leader speak
Meeting the Needs of Digital Age Technology infrastructures must be in tune with new age requirements
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he use of technology is linked to outcomes. So in education space, we must focus on the impact that technology is having on students. In the current scenario, even the graduates who have had their education are not job ready. The second aspect is that of adopting IT. How and where does a school start? How do they go about with it? Third aspect of the discussion is research, which we have done with around 1000 private K12 schools in India. Children are growing up in the Digital Age, but the infrastructure has still not matched up to the requirements. We used to have computer labs in the school to start with, but in a few years,
computers in every classroom became essential. Now, it is important to have one PC for every student. Laptops and tablets are gaining a strong hold in education. If you look at kids today, they have different learning styles. So we talk about a Wack learning style, which is a visual auditory and kinaesthetic style of learning, which facilitates learning through diverse styles. Another important aspect is the Collaborative Approach, where the focus is moving from Teacher Centric Approach to the Collaborative Teacher Student Approach. Therefore, technology plays a crucial role in promoting education and facili-
Partha Mukherjee Head-Segment Marketing, Public, Dell tating newer, better and updated learning systems.
Developing Digital Teaching Aids
The focus of Extramarks is to develop teaching aids that can be used to enhance the scope of education being offered in our classrooms
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igital learning is all about improving the quality of education. However, digital learning cannot be an external factor; it has to be adopted and imbibed in the education system seamlessly. It has to act as a facilitator that enhances the scope of the traditional modes of teaching enabling depth, clarity and ensures quality standardization at every level. The elements that form the classroom remain the same – the teachers, the students and the objective of classroom interaction. Over time what changes - is the medium and the methodology that enhances the learning process. By introducing digital technology in the classrooms, one allows the teacher to be more creative, interactive and productive. With new digital technology it becomes possible to cater to multiple intelligences in
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the classroom, introducing multiple ways of teaching the same concept. Hence, it engages the disinterested, less motivated student and challenges the advanced ones to High Order Thinking Skills. These elements in a traditional class are aspirational but not achieveable on a day to day basis. Digital learning thus, helps teacher to achieve her dream objectives of better personalized attention and outcomes in a classroom. Another advantage of digital learning is that it facilitates the teaching of new concepts and ideas as content can be presented in multi dimensional perspectives. Thus, creating ample opportunities to ever evolve the content and to keep technology bred child engaged in the classroom. It also allows the educationist to constantly align the curriculum to new developments in education, tech-
Poonam Singh Jamwal Chief Marketing Officer Extramarks Education Pvt. Ltd. nology and industry – thus help keep the institutions connected with the real world and the students ready for the world after school.