Online education is more highlighted than ever since it started the pandemic of the new coronavirus.
Although classroom education offers indispensable benefits, especially for young people, the resources that online education offers to facilitate and diversify teaching are undeniable, making it more attractive and creative.
Changes in education
Let’s start with a simple fact: the conventional model of education in the classroom, the one that we have been subjected to forever, with simple expository classes, started in the 18th century.
In this model, established in the pre-electricity era, the teacher is the absolute owner of knowledge. It is up to the student to just sit, listen and decorate, being nothing more than a container of information.
But everyone knows that with the passage of time and advancement in technology, this reality has changed. Nowadays, information is available to everyone, easily and abundantly.
The internet plays a fundamental role both in the way we obtain knowledge today and in the way it spreads, becoming an enormous facilitator.
Salman Khan, American educator and founder of Khan Academy, a free platform of online education acclaimed for its teaching method and efficiency, said the following:
“Technology today allows us to evolve. With the inverted classroom model, the student watches a 10-minute video about the lesson and takes doubts and conclusions to discuss at school. The classroom becomes a place to share content. The new tools create countless possibilities. The new generation lives on social media and loves video games. Why not use these things for education? ”
And although online teaching has been the target of prejudice for many years, this situation has been changing in the last decade and the question increasingly asked is: why not? After all, we can easily list its advantages:
- It does not require displacement.
- It allows the student to adapt his study hours to the rest of his routine.
- It allows learning at its own pace, advancing faster in subjects that are easy and spending more time in those that have difficulty.
- Eliminate Geographic barriers.
- With discipline and dedication, it guarantees a quality education with less costs and greater flexibility.
In addition, online education makes all Internet resources available as a way to acquire information and enrich learning, since the student can make use of various means, such as sound, video, images, among others, to learn.
– Tips for using eLearning in school education
Technology, students and online education
There is constant talk about how technology is changing education and how teachers have to adapt to these changes. However, little is said about the changes that students are also going through.
The advances and technological innovations do not stop, nor the curiosity and desire to consume of the young public.
With information coming in and being shared more and more quickly, it is no wonder that the old models of education need to shake up to handle this new generation connected 24 hours a day.
Understanding how technology has changed and continues to change children and young people is essential to create a new way of educating, one that attracts interest and captivates the student.
– Tips for creating online classes from traditional classes
Some changes and trends that at first seemed to be enemies of education, in fact can be used as teaching allies. Let’s see some examples:
Smartphones
Considered by many teachers to be a real “plague” in classrooms, it is difficult to find a young person without a smartphone today. However, the teacher can use this resource to his advantage, creating games that involve quick research or using social networks to post content and promote debate.
Videos
It is no secret that a video attracts more attention than a scribbled picture. Both in a classroom and in online education, instructors can use videos related to the subject as supporting material or create video lessons, offering the student the opportunity to review the main points of the lesson whenever they want.
– Learn how to record videos at home
Multiple tools
As we mentioned, youth is fast and eager for news. Do not stick to the old double booklet and slide, use different means to make teaching more attractive, media that are part of the daily lives of young people, such as videos, podcasts, animations, etc.
Online learning
The number of online courses available is increasing and interest in a more flexible learning method and out of the classroom too. Students want to have more control over their time, as well as the ability to learn at their own pace.
Social networks
As difficult as finding a young person without a cell phone is finding one without a profile on any social network. Channels that take up a lot of time and receive a lot of attention from youth, social networks can and should be used by current teachers. Whether to disseminate and share information or to promote debates and create forums, social networks can serve as a powerful tool for learning. Adapt and use it to your advantage.
Finally, it is easy to see that, by understanding his students and the changes that have occurred with technological advances, mainly related to information, the teacher is able to find ways to make these changes work in his favor, arousing the student’s interest and improving the quality of teaching.
Tips to improve online and classroom education
Facilitating learning and raising the level of education, whether online or in the classroom, is the main goal of anyone who wants to be an educator.
– Blended learning: a combination of online and face-to-face learning
To attract the attention of a generation increasingly connected and bombarded with information is not an easy task. To find a solution, the teacher may have to ask himself: what was the class I liked most when I went to school? Why?
The answer to that question is usually the same: because the classes were fun. Because the science teacher used music to explain the subject or the math teacher took sweets to teach about multiplication and division.
Harold Edgerton, a famous American professor, said: “The secret of education is to teach people in such a way that they don’t realize that they are learning until it is too late.”
To improve learning, this must be the educator’s key: using creativity to arouse the interest of students and make them actively participate in the learning process.
How to do this? Put your creative side to work!
To help, we’ve listed five ideas that you can apply to online and face-to-face education.
Create associations
To encourage and improve learning, the technique of creating associations is to relate new concepts to others already known, creating connections that are easy to remember.
Our brain records information by associations. This means that we record more easily when new information is associated with something that has already been memorized previously.
Integrate content
It is important to emphasize to the student that he should not memorize the content, but understand it. To make this task easier, don’t just focus on the subject being taught in a particular chapter, create a context, explain how that knowledge applies in the real world.
For example, do not settle for explaining a chemical bond, show what product it forms and how it fits into our daily lives. Create a sequence of facts that the student can understand as a whole and thus understand and memorize more easily.
Encourage reasoning
Learning to ask is just as important as learning to answer. An interesting way to improve learning, attract the student’s attention and encourage participation, is not to deliver all the information chewed, but to launch questions and challenges on the subject and encourage debate, or reward those who get the answer right or give the best explanation.
This technique helps to stimulate reasoning, besides making the class more fun.
Bet on the videos
Without a doubt, we are living in the era of videos, so nothing better to attract the attention of young people. Take advantage of the technology at your disposal and create tutorial and explanatory videos.
Another option is to record live videos in which students can participate, leaving doubts and opinions in the comments. Or even indicate videos and online classes instead of just texts as content for study and tests.
– Record video tutorials: tips for getting the best result
Make it easy with songs and rhymes
Music never goes out of style. Inventing parodies of a famous song or creating rhymes to teach about a subject is something that has worked in the past and will always work.
Creating music and rhymes is a simple and natural way to transmit knowledge, in addition to making the class more dynamic and interesting.
Remember that behind a good education, there is always a good educator, who is not content with just preparing students for tests, but strives to improve their learning through classes prepared with dedication and willingness to make a difference.
How to create and make online classes available
The advantages of online education today are numerous, and can add a lot to the teaching given in the classroom.
With the pandemic, many teachers unfamiliar with virtual learning technologies had to rush to adapt and continue their classes in the online format.
– Step by Step to Create Online Courses
If for many it seemed difficult, with a Learning Management System, that is, an online platform developed with a focus on online education, this task is much easier.
– Whats is a Learning Management System
With Coursify.me, the teacher has a ready and easy to use platform, where he can upload the content in an intuitive and quick way.
The Coursify.me features integration with platforms like YouTube and Vimeo, which is ideal for teachers who want to provide video lessons.
In addition, the user can upload texts, images, audios and any other material that is hosted on Dropbox or on the computer itself.
There is no limit on the number of students, and the teacher has full control over who has access to the classes, being able to monitor each student to find out who registered, attended the classes and fulfilled the activities sent.
To learn more, visit our website, test the platform and bet on online education to continue teaching your students in the best possible way.