Goal 4

2 Bluetooth low energy beacon