Can online videos help us educate every person in the world?

At the same time the world population keeps growing to a number that seemed impossible to imagine a hundred years ago, a world where education helps every human being realize her full potential is becoming a more likely scenario.

We’re living interesting times, and the Internet and online videos are becoming very important players in that beautiful vision.

Let me share a story with you that highlights the possibilities we have in front of us…

Nicole is a 15-years-old and a high school student who lives in Oakland, California, and has a passion for basketball. Last night, after finishing the daily basketball practice with her team, Nicole had dinner with her family and then went to her bedroom to watch the math lecture that Ms. Rodriguez, Nicole’s teacher, had recommended her for the next day.

The lecture was about graphs of parabolic equations. The examples given in the video were about basketball shots and their representation using parabolas. Interestingly enough, the video lecture had been recorded by a teacher in Chicago who was not only a mathematician and an excellent communicator, but also a former coach of the Chicago Bulls.

It was already late in the night and Nicole couldn’t finish watching the lecture. But next morning, while she was having breakfast, Nicole started watching the rest of it in her phone. By the time the school bus arrived to Skyline High School, Nicole was ready to work with her classmates on that day’s project.

During the last 3 years, thousands of middle school students around the world had used the same video to get ready for their classes.

The story of Nicole is not a story of the future of education, it’s a story that’s happening everywhere around us today — In 2014, the Speak Up National Research Project reported that, of the 431,241 students in grades kindergarten through twelfth who took the online survey, almost half indicated they regularly used videos as part of their homework.

Now, even if the potential of online videos for personalized and self-paced learning is incredible, what’s even more interesting is to think about the capacity of those videos to reach people who don’t have access to a good school or good teachers today.

As the Internet penetration rises and organizations work hard to guarantee that everyone has access to the Internet, the idea of a world where everyone has the potential to learn about anything and everywhere becomes a reality.

The challenge is not easy though. Not everyone has access to the Internet yet and problems like poverty, domestic violence or mental illness can prevent any kid from being able to even click on the play button. Hopefully, educators, parents, psychologists, social workers and technologists will work together to break those barriers.

Unlike real-time lectures provided in the classroom, videos can scale and reach millions of people. Wouldn’t it be beautiful to live in a world where everyone can become whoever they want to be? That world is right in front of us.