So far, 2020 has caused a lot of change in a very short amount of time. In just a few short months, many countries have placed various restrictions on interstate and intrastate travel, and many schools and universities have closed down. That’s shifted a lot of attention to tech-based education. What’s available with tech-based education now that 2020 has changed the face of education? Here are a few ways education has been shifting and changing in 2020.
Better Access to Books and Libraries
Many libraries and in-person bookstores have needed to shut down to avoid large gatherings of people recently. That means the only way for libraries and bookstores to offer access to books is through the internet. To adjust to this new requirement, many of them have turned to expanding or granting access to books online.
Although many libraries already had web-based systems available for readers to check out books, these systems were often lacking. Bookstores also typically didn’t sell web-based copies of books. Now, these systems have started to become more robust, offering opportunities for educators, students, and everyday people alike.
Even Easier Research
How do you perform research? If you’ve been performing research in a more old-fashioned way, you might consider “research” to mostly regard poring over books and other publications. However, especially without libraries, that’s more difficult than ever before.
People have already had access to online research for many years, but in 2020, many newspapers, periodicals, and libraries have stepped up to the plate, allowing people to research with less restrictions. That includes news sites, which have started allowing more free access to their information.
On-Demand Access to Experts
For much of history, people were only able to get access to experts through other people. For the most part, an everyday individual wouldn’t have been able to talk to a world leader, or even see what a world leader was talking about, without getting that news through a tertiary source.
However, today, as the world is facing a variety of crises, many experts are choosing to both give statements to news sources and release those statements online independently. This allows readers to get the full source of information on their own.
Livestreaming Education-Based Classes
Livestreams have become more popular than ever recently — people are using them to put on faux concerts, to connect directly with fans, and to teach people things. Education-based livestreams aren’t exactly new, as they’ve been around for as long as livestreams have existed, but they’ve exploded in popularity recently.
From OneClass’s educational livestreams about high school, college, and university math and chemistry to teachers livestreaming lectures, this technology has become essential in recent months. There’s no doubt that these livestreams will persist even as more people go back to school in the future.
Conclusion
Many of the changes that have happened over the first few months of 2020 have been significant. Although many of them have also been devastating to the people they’ve impacted, some of them have also been welcome changes from the way things have worked for years. Whether these are temporary changes or they’ll remain permanent is something that the world has yet to see, but they’re definitely interesting to look at right now.
