3 Education Trends to watch out for in 2021
Education has finally made the switch to mainly digital. We explored the top 3 educational trends you should be looking out for in the coming year.
2020 and 2021 have been a bit of a roller coaster ride for everyone involved. But if we are suffering as adults and educators, then think of the impact all of this abnormality is having on our kids.
As ever, the education sector is shifting to keep up, but it’s a slow process. Changes – particularly digital ones – take a long time to reach the high ups in charge. Evolution is slow and meantime we have thousands of children that are losing out.
Teachers, being the innovative creatures that they are, have already identified the top trends of the coming semesters. Read on to find out all about the education trends of the coming months.
Education Trends we’ll see before 2022
We asked the teachers of the land what they thought would be important in teaching in the next year, and here’s what they said…
1 – Safeguarding Training Will Step It Up
With so many children now learning from a home environment that potentially isn’t safe, there has never been more need to protect children. Safeguarding training should be a top priority for keeping them safe anyway, but its relevance has just jumped ten fold.
Why? When we lockdown in our homes, we assume that our homes are all safe. This is a misconception. Many people loathe going home, many people are victims of domestic abuse. With more than a million newly unemployed people in the UK, many of us go home to empty cupboards and a limited food and heat supply.
Safeguarding training is evolving to incorporate all of this – but it can’t end there. Teachers need to be fully aware of the dangers children are in without their intervention. They should know how to spot the signs. We advise yearly training refresher courses and monthly meetings.
2 – Nano learning is the Next Big Thing
Nano learning – which nobody has heard of yet – is coming to town. This is the era of screen fatigue, the age of children getting sleepy eyed because of the amount of online time they get. Nano learning breaks lessons up into smaller, manageable and fun chunks. This makes lessons go smoother for teachers and keeps kids engaged.
Nano learning goes hand in hand with gamification. The more lessons we can turn into video style games, the better. It will take lesson plan burdens off our teaching staff and instil the lesson that learning can be fun. Nano learning is the idea of breaking lessons up to be small, yet succinct. If we can master the nano lesson, kids will have less screen time and more fun finding out about things[i].
3 – Watch out for AI, VR, and AR
All of the above are coming to the classroom. Towards the tail end of the year, we should expect to see enough advances in VR that we can start to use the headsets for learning. Some of the programs in AR and VR headsets are mind blowing. Kids can shark dive, stand at the top of some of the highest mountains in the world, or explore towns and cities they have never seen before. All of it encourages exploration and a sense of adventure.
As for AI, we are already seeing small steps in the way we use it. For example, power automate can be used to make small marking tasks automatic, we might use a digital answer sheet to mark papers or to record results. AI will eventually change the way we teach, but for now, let’s take it in baby steps and use it to do the register.
Keep an Eye out for New Teacher Trends
These are only three of the big advancements in teaching that we should expect to see happening in the next twelve months. Teaching trends are changing by the day – along with the amount of time spent in the classroom. We might not know what tomorrow will bring, but we do know it will include better ways to learn… and that’s all any of we educators can hope for.
