Student education and the digital evolution have had their ups and downs, but if the last couple of years is anything to go by, it seems the two might be inseparable moving forward.
In the early days of the internet, predictions of video conferencing and high-speed communication protocols were still confined to thought experiments and doomsday merchants. Today, both of these are a vital aspect of not just our global educational network, but a wide range of other businesses and industries too.
Education, in general, has been relegated to the four walls of a classroom within a dedicated campus facility for the longest time. With the stroke of a global pandemic and the subsequent rise in virtual learning, education has shifted its modicum to online servers and Zoom calls. Perhaps its future is to be decided once the Metaverse takes a solid hold, but that remains to be seen.
The Evolution of Education
From the times of the earliest classrooms in the times of Plato and Aristotle, students have always gathered around a tutor or teacher to fully absorb all matters of the curriculum. From philosophical ideas to grand equations of the universe, the classroom, and its chalkboard has been a staple for the flourishing of human ingenuity.
The iconic picture of the greatest minds of our species next to a classroom chalkboard, or one where they’re delivering a lecture in an auditorium are familiar to most. It’s without a question that every reader here has seen the inside of a classroom themselves, and when thinking of learning, a school or college campus is what they think of.
That is not the case now, though. The rise of virtual schools and colleges has ensured online lectures and learning for everyone with a phone and an internet connection. And with the pandemic finally beginning to loosen its grip on the world, most educational institutes are still preferring online classrooms as a subsidiary form of learning. Everything from class notes to presentations and projects is now digitalized. Therefore, you might need to start looking for cheap sim only deals for low-budget data to support your kids and save some money.
This has led to an influx of students enrolling in colleges globally and has also streamlined the educational processes within schools. The handing out of class notes has removed the burden previously placed on paper and inkjet printers and is now transmissible through PDFs instead. Not only does it make the compilation easier, but the dispersion too. Students are added via email to their classes on any platform of the school’s choosing and get instant updates on their courses and study material.
Entirely virtual campuses are a further help to education. These campuses have taken advantage of an online presence instead of a physical institute, and this has improved literacy rates by a great margin. Students from all over the world can enroll in Bachelor’s and Master’s programs and study at their own pace. This is an affordable and efficient way of education. One that isn’t just easy on the pockets of students who have to shell out multiple hundreds of dollars for a degree, but for schools too who don’t have to contest with huge startup costs.
Virtual campuses are a great tool in any country where paltry literacy rates and low college graduate numbers dominate. It also places students from various ethnic, social, and financial backgrounds to participate in higher learning and compete in the ever-expanding job market.
The flexibility offered by virtual learning is also a great reason why schools are now preferring it over conventional methods. Teachers are devising different strategies for improved results. For instance, they have to record one lecture for a specific course in video form, which remains relevant for months if not years. Students can play the same videos and replay them for greater learning opportunities. And because classes aren’t scheduled according to the time of the day, students can pick their learning hours for a more efficient class timetable.
All Roses?
While the advantages of virtual learning are immense, it is held back by one problem: security. As things stand, schools and colleges loan proprietary hardware and software for remote learning. This was especially true during the pandemic when large swathes of tablets and computers were issued by schools. And it is also why the sales for Chromebooks have been at an all-time high.
For this reason, student activity monitoring apps have found their way onto proprietary hardware. Xnspy, in particular, has been an app in this category that is used by many schools for its tracking capabilities of devices.
The Xnspy screen monitoring software for students is usually the route most schools and educational institutes take. The application accesses all data coming into a device and any that is going out and reports to a centralized dashboard. Schools have routinely installed this application on tablets that they suspect might be used for things other than learning.
Xnspy can also block access to certain apps, making it a handy tool to ensure the device is being used for educational purposes only. It has a dedicated word alert feature that can notify the admin if inappropriate or vulgar content is accessed. Teachers have also used Xnspy to ensure no cheating occurs during tests with its screen monitoring functionality, and the fact that it can snoop on social media and instant messengers makes it a useful tool in any school’s digital arsenal.
Students’ monitoring apps like Xnspy have been a consistent companion for virtual learning and may just be what schools require to fully transition from on-campus learning environments.
The Future of Learning
With the Metaverse being touted as the next big thing in tech, it doesn’t take too much of a leap in imagination to wonder if virtual learning will integrate with it. Zoom, Google Classroom, and Microsoft Meet have been solid additions already. It is even arguable if the concept of education in the Metaverse has already begun with them. What will be interesting to see is whether remote learning will continue to require extraneous tools like remote monitoring apps to fully deploy or not. The days of a completely independent and online learning environment may already be here.