No-one likes Covid-19. But 290 million children out of school, industry workers staying home, and regions in quarantine, means something. 24 000 new online courses, 7000 serves, even Satellites are now used, and that only in China. Italy, France, Harvard are now closing, and stocks skyrocket. Will today’s server-capacity even hold? Here some useful links.
UNESCO is tracking how schools all over the globe handle this:
Italian Ministry of Education have set up a “support-site” for schools that wants to head into E-learning fast:
https://www.istruzione.it/coronavirus/index.html
Harvard and MIT and lot of other universities are now also closing. France just closed all of them.
But that is actually nothing compared to what China already has done:
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=2020022108360325
Should we then be surprised that Zhang Bangxin, founder of Chinese E-learning company TAL Education, has increased his wealth with about 20 % just during the last month? They are listed in New York and the stock; well, you already get the message:
And the list in this article on how other E-learning-companies have increased their stock prices definitely ought to create some attention:
https://www.classcentral.com/report/china-moocs-coronavirus/
Are we then to be surprised that also digital conference services are increasing heavily:
Sever-capacity then? Well, have a look here for instance. At my own university, Zoom already seems to brake down from time to time due to lot of teachers suddenly starting to use it. Even Xbox are jamming up. But then, maybe, Skype is managing a bit better at this moment. Anyhow: Downdetector as such is at least probably doing pretty well at this moment.
How about Malware then? “Perfect” time for it, right?
But what is then actually happening under the surface?
Could it be that a lot of the students, teachers, parents, industry-workers etc that previously were hesitant about E-learning are now forced into it, no matter if they like it or not? Could then some of them also find it to be far better than they expected? Will then all of them actually go back to “the old methods” ones this Covid-19-problem (hopefully) has blown over?
Isn´t it very reasonable to expect that E-learning as such now, on a permanent basis, have stepped up to a higher level compared to before?
And are we to be surprised if existing server-capacity might become the problem “of today” pretty soon…perhaps already?
Disruptive Education 