It’s been more than a year since the pandemic hit us out of nowhere and what we hoped will be a couple of weeks of working and studying at home turned into new normal. Over the course of the last months, we have learned that education, the backbone …well of almost everything, has had to adapt the most.
From classes full of distracted students, outdated chalkboards and rigid schedule to the environment free of boundaries but yet what seems to be a much more effective and targeted experience resulting in children being much more engaged, involved and achieving much greater results.
Computer-first learning refers to the environment whereby the main educational content, material and lectures are digested by students via online presence using laptop, desk computer or even a tablet or mobile phone. Such an environment requires a different skillset one has to learn to thrive during the academic but also a professional journey in the future.
Unlike the physical class where the teacher is very often put into place of police officer constantly correcting the behaviour (rather than focusing on material), the online class forces students to take charge and become more responsible and respectful towards the teacher and lectures. During the online classes, every child is sitting in the front row and that means preparation for the class is necessary in order to thrive.
Computer-first learning allows students to become aware of scheduling their time and task allocation resulting in much better organizational understanding so needed in their adulthood. How many adults have come across that have still troubles organizing their day to day schedule despite being in the professional world for several years already? It is certainly not an easy task to learn and with distance learning, the line between the academic and personal space presents a great learning opportunity for students.
As we observed over the past years, we have noticed that students who have been regularly attending online classes have increasingly improved in decision making, time management and prioritization. These three characteristics have been nurtured when assigning the projects, allocating students into the teams' assignments and others.
At Open Mind with our small classes, every student has a chance to actively participate during the online session and contribute with their ideas, discussion points or suggestions. We find the more space we give students to express themselves, the better the final results of their assignments are. This is a combination of two factors: 1, students are ready to speak up and talk about topics they are passionate about therefore, we can help them to explore these areas even more; 2, students are no afraid to speak up when they feel stuck (which is often an issue) and therefore, we can support them to analyse what might cause a bottleneck in their progress and work on it with together.
We hope you have enjoyed reading the article on why we believe online learning is the way forward when it comes to the future of education. We would love to hear your thoughts in the comment below. As always, we are here to help and guide your children on their accelerated academic way!
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