I believe the actual beauty of life is the discovery of the new. Something that one hasn’t seen, something that one hasn’t experienced. What’s life without new tastes, Insipid! What’s life without a new adventure, Banal!
So as life opens these new windows to these new
revolutions, we often wonder what is to be expecting from it. And as technology has become a part and parcel of our daily lives these days we wonder what new is to come up in the field of education. How much is technology the reason behind impacting education? And to what extent?
Most of our old generations did not even know about online information, they mainly gathered knowledge through books and people around them. But now with the help of technology we're able to reach out to millions, share a vast database of information and find answers to questions in seconds for which we used to spend days looking for in books sitting in some library! Sure we have to give some credit to technology! And to the question that whether technology has had some impact I think we've already answered that. But to what extent is the question.
So let’s know about the impact of technology, i.e. how much is technology changing things for us in education, and what are we looking forward in 2013? So here are 3 ways which have impacted the education system.
MOOCs
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are the ‘IN’ thing in 2013, we have various universities in collaboration willing to offer free online courses on platforms such as Coursera, EdX, Udacity. And I'm sure there are more to come. The need and popularity of MOOCs has increased to infinite levels in only a few months. Students in MOOC’s typically watch short video lectures, complete automatically graded tests or assignments, and use online communities to work through concepts they don’t understand. Educators across the globe are finding ways to decrease the attrition rate by working on innovations like Adaptive MOOCs. Although MOOC was started as a small effort to reach out to masses, this EdTech strategy has gone a long way due to its openness and ease of access.
Online Degrees
I'm sure by now you must have heard of MIT OpenCourseWare, well if you haven't let me tell you that MIT has launched this website where it makes all their materials and courses available for free for whoever wishes to learn. (Have a look at other OERs) Like this many universities provide online degrees and starting to offer credits for the same. They offer to reduce the cost of education and make the universities universally accessible. Many startups have made their aim to convert various courses in digital format for the world to be able to grab as much knowledge they wish to acquire.
Social Learning
Last but not the least comes the topic of social learning. The power of collaborative learning has increase in the 21st century learning. The idea here is to apply modern social web technology to enhance effectiveness and management of in campus delivery of education. Most of these products have seen very large-scale adoption in the recent past and some of these are on the way to emerge as the integral part of formal education. Though Social Media has its own pros and cons, the role of social media in education in increasing day by day. Teachers and professors collaborate and learn the best ways of teaching from each other. They now do not aim to teach as much as possible but aim at quality and effective learning wherein the aim is to gather the student’s attention and sustain their enthusiasm throughout the class, by even including elements of fun in their teaching.
With the great platforms emerging, everyone is connected on social networks and open education resources are available everywhere; making these three methods very effective and their impact on education in 2013 even stronger than ever imagined.
(Also read the ways in which EdTech will be used in future)
