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Rise Of Technology In Teaching And Education
Profound personalities like Albert Einstein in his quote‘Intelligence is the ability to change’have been profoundly keen in showing the importance of ‘change’,which is the only permanent element of life. Continuing its trend, change has again shown us its existence during this egregious Covid-19 pandemic. Take it business, industries, education, start-ups, media, jobs etc. everything’s nature has changed drastically. But the most noticeable change that we have observed is in education. Education was perceived to be associated with a formal building namely a school where children would come to ‘enlighten’ themselves, and that education will cease to exist without it. This is what most of us thought when a pandemic struck us. But the game changer was when online education came into play unexpectedly.
The type of versatility and convenience provided by online education was unbelievable. Nobody foresaw the possibility that technology could play such a crucial role in ensuring education during this crisis. Technology, associated with mobile phones - stereotypically regarded as ‘nemesis to education’ were now seen as ‘aid and ally to education’. And why not? It was now possible to conduct virtual classes with great ease without worrying anything about Covid protocols. Online education gave hope of education to 2.2 billion children of this world when all seemed dark. But was it universally accessible?
As every coin has two sides, online education too had many shortcomings. According to UNICEF, only 1/3rd of children in the world had internet access. This lack of internet accessibility just supersedes the advantages offered by online education. Most children having internet access were lukewarm in indulging in education virtually. Some felt it boring, some felt their joy of enjoying pandemic’s holiday was taken away, while some thought virtual class did not have any source of enjoyment that real classes had. It was also difficult to carry out the examination process while ensuring fair conduct. Also, children’s social life was affected adversely. The curriculum and examination date for the entrance examination as well as its procedure was under serious question. But all in all, what we could have got or not is not a question, what was available to us in this crisis is most important. One can argue about its shortcomings till the end of time but was there any alternative to it? But yes, improvement is always an option.
So, we see that importance of the correlation between education& technology has come to our notice finally in the pandemic. Although this sector was gaining popularity with ed-tech investment reaching 18.9 billion $ in 2019 but pandemic has opened it to infinite possibilities. And due to this, ed-tech overall market value is expected to reach whopping 350 billion $ by 2025. Whether be virtual apps, language apps, video conferencing apps, learning apps there has been a massive surge in these during covid-19. These ed-tech companies are blooming and becoming multi-national corporations. This ‘revolution’ in education has brought many innovative technological facilities which did not exist earlier. From Byjus to Un-academy to Vedantu there are numerous ed-tech companies which have thrived. Various start-ups have also prospered.
Well off sections of society have constantly supported the increased influence of technology in education but it is being argued that this revolution is shifting education from its fundamentals. Education was supposed to be a universal and basic right of every individual. The objective of education should be to give knowledge to everyone and harness a good human in them, with no selfishness. But now education is slowly turning into a business where education is feasible only to privileged ones so as to make profits, which is just a side way opposite to its fundamentals. The increased influence of technology and multi-national companies in education has made it so expensive that it exceeds annual fees of schools too. Already, remotely available education may just become more remote.
Technology is a great asset which continuously improves standards of our life. The influence of technology in education has facilitated us in providing quality education even in crisis. But accessibility and the feasibility of technology is surely a point to be concerned about. Technology will surely benefit education but only if it is provided to all of mother earth’s children with universal accessibility at a rational cost.