How Virtual Classrooms Impact Education

Learning has taken on an altogether new meaning and approach with virtual classrooms or, as I often call it, distance education in real-time avatar. Skype, Youtube, Schooltube and a plethora of other learning tools today is helping classrooms move towards creating a global education community.

How?

Consider this- a school in the United States that is learning about say, Mahatma Gandhi, logs onto Skype in the Classroom and connects to a class in Mumbai that is studying about the freedom struggle. Not only are they exposed to information that is perhaps more authentic, both the students and the teacher can pose their questions to their learning partners here in India and receive immediate response.

You can also connect through sites such as Classle.net to share and engage students in group activities just as on Facebook or Twitter, providing a safe virtual environment for children to learn.

Virtual classrooms such as this can help create a web of educational interconnectedness that can only make the students smarter.

Why?

Because students participating in a virtual classroom not only increase observational power and acute understanding of things, they are motivated to actively seek out information online then hunting through a big fat encyclopedia. It makes learning fun. Period.

A virtual classroom doesn’t take away from the effectiveness of the physical classroom. If anything, it only makes it more fun and adds to the lecture. Play a pre-recorded video of the day’s session. Pause the video if a student has a question and get back to session without losing enthusiasm or your train of thought. You can then use the rest of the class time for activity, worksheets or exercises relating to the subject.

I wish…

That schools here in India upgrade their systems to include virtual education. We don’t have the concept of a field trip in this country. It’s too much money spent and too much responsibility for the teacher. Which is why virtual field trips can do really well here. Imagine the entire fifth grade of a school in Pune visiting the Niagara Falls without budging from their seats. It certainly would make subjects like Geography a little more engaging, don’t you think?

                                                                     

Social Media Education - A thought!

Last week Wednesday we had our first Twitter chat on “Is Education ready to embrace Social Media” and I must confess I was quite amazed with the kind of response that we received. Honestly I was under the impression that this idea would face a lot of inertia and that people from the Academic world would not be willing to accept this change.

But the actual reality was at exact 180degrees. People really want to use Social Media as an easily & readily available Learning Management or a Content Management tool. But then I was stuck on what’s stopping them. Now this was a billion dollar question, and just like any billion dollar question this had a simple logical answer but a complex execution algorithm (talk of complexity of simplicity).

What I learnt during the Twitter Chat (FYI - look for hash-tag #TSP_EduForum, it’s an acronym for TheSocialPeople Education Forum) is that there seems like there is general agreement among social media users/evangelists/consultants that education is crucial. However social media education can be quite vast and can pretty much mean anything. It's like trying to teach someone to be a mechanic in a few days or even a few hours, there's a lot to learn. The challenge is keeping the learning community up-to-date on those latest tools/tactics/strategies.

As you know social media is a very dynamic in nature and what you learn today might change tomorrow. So if we keep seeing new tools/techniques/strategies emerging almost daily, how to we create and administer social media training programs? My answer, focus on the core of social media principles or global best practices. Here are the main topics I would consider (I'm going to leave a few out because I'm more interested in what you have to say):

1. High level Social Media Strategy (This I feel is the most important and vital topic. Wrong strategy and you or your idea is doomed.
2. Identification of the right social media tools/platforms that suites your need
3. How to identify existing social media communities (or create new ones if needed)
4. Social Media measurement or metrics.
5. Understanding how to monitor social media and respond to sentiments shared by users\
6. Benefits/value of social media and risks of social media with effect exit mechanism, just in case.
7. Resources needed to succeed in social media
8. Case studies/examples/results of social media campaigns

So here I have listed 8 high level topics that make up a part of what I consider the Social Media Education core. Instead of focusing social media education efforts on details (that will change quickly) I think it would be much more valuable to focus on applications that are relatively constant to rephrase this more scientifically, strategize and use media that is evolving rather than mutating. I would also strongly advice that the herculean tasks of planning and strategizing details can be left to the experts who are implementing the actual strategy or to the consultants that are advising the company.

Do you agree with me? What other topics would you add to the Social Media Education Core?

For those of you who would like be a part of our Twitter Chat, it happens every Wednesday at 10AM Indian Standard Time. Don't forget to hash-tag - #TSP_EduForum.

[InfoGraphic] Social Media in Education Sector as of Today!!