How COVID has transformed Ed Tech

Like so many other things, COVID has really accelerated what was going to be an inevitable shift into a more digital way of education. Because nothing accelerates the need to utilise technology in an active learning environment quite like a global pandemic. Everyone had to invest in the infrastructure, which had previously been a nice thing to have, became absolutely essential. 

Thanks to technology the relationship between student and teachers could continue virtually without skipping a beat. Teaching and learning were able to continue in a meaningful way, despite it suddenly happening remotely from lounges around the world.

But ed-tech doesn’t just apply to schools. It’s enabling learning, training, educating by giving people access to those tools digitally. Because of technology, information can be shared or absorbed that otherwise couldn’t have happened unless you were face-to-face.

It was a change that was fascinating to watch.

It has been so interesting to see the potential for the democratising of education. Because if you don’t have to be in the classroom to learn, you can, theoretically get have access to higher education from anywhere. 

This means that digital poverty needs to be addressed. Policies need to be put in place, and the price of the tech needs to come down so that these types of tools and education are available and easily accessible to every single person. At this point in society, having WIFI and a device to learn on is a basic human need. Kids doing their homework in a McDonald’s car park in order to hotspot internet access is shit.

The idea of learning becoming hyper-personalised has been a cool evolution. It’s been used for years in marketing to sell people things. Now, the same concept can be used to educate. If you are nudging people to buy your product, you can also nudge people to be better at Geography or Math using the same kinds of techniques. 

If you think about education in a digital world, you can start to employ techniques that have been used in commercial or even politics. If people can be taught to think they should vote for Brexit or Trump, learning the capital of Poland should be a walk in the park. 

With customisation comes the possibility that the classroom is reduced down to one and caters to a personal learning experience.