Technology in Schools Is Transforming Lives

The education system of a super-power aspiring India needs to go through tremendous amounts of change to keep pace with the education system of developed nations where digital education is the norm for the day. The present government’s Digital India programme shall lay special emphasis on the development of teachers to enhance pedagogies and ensure uniform quality of teaching across the country.

We know that technology cannot replace teachers, but only complement them.

The key lies in using digital platforms and solutions to deliver secure and quality content and more importantly provide access to quality teachers. Educational technology shall change education for the better – make it more affordable and accessible.

This is more important in the Indian context because we have a massive deficit of access to high-quality education till college level due to several seemingly insurmountable challenges, ranging from geographical distribution to socio-economic condition of the learners who attend a majority of Indian educational institutions.

Also, the cost of educating one of the world’s greatest populations has been steadily increasing and there is an expectation that technology may make education affordable for those who are so far unable to benefit from the same.

Educational technology in India

Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating e-learning, which is the learning and improving performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technological processes and resources. The earliest innovations and successful educational technology business models were created around providing software and hardware to make the classroom experience better.

Educational technology will be employed in the spread of useful information, the training and retraining of teachers, to improve quality education, sharpen awareness of art and culture and inculcate abiding values etc. both in the formal and non-formal sectors.

Providing hardware and multimedia content to make classrooms more lively, more interactive and to reduce dependency on the quality of teachers as finding good teachers is one the biggest challenges especially in rural areas.

Technology is often seen as a solution to improving learning and teaching, but what exactly does this look like in Indian schools? Which types of technology are being used? Does technology enhance learning in this context, and if so – how? Can technology be successfully used in government and low-income private schools in rural India?

According to a study by the British council, there are a lot of enthusiastic teachers and organizations using technology to enhance learning and aims to inspire further action from others working in similar contexts. The study also highlights the innovative ways in which teachers, schools and organizations are using technology to improve student learning and teacher development across the length and breadth of India.

Here are five reasons why technology is a must in education

1. Access to a variety of resources

With the help of technology, it is easy to provide audio-visual education. The learning resources are being widened and learners are encouraged to regard computers as tools to be used in all aspects of their studies.

2. Enhanced learning

The entirely new learning environment is changing the process of teaching and learning. How? By adding elements of vitality to learning environments including virtual environments for the purpose. Critical thinking, research, and evaluation skills are growing in importance as students have increasing volumes of information from a variety of sources.

3. Learn from anywhere

With the help of technology the pace of imparting knowledge is very fast. One can study whenever they want irrespective of whether it is day or night and irrespective of being in any part of the world. Internets support thousands of different kinds of operational and experimental services, one of which is an online library that can be used to get plenty of data.

4. Opportunities for online interaction

Peer to peer learning can be very important, and a class should continue to interact and learn collaboratively even after class hours. This idea led many social learning platforms to come up. In India, pagalguy.com is a good example, but there are not too many other instances of social learning, especially for primary and high school education.

5. Mobile learning

Typically in India, more people have access to smartphones with the internet as opposed to computers with broadband connections. This is a big cause of investing significantly in mobile-based learning technology. No doubt putting learning resources in the phone itself turns it into a very useful tool.

Roshini Muthukumar

Roshini Muthukumar, a native of Chennai, started her career as a content writer but made a switch to journalism to pursue her passion. She has experience writing about human interest stories, innovative technology, entrepreneurs, research blogs, and more. Previously, Roshini has done internships with The Hindu, Metroplus and worked as a correspondent with The Better India.