What is the scope of digital education in the future?

According to the Tibetan proverb — “A child without education is like a bird without wings.” Undoubtedly, Education plays a very crucial role in one’s life. But whereas today’s education system is failing to give the students the necessary life skills and all-round development

As Albert Einstein once said, “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in the school.” But what today’s schools are teaching is how to get good marks and more grades. The story is unaltered from Nursery to High school. Take the example of the alphabets, from ages, the students have been taught A for Apple, B for Ball. But no one will encourage the students to think out of the box and come up with some other words starting with A and B. After the years, the student may not remember these words but he will surely remember and follow that out of the box thinking. These are the life skills that the children should know.

A real education has to give equal weight to the arts, the humanities, to physical education — Quoted by Ken Robinson. Even though the current schools have a playground and hobby development centre, the lion share of their concentration goes towards marks and grades. If the student is interested in co-curricular/extra-curricular activities, then the current schooling’s should encourage their interest and help for their all-round development rather than having it as one leisure period in the week.

Because of the above reasons, there comes a need for an alternative school called home-schooling or study from home.

“I have asked many people about their view of studying from home. Their first knee jerk reaction is what are you talking about? Is there a study from home happening? Who knows the future dude? But here are the facts.”

• The situation in the days of our Grandfathers (Past): Many times from many people we have heard our grandparents or parents studied under street lamps, Not because to save power. They did because they don’t have proper electricity. They went to school on foot. Not one or two kilometres but tens of kilometres. Their only source of knowledge transfer was from teachers and books from libraries. Even nowadays most of the top schools didn’t have libraries. You can assume a situation about those days. They have gone through all of these difficult phases because of a lack of facilities and infrastructure.
• The situation in the days of Grandchildren’s (Present): Now the situation is completely different. The electricity supply has improved over the years. Now even rural villages can access the continuous power supply. We have started reading comfortably sitting at our home. We have seen improvement here.

But, We are going to school not by walking. Maybe school bus or personal transport, on an average every student spends 16 years at any educational institution. Even if you allocate one hour per day for the journey between an institution and home. That means you are spending more than one year on travelling. No much change here when we compare the past and present system.
Now let’s dig into the education system. No matter how many students are there in class? But everyone listens to the same lecture from one teacher and reads the same books. Those students who are good at remembering things or have good memory power, they can score more.
I have visited one school very recently and met class 10 standard students. During the interaction, one of the students asked me how to score good marks in Biology. Instead of giving answers, I have asked all the 50 students’ one question. What is photosynthesis? Almost 99% of the students have given the same answer. According to the book, it is correct. The remaining 1% has not framed their sentence correctly. Now I have given my answer to a student. If I am evaluating the answer sheet I will expect different kinds of answers. So that I can evaluate the understanding level of concepts by every individual student. To achieve this every student must have access to read different books on the same concept and listen to different lectures from different teachers, finally, students have the choice to prepare their notes by own and decide what is good or not.
The realization of the above summary is our brain should not work as a memory card. It should act as a Microcontroller. This can be achievable by the Digital education system.

Everybody knows the current situation all over the world. COVID-19 Pandemic has disturbed the normal life cycle of humans. The education sector has suffered a lot. But those problems do not stop signs. They are guidelines. I have been watching many parents’ posts on social media since the last few days about the decision they have taken for their children’s. One of the examples is here.

Let’s talk about digital education system now:

To be sure everybody starts believing Digital platforms can take a lead for improving our education system. As we talk before about electricity. Now the Internet is the main resource needed to achieve Digital system goals. Anyway, most of the reputed companies are working on this now to make it happen. Most of the rural areas are also able to access the internet.
If all goes as planned, what are the advantages students will get?
1. The first advantage is that a student can complete his course online. It is easy to learn and practice because it can be accessed from anywhere and anytime.
2. Availability of guidance from a variety of teachers provides vast options of perspective to look at things differently which will motivate students for innovation.
3. Access the international education system through various platforms.
4. If a student gets doubt at 2 am, He can connect to teachers from different time zones and get clarification at the same time.
5. From the student level, they can publish research papers of their understanding.
6. Concept oriented learning enables deep learning.
7. With the fast-paced development of online media makes easy access to eBooks, PPTs, videos. Which makes more practical understanding? No need to carry tons of books.
8. Augmented reality in education will soon affect the conventional learning process. AR has the potential to change the location and timing of studying, to introduce new and additional ways and methods. Capabilities of Augmented Reality technology may make classes more engaging and information more apprehend able.
9. Artificial Intelligence can help students get additional support from AI tutors. It could change the role of teachers.

So, like every home has Bedroom + Hall + Kitchen concept now. In the future, every home will have a Digital room. We will discuss what should and should not be present in the Digital room in the next blog.
The conclusion is good days are ahead for students. Hope digital and next-generation technologies will uplift the current education system.

Thanks to Teja RK for providing valuable information.

Share your comments if we miss something. Thanks for reading.