How Will Education be Improved in the New Normal?

-Hey there, it's Don from RV Business Coach again, continuing to look at what things might look like in the "new normal."

And again, doing this from a place of curiosity, a place of seeking, a place of trying to create conversation and thinking, "Where are we going and how are things going to change?"

So don't take this as my crystal ball reading, And obviously don't go make business decisions, career decisions, financial decisions, whatever based on my thoughts here.

But it is put out here as an attempt to just let you think about what are possibilities, and what changes might be coming, and how can we leverage those? And how can we leverage those to our benefit?

And also, is there a way to create a business out of that? As we make these changes, some people are going to be uncomfortable with the changes. Some people will need help moving into those changes, and there's potential business opportunities there to help them. So something to think about.

I always say a business starts by solving somebody's need. Recognizing problems and helping people those problems. Solving other people's pains. And so we can look at this and see if there's something there that's worth exploring.

So today I'd like to talk about education. Now, school systems at all levels, from I guess Kindergarten all the way up to college, now are using online learning/remote learning. Something we never thought of just a few short months ago. Or we thought of it only in special cases.

And it's been kind of interesting because it happened very quickly. And that's caused some problems, I think. As I look at stories of remote learning it seems like most of the problems we're having come because we just had to do it so fast. And so a lot of things could not be thought through as well as we'd have liked, could not be solved as well as we would like.

But as I look at the online learning that's going on, and as I talk to other parents, it seems to me like there is tremendous potential here. We may not want to take all of our schools online, but using online as a supplemental education tool has tremendous possibilities.

Think about students who now have access to classes they wouldn't have had access to before. Great learning opportunity there!

And at the same time, the other thing that jumps out at me is for that to really work, we're going to have to solve the Great Digital Divide. I had not realized how great the Digital Divide was until we entered this period of quarantining. And as I've talked to people all around the country, I've realized things that I've just taken for granted-broadband internet access, 4G LTE cellphone access-isn't available everywhere. And a lot of people don't have that, and that really impacts their ability to take advantage of some of the online opportunities that are out there.

So I think really two huge opportunities that we can look at moving forward are:

1. How do we leverage online education to make better education available to more people; and
2. How do we solve the great divide?

Interestingly, just a day or two ago, Jeb Bush wrote an op-ed or an opinion piece about this very thing: digital education/online education. And he made pretty much those same two points. I'll put a link to it in down in the comments, but his comments were similar to what I was thinking which is there's a great opportunity to further education using online as a supplement, perhaps not as a replacement for Classroom education, but as a supplement to classroom education, and we're going to have to resolve the Great Digital Divide. And he has some ideas around doing that. So like I said, I'll post a link to it down in the comments. It's good reading, and will hopefully prompt some thoughts, too.

All right, so what are your thoughts about solving the Great Digital Divide and about using online learning? I'd love to hear it!

Please leave comments and let me know! Take care!