Over the past three decades, an online learning revolution has been progressively taking over our educational systems.
Back in the 1980’s, computers gradually appeared in our mainstream classrooms to assist with learning, employing a range of techniques to complement the traditional pen and paper format which has been a staple of school life since the 19th Century. By the early 1990’s multimedia PCs arrived with educational databases delivered on CD-ROM disks. By the mid 1990’s, the internet made its grand entrance into our schools and quickly found a foothold in every corner of our lives.
In 1997, educational software, graphics and video became an integral tool of our teaching armoury as computer capacity grew exponentially. DVD drives in computers enabled storage of increasing quantities of educational data to facilitate the transferral of data into the minds of pupils worldwide, at the same time, rendering books virtually obsolete.
This incredibly rapid evolution of information access has continued to infiltrate the ways in which we teach and how we learn. The recent pandemic has shown us, with the aid of Zoom and a variety of online teaching programs that learning can successfully continue inside the home, even when classrooms are closed and teachers are accessible only via our computer screens.
Alongside Online learning, which is solely computer-based, the new styles of learning being adopted include ‘Web-enhanced’ which encompasses occasional classroom meetings, ‘Blended’ which involves a little bit of everything from fixed online coursework to lectures and face to face, and ‘Flexible,’ where times and locations of activities are organised outside of the usual traditional fixed systems. Distance Learning allows a student to study at an American college without ever leaving Europe. We will cover all of these learning styles in detail, in future blogs.
At the same time we are seeing a growth in new flexible ed-tech platforms such as https://yourfavouriteteacher.com/ providing virtual classrooms created by teachers for parents and pupils. Such a diverse resource permits teachers to track student progress and assess their learning via online quizzes. YFT claims it is a much more effective use of teaching time and allows pupil autonomy over when and how they switch on and learn. Altogether it is a highly supportive one-stop online system available to reduce the stress of GCSE revision.
Such programs will revolutionise the way we learn in the post-pandemic world. It will mean having your teacher virtually next to you in the same room, providing safe learning in a safe space.