E-Library

Ignoring the fact that ebooks, and PDFs are cheaper than hardbacks, it takes a lot more energy to carry multiple books to school, than it does to simply login on a laptop, Kindle, or tablet.

With groups like the LSE Digital Library and World Digital Library expanding quickly, and even holding rarer edition of books, it’s easy to see why they are beating hardback services.

Publishing companies such as Harper Collins openly discuss online books as the future.

Documentries, movies, and more

Many people remember the wheeling in of a small television, and a VHS/DVD being played, but in 2013, it’s simpler for the teacher to have a MacBook attached to an ActivBoard play a Channel 4 OD/BBC iPlayer/Hulu/YouTube video.

Groups like BrainPOP specialize in creating multimedia content for all ages and types of students, from flash games, to interactive quizzes.

International revenue for digital game-based learning in 2012 totalled $1.5bn, Education Week has reported.

Online exams

Many online exam-based services can be exposed to hacks, tricks, and other ways to get third party info on an upcoming exam.

However, with more and more universities based online and over 1.5m homeschooled students in The United States alone, online exams make sense.


Educreation

One of the most annoying things as a student is having to scramble through illegible notes, half-drawn charts and images, and more. Educreation allows teachers and professors to either record in-lesson or at home via an iPad, laptop or iPhone, the exact audio and on-screen images/text the teacher is discussing.

You can watch in real time, or pause, rewind, and fast-forward to the part you need.

Research

Similarly to E-Libraries, the internet provides us with a whole host of online resources from the dark depths of a Wikileak PDF to help with your NSA exam paper, to a Spanish translator to help write an essay.

Online resources allow us to access information in the classroom, on the go, and at home to help support our very important learning.

International language barriers, which may have stopped a student from reading a piece on Syria from a French newspaper are now gone with full-page translators. All this and more prove that the classroom is heading very quickly to the computer.