Author: Nicolas Colsman
Nicolas Colsman
Reading time: 19 minutes
Synopsis
The book Digitale Bildung (2025) is about the future of schools. It asks how we can best prepare teachers, children, and classrooms for the digital age.
What’s in it for you: Ideas for a new digital school system.
Apps, algorithms, and AI – there is no doubt: the future is digital. So, it is very important to prepare young people for future challenges. We need to get them ready for life in the digital age. The schools we knew before cannot do this. They need to change and become modern. Instead of blackboards, chalk, and math books, we need special learning apps and digital helpers. We also need teaching methods to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) well in schools.
Sadly, Germany is quite behind in digital education. At least, that’s what education expert Nicolas Colsman believes. He has created many ideas for Germany to catch up. These ideas can make our school system ready for the digital future. We have chosen his best ideas and put them into this short, informative summary for you.
Blink 1 – Digital Education: A Huge Task for German Teachers
Digital education brings big challenges for our school system. In Germany, the problem is not a lack of will. It’s about old structures and a system that makes people feel overwhelmed, instead of helping them.
Let’s start with teachers. Today, teachers are expected to be many things. They need to teach knowledge, coach students, offer support, solve problems, be digital experts, and do administrative work. This is already very hard to do. If you add the task of preparing young people for the digital age, it becomes too much. Also, making things digital means a lot more paperwork and planning. Teachers must fill out forms, arrange training, write down processes, and learn new devices and software. All this takes time and energy. Then, the real teaching work suffers.
To do their normal job and learn new skills, teachers need much more help than they get now. But there are not enough staff for IT, training, social work, or mental health support. Instead, teachers have to do all this. They are not trained for it and don’t have enough time for it. This leads to frustration and feeling overwhelmed. It’s not because teachers don’t see how important digital education is. It’s because they simply don’t have time for it in their daily work.
Also, the old-fashioned administration itself does not work digitally. It uses old systems, fax machines, and old software, which slows down progress. Teachers who try to use digital tools are rarely rewarded. If they try new things, they might face problems. Colleagues, parents, or school management might not agree. This is not a good environment for new ideas.
This problem also exists at higher levels. School offices and ministries often work far from what schools really need. Decisions take months, sometimes years. Who is responsible is unclear. Processes are slow. Priorities change often. This means the system cannot react well to problems. It certainly cannot react well to long-term changes. Digital education needs speed, a willingness to try new things, and a desire to learn. But the current system focuses on control, safety, and basic agreement.
So, digital education can only work if we rethink the system around people. Teachers need less work, not more tasks. They need time, freedom to design, and professional help. They also need leaders who encourage courage, not punish it.
But how does this work in other countries? Let’s look at that in the next part.
Blink 2 – Digital Education Around the World: What Germany Can Learn From Other Countries
Many problems that slow down Germany have already been solved elsewhere. While Germany still argues about who is responsible, other countries have made digital education a top priority.
For example, in South Korea, the Ministry of Education is one of the most powerful government departments. They see education as a key asset and an important base for the country’s economic and social future. Children as young as eight learn basic coding there. At the same time, South Korean children face a lot of pressure to perform well. Almost all study late into the evening for school. Many also take private tutoring. The lesson is clear: Germany needs the same strong political focus. But it must not put the well-being of its children at risk. Education should be important, but not cruel.
Estonia also works in a focused way, but it is a bit softer. It shows how digital education can work if the systems stay flexible. Estonia organizes its education system centrally. But it gives schools a lot of freedom. School leaders decide on budgets, staff, and training needs. Teachers choose their own methods and materials. At the same time, the digital infrastructure across the country is uniform and reliable. Digital class registers, working administration software, and stable internet are normal. Most importantly: IT, maintenance, and using media are handled by expert education technologists. This frees up teachers. Digital education is not an extra task for them. It becomes a normal work tool.
So, Germany does not need to invent new things. It can simply learn from other countries that already do digital education well.
But what about the other big player? It has changed public and private education for some years now. How does Artificial Intelligence fit into schools?
Blink 3 – Digital Education and AI: An Opportunity for German Schools
Few topics in education today cause as much strong feeling as Artificial Intelligence (AI). For some, it is a great promise. For others, it is a scary ghost. Especially in schools, there is a lot of fear. People fear being watched. They fear machines taking over teachers’ jobs and control. But fear-mongering does not help anyone. Like it or not, AI is here to stay. To talk about AI in education in a good way, we should first make it less dramatic.
AI is not one big thing that suddenly decides how schools should be. It is a set of tools that have grown over decades. These range from simple if-then systems and learning algorithms to tools that create texts, pictures, or music. If you understand this, you quickly see: many things in our daily lives are already run by AI. This includes spam filters, translation services, navigation, and Netflix recommendations. What is new is not the technology itself, but how powerful and easy to use it is. And this is where its huge potential for education lies.
