Will Educators Need to Adapt to Internet Technologies in the Future?
By Karla Robinson
October 30, 2012
October 30, 2012
- When you Google a song title, often guitar chord information will show up in the results. And say you don’t know a chord for that song, search it on YouTube and you’ll probably be able to find numerous guitar lessons online.
- Today, the opportunity to learn how to play musical instruments no longer requires expensive private lessons or going to a class. This phenomenon is likely to spread to other areas of study.
- “The current hype is that ubiquitous Internet connections and tablet devices will emerge as a competitive threat to real-life teachers, kill the textbook business and bring low-price learning to billions around the world,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
- “There will be big business opportunities for a select group of star teachers and a handful of companies, too,” the article continues. “The downside: Schools and teachers will have to adapt to lower-cost competition from around the country and the world. And they may have to acknowledge that technology might be better at many tasks done today by a fidgety teacher and a metronome.”
- Already, some online guitar instructors have been able to make a comfortable living through YouTube videos, like Justin Sandercoe who accumulated 170,000 subscribers. He now travels the world giving in-person lessons to fans or $100 personal sessions online.
- “The business problem with such media models is that production can be ramped up only so much — it largely relies on one person’s available time,” the article notes. The piece acknowledges other efforts that leverage computing power to “teach.” For example, one system can track how well students follow streaming sheet music.
- Online systems can be much more distracting for some students, and ultimately, motivation and discipline determine the student’s success. In the future, teaching may become more about motivating than explaining.
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