Let's talk about virtual education

Dear readers, since the appearance of the internet we have shortened distances and no matter where we are without a good connection we can be present at any event or activity, for this, a great diversity of tools have been developed to keep us informed and communicated, which has revolutionized education for an open and distance learning process, giving way to what we know as distance or virtual education.

A few years ago this type of education could be considered as novel, but nowadays it is an everyday thing that educational institutions have adopted at different levels, especially university, which guarantees that a variety of academic alternatives can be provided to a greater number of people worldwide, covering the study needs of society where the physical presence of people is not fundamental, which can maintain the balance of those who work, managing your time well and at any time depending on the conditions or methodology implemented by the educational institute.

In the aforementioned, it is precisely where distance or virtual education has shown to be more effective where time and space limitations are not a problem, coupled with didactic methods and techniques that can make the teaching-learning process flexible, because virtual education has led to the inclusion of new strategies and others that have been adapted from existing ones. That is, there is a kind of evolution where didactic strategies to transmit knowledge have been adapted to new contexts where it is not necessary for students and teachers to be in the same place and at the same time.

Virtual education offers the possibility of teaching education at any distance, it is also characterized by the insertion of multimedia contents in the teaching materials, combined with communication tools that provide more opportunities for knowledge exchange and collaboration between students, teachers and other learners. Virtual teaching and learning environments have attracted the interest of many educators, who see in them the potential to make education more efficient and flexible,

The use of educational technology in computer-mediated communication is an effective way to improve communication performance, promote integration between virtual participants, support collaborative learning, and increase motivation in e-learning contexts. In view of technology, these allow the student, rather than acquiring knowledge and reproducing it, to develop processes that reflect their understanding and conception of information; since through these cognitive tools the student actively participates in the interpretation of the external world with the application of different techniques such as verbal reports while working during the instruction, in order to subsequently make inferences about their thought processes.

Dear readers, it can be evidenced that the different strategies of traditional face-to-face education can be useful in some aspects of virtual education but without a doubt with the use of the different tools offered by new technologies and especially the use of the Internet, allows students to have access to all kinds of information should only be oriented to know how to identify the type of useful and quality content; in the education of the past, the levels of consultation were lower, you could only have access to texts and communication with other classmates and with the teacher.

In this sense, specialists such as Wilson (1997), points out that search engines, emails, tools for discussion and conference, for group work and collaboration, as well as multimedia presentation technologies, from there, a coherent instructional design adapted to current contexts can be established.