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Is the biggest classroom in the world the screen in front of you?
The screen - whether on a laptop, an iPad, a mobile phone, even that quaint old device a television set - plays a huge part in the lives of young people.
When a student protest ended in London this month, the last knot of marchers did what came naturally - they sat on the edge of the pavement and got out their laptops, glowing like some kind of digital campfire.
Entertainment, socialising and information have become screen-shaped. And a cluster of global online learning projects are bringing education into the frame too.
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| Photo: BBC News |
Among those attracting attention is the Khan Academy, the US-based free online tuition service, which helps youngsters to catch up on lessons and bright children to stretch themselves further.
The combination of broadband, cheaper laptops and iPad-style tablet computers is putting such online teaching services into the mainstream.
The Khan Academy has thousands of step-by-step videos explaining topics in subjects such as maths and science. It's also interactive, allowing individual students to test themselves again and again and then chart their own progress. On tablet devices, students can write directly on to touch screens.
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| Photo: BBC News |
William Dutton of the the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford says traditional universities have struggled to reconcile their teaching with the way that young people now gather information.
Outside the classroom, in "informal learning", the internet is the first place that many people look for information, whether it's using Wikipedia or searching for some specific detail, says Professor Dutton.
"But universities have not figured out how to integrate online information into courses," he says.
But Professor Dutton expects this to change, with all universities likely to shift, at least to some extent, towards "blended" learning, using both face-to-face teaching and online learning.
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Source: BBC News