Thanks to AI, daily school life could become much easier. It can help where teachers now lose a lot of time. This includes timetables, recording grades, parent communication, and preparing materials. These are tasks not related to building relationships, motivating students, or personal learning support. If we let AI handle these routine tasks, it creates free time. This means more time for teaching work. This is what schools should really do. In other words: AI does not replace a teacher, but it helps them with their work.
For example, AI can adjust learning materials in class in real-time. It can change them based on level, language, or learning style. One child might get learning content visually. Another might get it as audio. A third might get it in simpler language. This makes learning more flexible and personal. The teacher does not have to do everything alone. AI can act as a learning partner, a practice coach, or a brainstorming partner for texts, ideas, and projects. The teacher still explains, guides, and decides. But they are no longer solely responsible for every different need.
Other countries already use these many possibilities. But in Germany, people are still discussing bans, misuse, and risks. Of course, these are valid concerns and should be considered. But they should not be an excuse to do nothing. The real danger is not using AI. It is not understanding it. If you do not learn about this technology, you lose control. You let others make decisions: big companies, platforms, or just chance.
You see: Artificial Intelligence is not a monster from the future. It is a tool. A powerful one, yes, but one we can use to make schools better and more effective.
Blink 4 – Digital Future Ideas: Horatio, the AI Super-Assistant
AI is not “the future of learning” – it is already here! Many teachers already use AI tools for small, daily tasks. But often, they use them unofficially, without clear rules. This creates a messy and risky situation. Technology changes daily life before we have a shared plan. This makes it hard to set limits later. When can AI help, and when not? What is help, and what is cheating? Most importantly: How do we teach children to think for themselves? They have a second brain in their pocket that solves tasks in seconds. If we don’t consider these questions, schools could slowly change. Learning as a space for growth could become learning just for results.
To stop this, we need one clear system. It would be a digital super-assistant. It would help teachers, support children personally, and make schools active again. This is where Nicolas Colsman’s program “Horatio” comes in. It stands for “Help-organized Reflection and Analysis System for Test Intelligence and Optimization.”
The idea behind Horatio is to create a shared digital space. This space brings together all digital tools. Many parts already exist. For example, AI for learning German as a second language, adaptive exercise systems, translation tools, planning software, and learning progress checks. The problem is not a lack of ideas. It is that these ideas are spread out and not connected, like tools in different drawers. Horatio wants to solve this. It aims to connect all tools into one real work process. It would be a co-pilot that is always there in school and helps teachers think.
For example, Horatio can handle all the boring paperwork. This paperwork takes up teachers’ time regularly. This includes timetables, grade lists, documentation, parent communication, applications, billing, and forms. This frees up time for what only humans can do. That is: building relationships, motivating students, guiding them, solving conflicts, and personal learning support.
The second use is with children directly. Horatio gives feedback. It suggests next steps and shows progress. It also helps make learning paths personal. The teacher does not have to do all of this alone. Here is a key point: Horatio must be programmed with a certain teaching idea. For example, it should not say: “You can’t do that.” Instead, it should say: “You can’t do it yet – try this next step.”
For Horatio to really work in this way, there must also be political will. This means the relevant ministries need to support it. In the last part, we will look at the situation in Germany. We will also see what steps need to be taken now to make digital education ready for the future.
Blink 5 – New Priorities: The Right Education Policy for the Digital Future.
If Germany wants to stop being last in digital education, we need completely new political priorities. As long as education is just a small part of the political agenda, it gets lost in many small federal decisions. The current system cannot see the big picture. There are sixteen education ministries, countless school offices, and an education ministers’ conference that gets stuck on small agreements. This cannot continue! Education must become a top priority in Germany again. Colsman has some ideas on how this could look:
- Germany needs a Vice-Chancellor who focuses only on education. This person would make sure that the digital future is a top priority.
- Also, a Future Council would be helpful. It would bring together teachers, students, parents, social scientists, and people from technology and government.
- A real game-changer would be a Federal Agency for Digital Education and School Innovation. This agency would not get stuck in normal government processes or federal agreements. Instead, it would be able to make quick decisions. Its job would not be to tell states what to do or “explain school” to them. Its job would be to provide what is urgently needed. This includes shared standards, safe connections, good examples, certified digital materials, and pilot projects.
- Teachers’ lives could also be made easier. For example, there could be a government-run marketplace for digital education products. These products would be checked, certified, work well with other systems, and have clear prices. Of course, the government cannot build every app itself. But it can set clear rules, create standards, and remove unsuitable products. This way, schools and teachers could choose the right solutions for them from the approved list.
If all these things come together, Horatio will become real. It will be one system with clear rules. It will be a shared, easy-to-understand data space. This system would be managed by politicians ready to try new things and truly invest in digital education.
Conclusion
We hope we have given you some new ideas. We also hope we have eased your worries about education challenges. Maybe we even made you excited about the digital future.
Source: https://www.blinkist.com/https://www.blinkist.com/de/books/digitale-bildung-de