Innovations in Education sphere

We all live nowadays in the amazing world. On the one hand, it is VUCA world, where Uncertainty perfectly shows reality of our today’s living. Thus, in the other hand, every crisis means opportunity for growth and development that we can oversee now. And COVID-19 has brought up on the surface all the prerequisites for the changes and innovations that were created but now are widely used. 

Being a teacher, I am happy to see the innovations that occur in the educational sphere. There are both bad and good sides of the current situation but I would love to zero in on positive sides – innovations. 

I have chosen just 5 novelties for the discussion, as believe them to be mostly important for surrounding people ad my clients. 

1. Wearable technology – bracelets or trackers helping to track the location of the student or kids. This makes safety for the students inside the campus, this also helps teachers to track students’ attendance of lectures at the universities. Of course, some creative minds can invent how to go against this system, but anyway this is a great technology, it saves much time for the teachers while monitoring classroom attendances, while taking safety measures.
2. Online learning platforms – nowadays everyone can get the access to the e-learning platforms such as Future Learn or Coursera and get the degree at any university around the world. So, there are no boundaries for qualitative education, and people can stay within their habitual location without moving away from the city or even the country. Another positive moment I see here is that teachers can also attend the same courses and improve their teaching skills, knowledge and attitude. As for my experience I study online courses from these platforms on the regular basis, it also helps me to improve my language and this is also great bonus for those learning foreign languages.
3. Paperless textbooks – as for me, I am happy the digital textbooks era has come. If to speak about kids it makes it much easier to commute to school with lighter backpack and digital textbook is all the time in tablet it’s impossible to forget. As for the adults with whom I mostly work – they prefer digital textbooks for the same reasons as kids and one more moment – psychologically adults don’t feel being at school. They hate this feeling). And it’s ecological – we save trees and I really value this, I fel making little ecological impact. In my classroom I advise printing out or buying paper based textbook only as reference books and materials. We also forget the trouble of worn out and old textbooks, with numerous marks. Additionally to this, some textbook have become interactive – with the help of some glasses we can see 3d objects or we can have short videos incorporated into the pages. All this makes learning process much more interesting. 
4. Gamification and gamified learning – fortunately teachers have finally realized that kids and children really study better while playing and added games into everyday school routine. This also helps even grown ups – judging from my work experience, they also study with greater interest while having gamification approach  this can be special tips that can be exchanged into additional mark at final tests, or this is some privilege at the test, or opportunity not to do home work. It’s funny but it really works and my clients study even better.
5. Internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) – this is my favorite part of innovations in education. One of the examples here is the Curtin University in Australia where IoT is widely used in the campus. Special program gets the information about classrooms and libraries occupancy, it also aggregates info about courses attendance and then uses this date for better organization of education process.  

•  IoT also changes methods of studies progress and estimation, it helps to monitor progress and make some corrections.
•  Smart desks are supplied with touchscreen for group work – they aggregate progress, mostly ative learners and so on. 
• Virtual classrooms are also one of the perfect examples – where students can get into any location they study now. 
• One of the everyday used options – electronic diary that also helps not to forget to write down the task, to be in touch with parents and kids’ records. 
• Electronic blackboard – whiteboard – is another perfect example to plunge into learning process with greater interest. 
• Online lectures driven by special webcams and special sensors for head helping to monitor brain activity while performing some tasks. 
• Distance learning – even being a student or a schoolchild of a local school or university  u have the opportunity to get the knowledge delivered to your home. 
• VR helmets to assist with getting new information, new experience. 

All this makes the learning process more personalized and more profound but however teachers claim digital literacy, lack of handwriting and lack of attention. Yes, there are such difficulties but anyway progress is really great. IoT and other numerous innovations help people to finally master the material they study. We also have to mention one more innovation – life-long learning – as world changes rapidly and people have to be ready for this with new knowledge. I believe every aspect can have both positive and negative side but I see only positive impact.

I’m a teacher of English and German by education. I used to live and work in the USA and Germany as part of international programs. My second higher education is Human Resources management. After 1st graduation I worked about 7 years in international logistics and my second job was teaching English and German. All this experience helped me to transfer to Business Languages teaching and I opened my online school with students from around the world (almost). I love teaching, interacting with interesting people, read in English and German, I love psychology, do yoga and oil painting and study coaching. I try to bring up my 2 kids as bilinguals. We travel a lot.