Smart education to improve skillsets of students

Smart education is playing an important role in the education sector. It has helped in improving the skill sets of students and made learning more interactive and engaging.

A Greek philosopher once said, “The only constant in life is change.” The same goes for technology, which has become extremely advanced in the past few years and brought many changes in our daily lives. It has also modernized various sectors, including education and learning. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has played a key role in changing the dynamics of modern-day education, teaching and learning. Certainly, the conception of time and space has been changed by ICT, offering new ways to access information and change the development of knowledge. The usage of mobile phones in learning has created the idea that the places either physical or virtual are no more relevant; on the contrary, they are becoming increasingly necessary and the design of learning environments needs to coordinate the various places where a person can learn, integrating formal and informal situations. As an essential aspect of adaptation and personalization, it is also vital that mobile devices incorporate location details. The use of mobile devices gives users the ability to build and monitor more facets of real-world environments or contexts based on location.

ICT is deeply integrated into classrooms and coaching centres and has completely changed the traditional methods of teaching. It has also improved the skill sets of students such as global awareness, critical thinking and problem solving, communication and collaboration, social and cross-cultural skills and self-direction.

The instructor is the main source of knowledge in a typical classroom, where the students are foreseen to remain in the same position besides engage in the routine activity concurrently, where  the situation of pervasive learning activity for each student may be carried out in a different place and time. Furthermore, flexible teaching aids for teaching are available in any computer, at all times.

These days learning is not only about gaining knowledge, but also developing intrapersonal and cognitive skills. As rightly said by experts, the efficacy and success of learning depend not only on the outside environment, but also on the suitability of the learning process.

Smart learning is nothing but an amalgamation of technologies. It includes three imperative parameters—learning outcomes, learning behaviour and mental systems.

The paradigm shift in education.

Smart education offers a huge paradigm shift in the way students access education. The rapid changes in technology make it difficult for teachers to understand what the future will be like in the coming years. Smart education solves this quandary with the use of cutting-edge technologies that help both teachers and students to prepare themselves for the road ahead. The unique aspect is that it can be done in both physical and virtual environments.

While speaking about smart education and its benefits in the coming years, we need to understand the importance of technology in education and how it is going to shape the future. The current research report from Technavio expects that the smart classroom market in India will grow at a CAGR of more than twenty percent in 2020. College, coaching and school classrooms are now furnished with state-of-the-art tech-based educational tools that completely wipe out the traditional methods of education. Electronic items such as projectors and document cameras have made colleges and schools smarter and eco-friendly.

Benefits of smart education. While speaking about various aspects of smart education, we need to look at the various benefits it offers to the education sector. This sector has already adopted tech-based teaching methods with the use of interactive intelligent boards, projectors, smart notebooks, etc. No doubt, these gadgets make teaching sessions much more interactive and engaging.

Interactive sessions. Students’ engagement rate has escalated by 55 per cent globally after the introduction of technology in schools and colleges, as per a report by Gallup. Instead of traditional blackboards, Smartboards are now being used in schools to help teachers and college professors give lectures more effectively by utilizing various projections. In addition, teachers can explain their chapters more easily with the help of special effects and graphics.

Role of online resources. A smart classroom is furnished with projectors and digital display boards that help teachers to provide practical solutions from the Internet in a trouble-free manner. Students can also look for various topics on the Internet related to their subjects.

Upgraded learning. With the use of smart technology and electronic gadgets, information can be shared more effectively with the use of photos, maps, graphs, flowcharts, and animated videos. It makes teaching sessions and learning more interactive, easy to understand and fascinating. Topics can be understood much better through visuals rather than just reading from the blackboard.

Time-saving. This is another major benefit of smart education. In the conventional methods of studies, students need to prepare long hand-written notes, whereas smart education aids students to make presentations online and get feedback from their teachers in much lesser time. The same goes for teachers as well as they do not need to worry about giving verbal or written notes because presentations can be shared directly with all the students.

Conclusion. Overall, understanding of technology offers enhanced skills required for a digital future. Teachers, on the other hand, are also required to learn new technologies and methods of executing them in conventional classrooms with the utilization of ICT. By implementing sophisticated learning techniques, such as online virtual classrooms, virtual learning environments, cloud servers, smartphones, etc, teachers can help students grasp more out of learning.