COVID-19’s Impact on Life and Education.

Young people are engaging in so many important topics such as love and meaning and justice. The arrival of COVID-19 brought a new set of questions about how we learn and communicate with one another. How do I talk to you without being near you? How do I learn with no one to teach me? 

All of us became globally connected and we realized how much we need each other. This made an impactful difference to the way we communicate. We learnt to connect with each other in ways that were foreign before, on collaborative platforms like Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams. 

The IT industry thrived during 2020. Companies who took an innovative approach to remote working and learning have boomed. An excellent example of this is Microsoft. Not only has the number of daily Microsoft Teams users increased from 17 million in April 2020 to 115 million in November but the volume of users opting for Microsoft 365 has been skyrocketing since remote working and learning began. Tenacious teachers who had never taught remotely before, took the opportunity, and embraced daunting challenges with great success. 

The way students absorb, and process information has drastically changed. Learners have gone from passively absorbing information to actively engaging and applying their learning to real-world problems. Skills like conflict resolution, problem solving, creativity, and independence were strengthened through distance learning. The benefits of using digital education tools to enhance teaching and engage students have become self–evident. 

With the exponential growth in the utilization of these powerful tools for teaching and learning, we are beginning to realize that everyone can learn to communicate in new ways. As we embrace this, we might just start seeing the world around us changing for the better. 

Written by: Anna Blank (Intern at NBConsult Learning)