Why Corona-times is the piracy-movement

Between streaming and shellac records, we had tapes, CDs, iTunes and piracy in the music industry. Necessary steps before finally ending-up with streaming. So, which is actually the Covid-19-times? Well, it´s not the final structure. It is more like the piracy-movement. Here is the reason why, and what it might lead to, already next year.

Suppose you were a teacher who was told that the next day your classroom would be closed, but that you would still continue your teaching. How would you act? You have limited time, no resources. You would probably sign up all the students on a digital conference service, but otherwise continue, more or less, as before. You chose the simplest, cheapest, and fastest solution.

If we look at the development of Zoom, Teams and Google Classroom in recent months, what I described now is reasonably reasonable to assume: this is actually what has happened.

But you could have done something completely different. For example, you could have asked your students to sign up for any of these free MOOCs that already exist, and then concentrated on developing your own good exam process a few months ahead. It would have been just as easy. No cost. It would also have bought you time. That time could, for example, have been used for developing a good digital exam.

Of course, I do not know if many of the world’s teachers actually did what I suggested now. But the image I got, is that what I now proposed in any case does not seem particularly common.

What I’m trying to say is that, what Covid-19 will leave behind, may not at all be as radical as one might think.

Unless we think about the customers/students…

When piracy downloading in the music industry was at its greatest, a discussion that the entire industry would now fundamentally change arose. But that never happened.

Furthermore, even before file sharing, we had a piracy movement, which neither fundamentally changed the music industry. Home taping ones became a big phenomenon, but not big enough to fundamentally change the music industry.

It wasn’t until we got streaming that the music industry fundamentally changed.

But: after all, it was an extremely important thing that file sharing left behind, which in turn became a prerequisite for streaming, later on, to develop. File sharing taught customers that they could now start finding music online.

Today it is impossible to imagine that we could have streamed music without having had the file sharing-period just before.

It is not at all impossible that it is precisely this thing that, in fact, is Covid-19’s major “contribution” to the education world.

Although we can actually find out if that is the case, in only a little while. It can be measured in terms of measuring the number of students who actually will, or will not, return to the lectures after Covid-19 is over.

In some years, we probably will have some answers to a lot of this. But at this moment my own hypothesis is this: that even if you, as a teacher, will go back to work when Covid-19 is over, and continue as before, the attendance frequency of lectures will go down. A lot.

And that, in itself, can be big enough. Because it can be a trigger for something even bigger a bit later on in time.

Share this post with someone that perhaps believe post-Covid will create a stable situation.