Education after Internet era - a teacher of the future (part 1)


We all already know, the huge impact of the internet in our life. It has been infiltrated our daily life impact-fully, so smooth, it hard for us to resist it anymore, and slowly and willingly we succumb to its power. My niece, a 3-year-old cute and innocent lil girl, now has learned—by herself—to open Youtube and play her favorite song. My niece, a 5-year-old active lil boy, has learned to download a game from the internet and call, send a voice message to people by his choice—without the help from his mom at all. In fact, there is no one in my family who has taught him how to use a phone. My father, a man who has introduced me to love of reading - who has tons of books in his bookshelves—who once resist using a phone—now play and learn from Youtube video every morning, I rarely see him touching his books or buying a new one anymore. 

This kind of invasion has also affected so many people, even to me as well. Though I've tried my best to put the damage it in check, by rarely opening my gadget. However, these days the impact of the internet not only invading my personal and social life but also professionally—in classroom. I remember helping one of the teachers in North Aceh, Indonesia—one of the most isolated areas in Indonesia—downloading tons of lesson plan for his lesson. 

"Last 5 years, before the internet is available in our area, we used to spend day and night to make lesson plan, now we can access this awesome lesson plan from the internet and use it in our class, we can even show our students, a lesson-related animatic video." He said. 

Furthermore,  In the urban school—where internet just right on the student's fingertips—it's even more advanced. "My English teachers rarely come to the class, he usually sends us the video to watch then we took the quiz from the video given, online too by google classroom." said one of my students about her English teacher in high school. Uniquely, her English score is still good, unlike the common assumption that students need to learn directly, face to face,  and spoon-fed by the teachers. Some of my students buy the online course from a well-known education company, so they can understand the lesson better and re-learn it near the exam date. Some of them choose to google it, and surf from there until they get the material they want to learn.

So do I.

I don't own a degree in education, but I've taken a lot of free online courses on education and teaching for free; introduction of teaching and learning, future of education, teaching character, teaching English as a second language, learning and teaching IELTS, and many more. I improve my IELTS score, learning Japanese and Russian online. Basically, when I don't know something I google it and VOILA! 

I know it, I get the knowledge. That easy, that fast!

To the extent, that I realized, nowadays because of the Internet, I can acquire any knowledge easily in my fingertips, without any teacher in a class lecturing me about the knowledge like in the traditional classroom.

But then, if it's true, where does this leave us? Where do teachers go from here?

In the future, there is a high chance of the function of a classroom teacher to explain a material will be replaced by some online course superteachers on the internet, who—frankly speaking—teaches awesomely well with a well-built lesson plan and mesmerizing videography that will make our students engaged more in learning.

Where does this leave us? When our students got a question, they—just like me—would ask google and POOF! they got the answer. The answer will be more varied, enriching and deep at the same time.

Where do our students go from here? When they want answers, they would prefer to go to the kind- never angry and not judging google-guru.


I believe this change is impossible to be defied. More than that, teachers need to embrace this changes by shifting the mindset from a person who spoon-feeds knowledge to his/her students to someone who facilitates effective learning and teaching in class because the knowledge can be accessed by the students themselves (read: Google). Becoming a person who will be more focus on facilitating the students' creative, innovative mindset and real-life skill as well as providing encouragement of good behavior.

By that I believe our skill as a real guru—who empower creativity and innovation—can be truly unleashed. Becoming, revised, transforming to become a teacher of the future. A teacher after internet era.

That topic will be written more on the next post.
Until later, then!

Nurul Bahirah







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