Visual Learning

The move from education being in a classroom to online will hinge on the success of visual technology.  I’ve seen many online class formats, but I would contend that none of those will be truly as engaging as a real life classroom unless there is extensive use of visual learning.  I’ve seen online class formats where everything is based on students having to read and write information.  Those may work for those very committed to learning that topic, or those who learn well with that format, but this will not affective for the masses.  Students have always benefitted from visual learning being integrated into the classroom, and this will be even more critical as more courses are offered in an online format. 

            In going through the online book, I noticed that for me the most intriguing parts were when the instructor was interacting with a group of students.  The part where it was just her talking were not very engaging or informative.  This too makes me wonder if learning in an online environment can match the classroom  There are many ways to interact online, but I’m not sure they will ever match the effectiveness of personal instruction.  However, I also believe that both in-person and online instruction can be very effective or very ineffective depending on how they are conducted.  The skill of the person designing and delivering the lessons will continue to be far more important than the medium used to deliver them.

            The above point is almost moot, as online education is here to stay and will only continue to grow.  That is where I see it as part of my job to help assist and lead those delivering lessons to do so in an effective manner.  The use of visual learning will be a key part of that.  Today’s students have grown up with screens being a major part of their lives, so I can’t help but conclude that they will be more visual learners than previous generations.  Delivering content visually in an effective method will be very important. 

            I see a great deal of potential in the use of video sharing programs such as YouTube.  Again, Google has done a lot right in how they have given some options to the users in terms of how videos can be shared.  However, I cannot overlook YouTube’s greatest obstacle for schools and that is the presence of material that is not only non-educational, but highly offensive.  It took less than five minutes and typing “Naked Woman” to hit numerous sites that would be completely unacceptable in a school environment.  The difficulty is that the way YouTube works, it is only possibly to block or unblock sites based on specific URL.  This makes the task impossible for those managing those filters.  While I’ve also seen all those who say we should just toss out the filters and teach responsible use, as a school we still have an obligation to parents to provide at least some level of security for their students.  I did discover in doing a little research tonight that YouTube does offer a safe mode, which may offer us a way to allow certain URL’s while blocking the inappropriate material.

            That issue I do believe will find a way to be solved as more and more schools are looking for ways to offer fully online (or blended) education opportunities.  Another major consideration as schools move towards more online education is the increased hardware demands that video streaming places on a machine and also the infrastructure the supports it.   To conduct video learning, quality webcams, microphones, and video cards are necessities along with more RAM and faster processors.  Also, wired or wireless networks have to have the external and internal bandwidth to support these high volume videos.  At least currently, these things are extremely costly and would be cost prohibitive to many districts, especially those in the many rural areas currently unsupported by even broadband.  These same areas would probably be some of those to benefit the most from online education. 

            It will be very interesting to see where this goes in the next several years.  In some ways the ability to conduct education at a distance using these visual tools is already here.  Many schools are already doing it, but they are having mixed success (which in fairness all schools do.)  Some of the above issues I’ve raised are parts of those struggles, but there is also the accepted definition and practice of what going to school means that will need to change.   Technology will grow and hopefully things like bandwidth and equal access will continue to move in the right direction.  Even this week the FCC announced that they may shift as much as 8 billion dollars from subsidizing phone service, to beefing up broadband access for schools through the E-rate program.  Those hurdles are large, but they will be nothing compared to the hurdles of changing peoples’ attitudes and beliefs about what going to school will look like.