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Classrooms haven’t changed much since their creation, whiteboards have replaced blackboards, projectors now allow teachers to show content to their class but apart from that, things haven’t changed much in the education industry.
Despite this impression, education benefits and can benefit even more from technology, to provide greater accessibility, and quality classes.
This article will try and explain what the education industry is, why it needs technology, and how it introduces tech to teach better.
The education industry comprises establishments whose primary objective is to provide education. These establishments can be public, non-profit, or for-profit institutions. This includes elementary schools, secondary schools, community colleges, universities, and ministries or departments of education.
Modern education also brings together newer fields like online academies, and corporate educational support services.
The industry as a whole also generates large-scale revenues and employment. In the US alone, the industry generated $400 billion last year. Most of the money that the industry receives comes from government programs, the private sector, families, and individuals that wish to educate themselves or their kids.
The future of the education industry is promising. As people are starting to notice that a one size fits all approach isn’t the way to go, technology focuses on mastery learning where people can learn at their own pace. Technology is being integrated into several sectors of the industry as educators can now use other modes of delivery to teach and communicate with students apart from the classroom. As we see the rise of live streaming and video conferencing, students can now earn certificates through online academies.
Let’s now look at the reasons why technology is important to the industry.
Technology can provide a fun way of learning for kids. Bringing to the table, diverse ways of learning. Videos for example provide a certain depth that a written text doesn’t. As students often sit for entire days, classes can become boring, learning doesn’t happen then as the process requires novelty and the participation of the student.
Technology offers teachers new ways of providing students with the material. As a bonus feature, most of these other materials can be kept by the students. Most of these methods are new, they might not all be great, but they sure do offer a new perspective and option for teachers.
One way of learning, particularly when conducting technical, complex, or boring classes, is through experimentation. Technology, therefore, brings simulations to the table, offering students the ability to understand at a more practical level what they’re learning.
Historical events are already starting to get mapped out and simulated to offer students a more hands-on approach to history instead of having dates to remember and a written story of history. This same idea serves in technical and scientific classes where experimentation might be too expensive or require equipment that is too specific. Technology provides a way to recreate the experimentation in a more affordable way to show the students the ideas in play.
Technology finally provides a lot of flexibility, as we’ve seen in the COVID 19 sanitary crisis, the internet has enabled teachers around the world to keep on teaching their students despite rough conditions. Similar technologies also extend the class resources to the outside and brings the classes elements directly to the students.
Using the internet they can have easy access to a class’ material and study the material without any physical manual.
Enabling these advancements is a myriad of tech innovations, the most widespread being.
We’ve seen the rapid development and adoption of this technology in the past year. It has widely transformed the education industry by enabling students and teachers to connect outside of classrooms.
As nowadays, most computers come equipped with cameras and microphones, it’s relatively easy for students to jump in on an online class. With this in mind, teachers might find it harder to create engagement online as it’s harder to share content.
This trend has been propelled by other tech innovations such as smart pens that write out and share what the teacher writes directly to the students.
The development of virtual reality in classrooms joins the simulation trend we’ve discussed previously. While not available in most classrooms and still usable by just a few students each time, this technology offers students the possibility of exploring 3D worlds in a virtual reality headset.
Some implementations of this technology are starting to appear in science, you could for example find yourself on a planet and understand how each parameter of that planet, like its size, weight, and atmosphere affects your virtual character.
As we’ve discussed before, startups are already developing 3D worlds that represent pieces of history for students to jump in and explore. This offers a new way of learning a domain that most students find hard to apprehend.
This tech innovation is all about collaboration. It enables students to connect to a central display. The idea behind this technology is for students to interact directly on their laptop or phone. This encourages participation as what they write or do gets shown on a display in front of the class.
This makes it extremely easy for teachers to receive answers to their questions and find ways of engaging their students.
The education industry might seem old at first, but things are changing as the industry develops new ways for teachers to share their knowledge. It now becomes the teacher's responsibility to find new ways and ideas of sharing what they know, through videos, audios and maybe virtual reality in the near future.
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