TECHNOLOGY IN TIMES OF COVID – and how it helps in boosting education

— VANDANA DEVI SREEJITH

A classroom in 1991:- The teacher walks into the classroom with an armful of books. She greets the class and turns to write on the blackboard. Her students, meanwhile, spend most of their time rummaging through endless books and stationery, trying to find the right ones while half listening to their teacher’s words.

Fast forward to 2020:- The Covid pandemic has hit humanity worldwide. People remain closeted in their homes, hugging on to their lives while shops and schools remain shut. The tech savvy generation that they are, kids happily play on their parents’ gadgets with scant regard for what’s happening outside, while parents and teachers alike fret over the waste of their child’s valuable academic year.

Enter Online Education. A special kind of technology based learning methodology that answers parents’ prayers while alleviating the woes of educators to a great extent. A solution that is a definite win-win for everyone involved, as it is easier to keep the attention of a kid focused on a gadget than on a blackboard. Technology offers unprecedented solutions, and hitherto unexplored avenues to enhance the learning experience, not only for students but also for schools and teachers alike. While animation videos and graphics can be effectively used to teach challenging concepts to smaller children, college going students can benefit from explanatory videos that instruct them thoroughly without the need for a mediator. Technology helps everyone follow the norms of social distancing well by converting face to face classroom interaction to online lectures on video-based digital platforms. Such learning becomes more personalized, as students are now able to tune out distractions that are common in classrooms, learn at their own pace by replaying videos or lectures as and when necessary, and are free from peer pressure to perform well in front of others, thereby bringing back a sense of calm and genuine curiosity to learning.

Learning Management Systems developed by experts such as AGAM are now being touted as a one stop solution for schools and colleges alike. Priced reasonably for their end users, it offers customized software that can not only help institutes in tracking admissions, managing fees and monitoring daily attendance, but can also support educators in devising lesson plans, scheduling examinations and handling the daily work flow. It brings a host of benefits over traditional methods of teaching, as LMS based models can ensure more transparency in the parent-school interaction, and facilitate a student guided approach to teaching, that focusses on allowing students to understand concepts deeply, while moving through the pre-designed curriculum at a faster pace.

The biggest benefit, however, is how the world of teaching has transformed into one big platform overnight since the advent of the pandemic. Regardless of subject or region, teachers all over the world have taken to conducting classes online, while continuing to interact personally with their students. While teachers enjoy the benefits of teaching across borders or instructing the wards of their competitors, students now have access to a wider range of specialists, from whom they can pick and choose the ones most suited to them. A French student, for example, can choose to learn directly from a native teacher, sitting in France instead of attending French classes within his locality. The rising cases of Covid has encouraged educators around the world to collaborate on teaching methods with the help of technology, and to use digital solutions to refine education to suit modern day sensibilities and values.

In short, as our day to day life becomes more and more dependent on technology, it makes sense to digitalize the education sector as well, which is not just the most feasible solution during this global crisis, but is also hands down the best way to introduce our future generation to the miracles of the online world!