Are we at the beginning of an educational revolution?

The last year, for obvious reasons, has seen a huge increase in pupils receiving online lessons. Even though the technology to provide classes over the internet has been available for well over ten years, up until recently it has only accounted for a marginal portion of the tuition market, with the vast majority of parents and students wanting face to face tuition.

Recent events have seen a huge increase in the demand for online lessons. The corona virus pandemic has affected multiple areas of the economy, from commercial sector, to hospitality and entertainment - but it may prove to be the education sector that experiences the most significant and longest lasting transformation.

As least far back as the time of the ancient greeks students have been learning in classrooms, receiving guidance from a single teacher while seated attentively (one hopes) at their desks. Maybe it`s time for a paradigm shift, a reevaluation in the way lessons are delivered. Our communication technologies certainly permit this, for it is now possible for anyone, virtually anywhere on the planet, to deliver real time live footage to any other person, wherever they may be.

But while a teacher in New York is certainly able to teach a class of pupils who are scattered across each of the seven continents, one is certainly justified in asking what benefits this kind of pedagogy provides. The most obvious advantage is simply one of geography: the teacher and their pupils do not have to travel to a single location. The benefits of this are not only saving everyone from a protracted and polluting commute, but allowing pupils from across the world to have access to teaching facilities traditionally reserved for those communities within a certain catchment area. This means pupils in small and remote areas, who are naturally limited to the number of teachers in their area, can enjoy just as much choice as those living in a city.

Another benefit of online teaching is the range of online resources that are available. A teacher can immediately send instructive graphics or videos to pupils - in a maths lesson this may be animation showing how to balance a simultaneous equation, while during an art lesson images of paintings or sculptures can be made to appear on the pupils` screens.
Of course the teacher could explain how to solve the maths problem on a whiteboard, and the pupils would certainly be able to find illustrations of the artworks in their text books - but online resources allow the teacher to synchronise their verbal instructions with graphical accoutrements, the helpful diagrams or images appearing on the pupils screens at apposite moments during the lesson.

Online lessons can also be recorded, to be consulted by pupils during their revision, or used by the teacher to construct future lesson plans. Many prominent universities have been recording their lessons for some years now, with hundreds of hours of classes, delivered by some of the greatest academics of our age, being freely available online.

These are all compelling benefits in favour of online teaching, but there are some things that can never be replicated online. Social interaction is a huge part of schooling - many would say the primary purpose of education is to impart social skills to a child, to mould them into a civilised, respectable human being. In many ways the playground is just as important as the classroom, and it is hard to imagine how this part of the school experience could be provided through a computer screen. One shudders to imagine a whole generation of children isolated from one another, interacting only through online games.

So maybe online lessons aren`t going to completely replace classroom learning, but I feel they will play a part in the future of every child`s education. Perhaps the school day will become shorter, with children returning home in the early afternoon, but having a couple of hours of tailored, online lessons later on. Whatever happens the events of the last year have changed so many things, and the convenience of online lessons will probably remain appealing for some time to come.