Despite being a year of worldwide upheaval, 2020 led to a variety of major developments in digital solutions in education, like the widespread switch to online schooling, the increase within the use of apps, and hybrid learning. It’s doubtless that teaching can still build use of digital technology for the predictable future. With this comes new challenges and developments.
So to measure the projected trends in teaching for the new year? scan on to search out out what’s future for 2021 and on the far side.
1. Nano learning
The information age has brought with it a decline in attention spans and a rise in screen fatigue. Our brains square measure bombarded with distracting alerts and notifications day in time out. They answer these signals with a rise within the stress secretion Cortisol. As a result, we tend to square measure physically unable to concentrate and method giant amounts of knowledge.
So however can we approach this drawback within the classroom?
The answer might lie in nano learning.
In a shell, nano learning could be a bite-sized learning solution. It involves providing students with data in smaller amounts, over a shorter amount of your time.
Learning in brief bursts is tried to extend our ability to require in and retain data. By providing your students with little, “pellet” like bits of knowledge, you’re way more probably to extend their productivity, capture their attention and aid their ability to find out.
The four keys for effective nano learning in the classroom are:
- 1. Identify the students’ needs
- 2. Set the learning objectives
- 3. Choose your content e.g. videos, apps, podcasts
- 4. Keep it short; recommended within 2-5 minutes
2. Virtual reality and augmented reality
Ground-breaking video game (VR) and increased reality (AR) technology area unit returning to the room.
Immersive VR experiences need a VR telephone receiver. This features a digital interface that comes pictures, making a true or virtual world that users will see and act with. It additionally includes gesture controls and easy-to-use teacher controls.
While some VR headsets area unit, without doubt, costly, Google Cardboard and similar alternatives supply a more cost-effective VR expertise – the user solely has to insert a smartphone into the viewer.
AR, on the opposite hand, may be accessed merely through a smartphone or iPod.
In a similar approach, the technology comes pictures, sound, and video exploitation the device camera and is displayed via the screen. However, instead of immersing the viewer in another reality, it layers these pictures on high of what may be seen on the camera. As a straightforward example, Google search permits you to check totally different animals in your surroundings, therefore you’ll be observing a panda sitting next to your desk! Strive it yourself by sorting out “panda” on your sensible device.
Students have interaction with digital technologies like VR as a result of it evokes them to assume on the far side the four walls of the room.
So how can you incorporate AR and VR into the classroom?
- 1. Field trips – helpful for art, geography, and history lessons, among others, VR can take students on a tour around the best galleries, museums, and cities in the world, without leaving the classroom.
- 2. Virtual careers – VR offers the opportunity for students to find out about a range of careers. It literally puts the student in another’s shoes, meaning they can gain first-hand experience of what it’s like to do different jobs.
- 3. High-tech training – highly influential for students who are thinking about pursuing a career in areas like the military or medicine, VR and AR can project real-life training. For example, it can show students the anatomy of the body from the inside out.
- 4. Language immersion – the best way to learn a language is total immersion. VR can immerse students in a foreign language, by virtually placing them in the middle of a virtual world, hearing only their target language.
3. Project-based learning
Project-based learning could be a pedagogy that actively engages the scholars in real-life comes. the concept is that students learn by doing, with lecturers acting because of the active help.
The objective is to own students investigate associate degreed replies to an authentic, participating, and complicated question or issue. they’re going to develop critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication skills; all of that is extremely asked for twenty-first-century skills, valued by employers.
Some topics for projects to set your students to include:
- • Finding solutions to a local environmental problem
- • Coming up with alternative energy sources
- • Analyzing photography or photojournalism
- • Voicing opinions on a popular debate
So how does project-based learning work in the classroom? One idea for leading a class with this method is to:
- 1. Put students in groups of 4 or 5
- 2. Ask them to brainstorm some ideas for their project
- 3. Have class feedback and choose the one they will focus on
- 4. Then ask students to research their particular subject area together
- 5. Next, ask them to put together a presentation digitally so they can practice using design and technology
- 6. Finally, ask students to present their project to the rest of the class and encourage feedback and discussion.
4. Experiential learning
Student disengagement is on the outgrow. Often, academics realize them on their mobile phones, segmentation out or speech friends. However, a replacement thanks to tackle this can be gaining momentum: enter experiential learning.
Now common in colleges worldwide, this learning approach involves immersing students in real-world things. It offers first-hand experiences during which they have to apply designing, decision-making, cooperation and additional.
Although this will be done out of the schoolroom, as an example progressing to the installation or visiting museums, in 2021 it’s expected to shift on-line.
So, what online experiential learning activities are there?
- 1. Collaborative exercises – provide students with a problem or debate in teams and ask them to come up with ideas and solutions. This could be a philosophical debate or a mock business problem to get them thinking about a range of scenarios.
- 2. Role-playing – get students to act out different scenarios. An imaginary situation can teach students how different actions and behaviours can affect outcomes.
- 3. Field work – students are asked to go out and collect data. This could be done online through questionnaires and surveys, which can then be presented to the class.
5. Online schooling
Online learning is that the most well-liked instructional trend for 2021 – albeit one born out automatically in 2020. Of course, with developments in edtech, this can be currently turning into attainable on an outsized scale. Sped up by the pandemic, colleges are forced to experiment more with online learning.
So, why is online learning so popular? Not solely is it versatile and cost-efficient, it’s additionally accessible to a wider vary of learners because it removes the idea of ‘location’. Therefore, it are often seen as breaking down barriers in education and gap up the door to a wider pool of learners.
In 2019 Pearson partnered with Harrow college to change the launch of their new on-line grade, Harrow college on-line. Their aim is to open up their education to high-performing youngsters from anyplace within the world, WHO would love to require their A-levels at a prestigious, high-quality British college.
Pearson is providing the technology that underpins the net college, that opened in Sept 2020. The New Year is probably going to check additional on-line colleges being created round the world – and additional college’s desegregation on-line schooling into their bricks and mortar giving to increase and deepen their syllabus giving.
We’re looking forward to seeing what happens in 2021. What other trends do you think will appear in the new year?
