This week of our learning journey has been focused on the role and importance of our learning environment, that during the past year of COVID19 pandemic has moved our classrooms to online surroundings. And I think that the topic is really interesting, especially that everyone has different literacy for digital tools, experiences, needs and opinions about. It is all shaping our experience of education in the digital era.

All of us have been exposed to virtual tools some extent, being it social media, communication apps, work related apps, gaming and entertainment, as well as knowledge sharing. We all might already got addicted to constant news flows, notifications and legendary ‘fear of missing out’ (FOMO). Knowledge and experience with usage of these solutions is certainly impacting our experience with online learning. Another very important aspect is the conditions to work and learn remotely from home, as we all have different housing conditions, family situation and internet connection.

But what seems the most important is the importance of building trust that can feel very hard online, or even impossible. I have been thinking about it for some days already and concluded that it is equally hard to achieve online as face-to-face. Building trust is in my opinion about honesty and keeping up our promises, as well as admitting that we are not perfect, and we also have our issues and challenges in every situation. Similarly, I think that the effectiveness of learning is not about the tool, nor mode, but the content. Despite very few areas of education there are really hard to teach online (mostly artistic, like sports, music, painting), many areas that can be easily and effectively passed online when the teacher is well prepared (e.g. lecturing on theories, phenomena, techniques and case studies). I think that it is all about the people and their attitude to given task, so it’s always crucial that we stay positive and open in our common journey forward!