Think how you are playing out Nature's role. 

Are you emulating her plan of living a balanced life. If you are, this will definitely make her smile down at you.

In Part 1, we talked about the era gone by, that of chalk and board and how it seemed often that the teacher was taking precedence over what is taught.

The present is already seeing the transition to the student centric era, the era of eLearning, the era of digital chalk and board and the era of interactivity as education has never seen before.

Technology is a major catalyst to the way education is imparted. It has provided some unique out of the box thinking processes which were inconceivable in the era gone by.

For example, the mere thought that one could actually take lessons (learn) lounging in our pyjamas with our feet up and with a slate of digital technology parked on our laps or from the minuscule screens of our mobile phones (the smartphone variety in particular) while commuting was deemed preposterous. However, as much as the conduct of business has been elevated through the use of mobile technology, education is getting revolutionized by it. It is literally spearheading an avante garde form of education where time, space, location melt into an amalgam of anywhere learning, learning on demand. 

If you remember, in Part 1 (go here for Part 1), we said that the past era was one where the teacher was taking precedence over what was being taught. Well, technology went and turned that topsy turvy. Now, the emphasis and focus has moved to what is being taught. In fact, this has become critical in ensuring assimilation and retention as we will see later.

Technology has thrown the gauntlet at educators to ensure that the new way of learning in no way suffers from loss of personal touch or the physical presence of the instructor. While one may argue the merits of this new way in its apparent loss of the human touch, it certainly is a complete lateral thinking approach.

Virtual Classrooms 

So while elearning means that the personal touch with the instructor is lost, it has provided its own solution to this. Virtual classrooms have sprung up where the instructor is actually having a conversation with the student in realtime. This is made possible by the awesome internet which has made video streaming and chats now a commonplace phenomenon. This has certainly bridged the gap caused by the physical presence of the instructor being lost. Webinars are now as common as seminars.

What is a webinar? It is simply a live online educational presentation during which participating viewers can submit questions and comments. A virtual classroom is nothing but a webinar with participating students located all over the globe and logged in through the internet. It is as good as a physical classroom.

In fact, the eLearning revolution has germinated the concept of blended learning. Blended learning is where the benefit of a self paced, student driven learning process is combined with an interaction with the instructor - the best of both worlds in a manner of speaking.

Ironically, a virtual classroom brings with it a certain element of interactivity which more than compensates for the personal touch of the instructor. Additionally, the involvement of the students is almost a given particularly when the virtual classroom is in session.

What is taught 

Technology also managed to quietly bring down another bastion of learning (or teaching from another perspective) from the past era - the personality of the teacher. The new path means that focus is squarely on what is being taught. In fact, in many instances, the new way means that the students did not even know who the instructor was at the other end. This though is best complemented with a dose of blended learning.

Time, Space, Effort and Cost

The bar for good quality education has always risen and with it costs. Education in a private university or college can be a very expensive proposition. Here too, the ubiquitous Internet is the great leveler. It enables the coming together of student and instructor and the imparting of learning in a business model which costs a fraction of its counterpart in a brick and mortar institution. This obviously also has allowed those who previously could not afford a physical campus education to learn through an eLearning course on the Internet instead. The question mark against comparison of quality in the two methods of education is slowly disappearing over time.

Moreover, eLearning compresses time, space and effort too. No time is wasted on commutes, it does not actually matter where you are in the globe and you can virtually start learning at the tap of a finger on a sliver of digital technology. Learning has indeed come a long way.

What kind of learning are you going through? And those of you with children, what kind are they going through? Surely, there must be differences between the two.