Technology is changing the way people learn and access information, especially due to COVID dragging education to be more online (World Economic Forum & UNESCO, 2020) Education has always followed a structural-type of classroom model that goes back to Industrial Revolution, where teachers would deliver information to students in a more standardized way. Even though the system has evolved over time, the basic structure has remained similar (Module 4). However, the newer and more modern technologies and online platforms are changing the way students are now interacting with the educational material and how they learn outside the classroom.

One technology that unexpectedly impacted my own education was TikTok.

Introduction: Technology and Education

During the final year of my high school education, I struggled a lot with chemistry. My teacher moved quickly through lessons and often wrote notes very fast on the white board and then erased them very fast, which made it difficult for me to fully understand. Even when I tried to ask questions, I sometimes still felt confused about topics like atoms, elements, and chemical bonding.

Around the time midterms were approaching, I was feeling extremely stressed and worried that I might fail the course. One day while using TikTok, which I normally used only for entertainment, I wondered if anyone actually posted educational content there.

While searching, I found a creator who posted very organized chemistry notes (Kline, D. 2005) and short videos explaining difficult concepts. Her videos broke down complicated topics into simple explanations and showed step-by-step ways to solve chemistry questions.

The Incident (My Story)

Finding those videos felt like a huge breakthrough for me. The explanations were slower, clearer, and easier to follow compared to the way I experienced them in class. I started watching more of her videos whenever I studied chemistry.

Through these TikTok explanations, I began to better understand the concepts I was struggling with like:

Because the videos were short and easy to replay, I could review them multiple times until I fully understood the topic.

How It Changed My Learning