Knowledge
What is technology doing to our classrooms?
As a new school term looms on the horizon, there are chances that our students will have a brush with a technology basis of teaching and learning. Technology is set to make learning more engaging and fun.
Back to school season generally witnesses a mad rush to the local stationery store and come back loaded with books, brown covers, plastic covers, pencils and other knick knacks. Today it’s also about visiting your local electronics store and picking up the latest Chromebook laptops and tablets who jostle for space in the childs bag.
Education is an area where new technology has started making inroads and will lead to the greatest transformations. For a country such as India that faces massive problems in the educational sphere, technology may be just what the doctor prescribed.
Lets look at the heart of the problem, lack of adequate infrastructure, sub-standard quality of teaching, missing teachers, high student dropouts and a host of other challenges have prevented us from achieving our goal of 100 % literacy. Technology is capable of reversing this situation and making education an important pillar of national development.
Here’s how. Private sector schools have already embraced state-of-the-art digital methodologies that conform to highest global standards. Such schools now sport whiteboards instead of blackboards, and tablet computers, projectors, digital cameras and online games have made an appearance.
However, this trend has to proliferate and reach schools of all sizes, ownership and student profiles to make a real difference. This will allow high quality education material to reach remote locations, thereby enabling teachers to expand their reach. As a result, the overall efficiency of the education system is expected to improve.
With time, there will be greater deployment of cloud technologies to deliver learning flexibly and conveniently to users. With increasing security, the cloud has emerged as the chosen mode of delivery by institutions like colleges, schools and universities.
Progressive colleges and universities are expanding their virtual footprint across India and reaching the unreached without having to make heavy financial investments. They are simply leveraging the infrastructure provided by service providers to host their programs and make available online courses “off-the-cloud.”
Meanwhile a different breed of educators are setting up their cloud campuses, as a pathway to higher growth. Over the course of the year, many more cloud campuses are set to be launched providing high-quality learning experience on a pay per use mode of usage.
With India boasting the fastest penetration of mobile phones in the world, second only to China, educators are increasingly finding another platform of content delivery in most hands. Educational institutions will offer content, tools, data and assessment services over tablets and mobiles.
Finally, social media will play an epochal role in the educational landscape. Educational institutions have started using social media as communication platforms with their learners and connect them to faculty. Research has proven that social media platforms, when integrated with student programs have the power to boost student participation while reducing dropout rates.
Further, we can expect collaboration as one of the most used tools in education. This trend, currently diven by portals such as Moodle, Google Documents ― allows students to share notes, upload assignments, and chat with peers and teachers ― will become more popular.
It is becoming increasingly clear that technology has the power to draw India’s educational system into the 21st century, making it a powerful driver of the country’s economy.