The past couple of years have definitely changed the world, with the COVID19 pandemic bringing about situations that were pretty much unheard of in pre-COVID times, like the majority of office workers working from home, kids being home-schooled, and restrictions on where we could go and how many people we could meet up with at a time. But the reality in the education industry is that things were already changing quite rapidly in schools, colleges, and universities not only in the US but also around the world.
Over the past decade, the education industry has seen a lot of developments and updates. Social media, for example, has grown exponentially over the past ten years, which has considerably changed how students stay connected and interact with one another. The internet now offers tools for all levels of education and even for high school graduates who need help in how to write my college essay with best experts. Cloud computing is another major development of the past ten years that has brought about a much easier way for both students and teachers to study and work remotely. As a result of this, people who may have otherwise struggled to get the education they wanted or needed beforehand are now able to access it much more easily.
In today’s modern education industry, students also have many more options to choose from when it comes to learning with a style and at a pace that suits them best. For example, they can find tutors online, use various study apps to complete homework, turn to professional writer service platforms for help with proofreading their papers, or even have experts write their essays. Along with this, teachers and other educational professionals can ease their workload with access to a wider range of software programs such as automation software for marking tests that allows them to reduce the amount of mundane, paperwork-based tasks that they have to do and spend more time directly working with students instead.
Another major change in education over the past decade is the way that we access and consume education. We are now well and truly living in the Information Age as a direct result of the internet, and because of this, students have a bigger pool of knowledge available to them at their fingertips.
Education can easily be intertwined into our everyday lives, and many things no longer require you to go to school to learn them. YouTube, for example, is a huge source of educational resources. The internet has overtaken books when it comes to learning, which in turn has made education on a wide variety of topics cheaper and more accessible to lots of people. Online courses and degree programs are another major result of the growth of the internet in the education industry.
Today, you do not always need to sign up to classes on campus if you want to get a certain bachelor’s, master’s or even a doctorate degree, with online programs available that students can get remotely from the comfort of their own home and with a much more flexible schedule, which has made higher education more accessible by allowing students to work and uphold other commitments.
Read on to find out more about how the education field has changed and progressed over the past ten years.
Growth of Digital Media and Devices
Compared to a decade ago, the media today is designed to be shared and duplicated, which is hugely important in the world of education. Today, we have modern and advanced digital devices available to use, which have made significant changes to the way that students learn at every age and in every level of the educational process. Modern devices are more interactive and personal, providing immediate, direct access to almost anything that we might want to learn about. Along with this, digital devices have become a crucial part of the lives of most people today.
The growing demand for skilled and knowledgeable people to develop, plan, create and maintain digital media and devices has also led to an increase in IT and media-related education subjects, courses, degree programs, and more that are available from a wide range of educational organizations.
Digital Classroom Games
Today, learning has become more fun and interactive compared to how it was experienced ten years ago. One of the main ways that learning has changed to become more interesting and immersive is the addition of digital games into the classroom. Digital education games were very new to the scene ten years ago and had only been tried out in a handful of classrooms. In comparison, digital educational games are now quite advanced and a common sight in lots of schools and other educational organizations with teachers and educational professionals often relying on them to provide students with a more interactive and engaging learning environment.
As more classrooms adopt digital educational games, it is providing students with a way to learn that is more appealing and exciting compared to traditional learning strategies like reading off a whiteboard or from a book. Many students are better able to consume and learn the information when it is presented in this way. Digital games are available covering a wide range of subjects including spelling, math, coding, music, languages and more.
Mobile Learning Increase
Mobile learning has become the new standard in education. Compared to in the past, students are getting up from their desks more often and learning has become more interactive. More and more students are taking advantage of our digital devices, mobile whiteboards, and digital connectivity in order to learn more on the go. Mobile learning and technologies such as AR and VR have made it easier for students to get up from their desks and walk around to enable further learning, compared to only getting the opportunity to do this on field trips. Along with this, the growing accessibility of mobile learning has also made it easier for teachers and other professionals in education to connect with a more diverse range of students.
Around the world, students are now in a better position to improve their education with the ability to connect with teachers and experts remotely and collaborating with other schools, often in different countries, on a variety of projects thanks to cloud computing software programs.
