I was initially doing a piece on the on the link between education and technology, which always seemed like an evergreen topic but in light of current world events seems much more relevant and of the time.

With this lock down and restrictions technology is having a much more pronounced impact. this may not be a good thing as described by Hubert Dreyfus who asserted that lack of face-to-face interaction has negative effect on student participation – that it effectively legitimates student withdrawal, student deception, and a singular lack of student commitment.

As a part of this mandated trial of online learning and the virtual classroom I can attest to the challenges of this type of learning. The technology is though not that bad, with the screen being taken up by the person talking. it does allow for class and student interaction, but it is a pale substitute. When you are in the class you can see the screen much better and you are limited by the size and quality of your screen at home. There could be a couple of tweaks made to this that would make it better. Possibly if the teacher was on an in-screen box similar to how we see it in class it would help.Instead of being in a spilt screen or absent form the screen while they speak about the screen etc.

It would also take a a change in teaching styles to be able to adapt to the online teaching model. to have a mind or better yet to be able to see what the students are seeing so as to more effective illustrate ideas issues and topics. similar to a weather person in that they could see what the audience sees and adapt their style accordingly.I initially thought that this would be a good idea and a good option and I still think it could be made better and better use and access to this type of technology could and should be used. The only impediment to this would be the old guard “Luddite” laggard late adopters to the technology.However in a way this could be the impetus that they would have needed to be mandated to adopt the technology.

So that when this lock-down is over they will at least have a functional knowledge of the technology and how to use it. In order to have a truly blended learning experience, where students can log in to the class virtually if they needed. this is in my opinion not recommended but it does offer a viable albeit inferior option/solution.