Traditional education or online education?

Posted by msl herry on February 10th, 2020

The generations' predecessors to millennials are the fruit of what is known as "Traditional Education" (I have just stated where my age is tilting). Education that has made us know how the pages of a manual smell, the sound that causes the stroke of a pencil when writing our name, or knowing that a simple drop of ink can cause an indelible memory in a white dust jacket (In Argentina in the Public primary and secondary school children wore white overalls, representing an emblem in education. Today this tradition is only preserved in some schools.). Not to mention a penance for running at recess or having the audacity to have thrown a piece of chalk that had the bad luck of falling next to the teacher ...

It is not a script extracted from the fiction of yesteryear ... this happened and it was not so long ago. Time flies, like the paper planes that we made with a sheet torn from a notebook.

A little nostalgia is good to understand that the passage of time is inevitable, but so is the progress that accompanies it. No one can fail to admit the importance of the face-to-face accompaniment of a teacher in learning, or the socialization caused by sharing a desk or reading book. But neither can we deny that every positive side has its opposite and in this particular case we could define it as "limiting". Limitations by distance, time, space, available space, economy, accessibility, structure, geographical, health and we could name as many as people who have traveled this path, or who have not been able to do so.

The passage of time combined with the attraction caused by innovation for humanity has given way to continuous revolutions that have forced us to evolve. For some it will have been for good and others will not agree so much, but nobody can deny that we are a species that seeks and provokes that evolution. Here we are then, in the face of a technological revolution that has forced some generations to unlearn to learn something completely different, while other generations would simply be paralyzed if they removed a device that already has characteristics of a human organ because of its essentiality. What a paradox, right? different generations living with such a small age difference, but with so much distance in the learning methodologies to which they had and have access.

And here we are, facing a dilemma between traditional Education vs. Online education Can we say that one is better than the other? Which one is more effective? Can not a teaching accompaniment also be done live even being miles away? Surely we will find many opinions, some similar, others completely opposite, but many will agree to say: It depends.

To try to make sense of that “depends”, let's look at some characteristics that we find in both methodologies, but to make it more challenging, we will not identify which one each belongs to, let's see what happens if we do not condition our mind and make a single list. Are we able to tell which methodology each response to? Maybe, after all, there are no differences and we can even eliminate the "versus", it's all a matter of our perception:

• Teachers and students sharing the same space of time, being able to dialogue, see each other, listen to the tone of voice and even share nonverbal communication.
• We can make a query when the question arises, and get an answer immediately.
• We have a world of knowledge at our fingertips.
• The investment of money and time required is accessible.
• We can learn and study in a group.
• We can respect our classmates by asking for permission and being ordered when we want to intervene in a class.
• We have the flexibility to study in our most productive schedule.
• We can accommodate custom schedules.
• We can interact, exchange and integrate with other cultures and latitudes.
• We can share family and education at the same time.
• We can learn with the instructor, teacher, teacher of our choice.
• We can access the race we always wanted.
• We have the bibliography we need at our disposal.
• We can take advantage of every moment to study.
• The pace of learning is autonomous.