Oam Patel
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Compared to traditional education, online learning is empowering: the most freeing educational experience I’ve ever had.
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– Oam Patel
Khan Academy plays a distinct jingle for correct answers. It also plays a distinctly disappointing buzz for wrong answers. I know them both well; I’ve had the past 7 years to form a vivid connection.
I first used Khan Academy in 5th grade. What started as a passing click turned into near addiction. Khan Academy made learning accessible while gamifying the process. Soon enough, I was looking so far as trigonometry! I had no clue what the shapes meant, but the online format made it too easy to keep trying. Over the next several years, I used Khan Academy consistently. I liked racking up points, I liked positive jingles, and I liked the feeling of floundering when I’m immersed in something new.
That’s learning: hard, uncomfortable, and frustrating, yet simultaneously so promising and rewarding. Personally, though, one criterion laid the foundation for it all: freedom.
Compared to traditional education, online learning is empowering: the most freeing educational experience I’ve ever had.
Freedom from Limitation:
I was born in rural India in 2003; I moved to the US when I was barely 3. One of my earliest memories is of my first school: two green chalkboards and dirt floors. I’m quite thankful we moved. Our conditions today are, objectively speaking, better. In terms of educational opportunity, Mountain Home, ID is a stream compared to rural India’s droplets.
Yet, even then, this is rural Idaho. Teachers rotate in and out, the poverty rate is 40% higher than the national average, and test scores are lower than even Idaho’s averages. I’ve often felt limited with my education in Mountain Home. I say that not to sound ungrateful because, truly, I could not be more grateful to be here. I say that as a point of comparison. Equality of opportunity starts with educational access. Rural locales present a barrier.
Technology, especially online learning, breaks that barrier. It’s given me access to a waterfall’s worth of knowledge, more than what I could drink in a lifetime.
By about 9th grade, I’d finished every math and CS course offered on Khan Academy, farther than even what my high school offered at the time. Thankfully, I came across several online resources: Coursera, EdX, MIT’s OCW, and the Idaho Digital Learning Academy. I was able to explore areas I hadn’t known about, areas not even my teachers had known about. I can’t emphasize how freeing it felt. If I put my mind to it, I could understand and hopefully contribute to even the most advanced of fields. It’s shaped my interests and goals: I wish to give back to the bank of knowledge from which I’ve borrowed. Absent online opportunities, my personal development and future plans would be very different.
Freedom of Curriculum:
The typical school curriculum is rigid, designed to meet the needs of the typical student. However, “typical” is often defined as the average of all students, and yet, in the average lies no one. We’re all different: ahead in certain areas, behind in others, individual in our attributes.
With online courses, I’m able to learn at my own pace, whenever and however I choose. More options mean more opportunities. I feel I learn more and in a shorter time while online. Even for those who prefer in-person learning, though, online courses are valuable since they free up time. For example, I’m only taking four “normal” classes my senior year. I take the rest online and receive credit in areas that truly fascinate me. Absent online education, my flame for learning would be standardized and stifled.
Freedom Against Challenges:
The elephant in the room is COVID. Soon after it hit Idaho in mid-March 2020, schooling went online. Even now, close to a year later, schooling is hybrid: two days live, the rest asynchronous online work. It was a necessary change. The online curriculum allowed education to survive in a world where life itself was almost forced to close. Unfortunately, the transition has been rough. I’ve tried my best to help others having an especially difficult time.
I’m grateful I had experience with online learning far prior to COVID. I feel better prepared to handle unexpected challenges. The online environment gives freedom to address difficulties on one’s own terms. This is true not only for global crises, like COVID, but also for individual ones: appointments, illnesses, and family. Absent online learning, I would lose my flexible approach to education.
All in all, I’ve taken about 20 online courses for credit. Online learning has been integral to my development, not only for what it shows on my transcript but for the attitude it’s instilled. Given my locale, I’ve had to take the initiative to search for online opportunities, and I’m so grateful I did. Though every online course has varied in its curriculum, my personal response to each has been the same: a sense of relief. I can’t emphasize enough just how freeing online learning has been for me.