Over the past two years, the world was introduced to how effective mobile learning could be as more students had to stay at home because of the COVID19 pandemic. When it was made impossible for students to attend school as normal due to the pandemic, many were able to continue learning without missing out or falling behind thanks to these mobile learning and cloud-based learning options.
Online Courses
Ten years ago, online degree programs were available, however, they were only offered by select colleges and there was only a handful of subjects available to study. Compared with today, online learning has grown massively over the last decade and these days there are more and more students who are choosing to get a degree or an advanced qualification online for a variety of different reasons.
In the past, online learning was also more isolating and online students may not have always had the same opportunities that they might have gotten as a traditional student due to the lack of connectivity and cloud-based learning platforms available at the time.
Today, online degree programs are available at all levels and cover a wide range of different majors and subjects to prepare students for a certain career or help them progress in their current career. Teachers are even benefitting from online learning – not only does this provide more remote teaching jobs, but it also allows teachers and other educational professionals to take their own career to the next level with a lower opportunity cost.
Programs such as this online Doctorate in Education from Marymount University are often more flexible compared to studying on campus, allowing teachers to keep on teaching while they learn and improve their education career at the same time.
Better Extra Curricular Learning
Thanks to technology, there has been a huge increase in the opportunities available to learn outside of the school environment in the past ten years. This is especially true for children in school who now have a wide range of fun and exciting options for learning new things at their fingertips often presented in ways that are easy for them to digest and understand.
Over the past ten years, the education industry has grown to become more aware of people’s different learning styles and as a result, the school classroom is not the only way that we can learn new things. This has also made it easier for some parents to home educate or ‘unschool’ their children if they wish, with more resources on offer and opportunities such as online tutoring available in abundance, which would not have been as easy to find ten years ago.
Why Start an Education Career?
Over the past decade, the education industry has definitely changed a lot and is still changing in many different ways. Both education professionals and students are excited about what the future might hold, and when you think about all the ways that education is advancing and developing currently, it’s hard not to feel some excitement about where it might be in the next ten years. If you are in the process of choosing your future career path and are interested in working in an interesting and dynamic career where you can continuously learn new things and help other people at the same time, there are lots of great reasons why a career in education might be an ideal choice for you.
Make an Impact on Students
Studies have found that teachers come in only second to parents when it comes to the adults present in a child’s life that can have the biggest impact on their development. If you are interested in working in education as a school teacher where you will spend your day interacting with and teaching young children and teenagers, this is a career where you have a special and unique opportunity to make a lasting impact on the lives of the young people that you work with. As a teacher, you will not only be responsible for the expertise and knowledge of these members of the next generation, but you can also be a source of support, give advice on healthy habits, and help them build solid communication and social skills.
Boost Your Own Education
One of the main requirements for working in teaching is that you have to be knowledgeable in your subject. As a teacher, keeping your own knowledge up to date means that you are not going to be risking teaching outdated stuff to your students. They are relying on you to get it right and to prepare them for their future adult lives and career.
To become a teacher or professional educator, you will need to first focus on your own education. This will usually involve getting a bachelor’s degree in education, and you can move on to get more advanced degree qualifications such as a master’s degree or doctorate if you want to take your career further in the future.
However, it doesn’t stop at the required qualifications alone. As a teacher, you’ll need to spend time researching and learning new things to make sure that you are an effective educator to your students.
Career Options
Working in education isn’t just about being a teacher. If you are interested in taking a different approach to your career, there are lots of different roles within education that have an impact on students and are necessary to their success. For example, if you are more interested in a role where you will be responsible for helping students with their personal development, resolving conflicts between students, helping students build healthy habits, make career choices, and safeguarding and supporting students who are going through things like bullying or abuse in the home, working as a school counselor might be an ideal role for you.
Alternatively, if you want a role where you can be impactful in changing education for the better and setting up the system in a more beneficial way for students based on what they need, consider training to become an educational psychologist.
Over the past ten years, education has changed in many different ways, leading to more collaboration, more educational options, and better access to education for people from all backgrounds.