Education, in its core meaning means sharing of information. That piece of information has to be relayed from point A to B with the hope that its content will remain intact.
These days, an element that has totally transformed this transfer of information is technology and it has surely blurred the lines of distance and the reliance of physical elements in getting things done.
Gone are the days when learning only involved a boring and authoritative teacher standing in front of a classroom and talking for hours.
Teachers must always be there yes but the four-corner classroom has become irrelevant these days.Lessons, tutorials, revisions, questions, can be offered through video conferencing. A student in Africa gets the same lessons as the one in Singapore and Venezuela in real time.
Not only that, classes don’t come to a close when the bell rings and the teacher goes out. Learning continues round the clock as students can send emails to seek clarification and indulge themselves in research on the internet.
Furthermore, students also have the liberty to interact with their fellows on particular lessons through messaging and social media. Others have taken a step further to create class or course blogs and sites where they conduct group discussions.
Teachers as well can do in-depth research online before they present the information to students.
Being a money involving exercise, education was in the past costly in terms of stationery, traveling and other expenses. Today, you don’t need all that. The use of paper has been curtailed because handouts, memos, application forms and many other academic documents can be circulated online.
Instead of traveling, students can take a virtual trip to places and grasp the information anyway.
Technology has also aided presentation of information especially figures and statistics. These days, information can easily be classified in tables, histograms, bar graphs; all this in a click of a mouse.
It is therefore undeniable fact that technology has greatly changed the education landscape.