The future of digital education in Stirling with full fibre

While homeworking has been quietly on the rise for several years, the pandemic-driven shift to home-learning for students of all ages has been sudden and dramatic. Overnight, desks and classrooms became tablets and kitchen tables, creating new barriers and challenges nobody could have ever imagined or planned for.

If we’ve learned anything over the past year, it’s that broadband is as important as water and electricity to our everyday lives, and that we need to level up access if all our learners are to benefit from the next generation of educational tools.

This is why CityFibre is building a city-wide full fibre network that will bring almost every property in Stirling within reach of the fastest, most reliable and highest capacity connectivity available.

Future of education

Besides connectivity, a second reason why many students have had a mixed experience of home-based learning is that they haven’t yet had the opportunity to try out more of the digital tools that are now emerging and find one that suits them.

We all learn differently, and in the classroom, it is much easier for the teacher to adapt to different students’ needs.

The good news is that digital technology has become a platform for the development of new approaches to learning that make it possible to personalise it to the students’ needs, capabilities and learning styles.

Of course, the success of innovations like these depends wholly on the infrastructure that supports them. Digital connectivity is a crucial enabler of these technological leaps in remote education and training.

Immersive learning

Going back to personalised learning, the best and easiest way to achieve this is by creating immersive learning experiences.

Can you imagine being able to put on a headset and experiencing the sights and sounds of the Colosseum at the touch of a button, rather than just reading about Rome in a textbook?

With technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), this is all a real possibility – at all levels of education. VR simulators, for example, are already being used to train the armed forces and even surgeons.

A strong connection

Ultimately, if remote learning methods and new technologies are to become accessible to all, it’s essential that all homes are supported by digital infrastructure that won’t let learners down.

Unfortunately, this is simply not the case with much of our existing communications infrastructure, which was built to carry telephone signals, not data. Currently, less than 20% of premises in the UK have access to full fibre.

However, CityFibre is giving Stirling a boost by building a new full fibre network that’s future-proofed.

Designed specifically for the digital age, full fibre networks use 100% full fibre technology to carry data at light speed all the way from the home to the point of connection – think of a pristine open highway with no bumps in sight.

This gives users consistently faster speeds - for upload and download and near limitless bandwidth (i.e. everyone in your house can work, study, stream or game simultaneously).

With full fibre, you’ll never need to worry about you or your child missing a lesson at home ever again!

To check availability and keep an eye on which broadband services are live in your street, visit cityfibre.com.