corporate diary
Technology Enhancing Intelligence, Capabilities Every child is intelligent and effective use of technology can act as a tool to help students to discover and enhance their intelligence and capabilities. As the Director of an education innovations company, Mexus Education Pvt Ltd, creating futuristic technology based model for education Anil Goyal strongly believes that the next big trend in ICT in education will be the paradigm shift from IT hardware and software to edutainment as the mode of education delivery in each classroom in India. In conversation with Rachita Jha shares his passion for innovative use of technology in classrooms What made you start futuristic technology based education business? If we compare the kind of education that was delivered during the Gurukul times with today, we find that although there were many techniques used in those times the content/information was less. Today we have the requirements to expose our learners to new areas of expertise, new challenges in higher education and new skill sets. Parents today also want to
46
www.digitalLEARNING.in
highlight specific abilities in their child and chart out his higher education path accordingly. This is an area, where interactivity through technology has become important, as the teacher now in his/her 40 minutes of classroom interaction has to deliver the best of her learning to student. This can be easily done using an innovative mix of various digital tools such as multimedia, interactive digital content and concept-based stimulators. However, in the overall philosophy of quality educa-
tion delivery, technology can only act as a tool to enhance the multiple intelligence capabilities of millions of school students who go through the daily grind in our education system each day and teachers will always play role of facilitators in connecting the knowledge with the learner. Please tell us about the journey of educational technology at Mexus? Initially when we started in 2008, the major thrust area for us was on innova-
corporate diary
tion in education and classrooms. We spent most of our time and resources in understanding the teaching gaps, understanding the many constraints that the teachers face in delivery of curriculum and make it new and innovative. To ensure that we do not replicate what is already present in the market, we interacted with schools, teachers and students to understand more on the challenges in using the existing array of digital content. It helped us to get a hands-on understanding on the gaps that exist in the current educational technology scenario. What we observed is a dry presentation of content that is picked up from textbooks, that is windows based or explorer based. The Howard Gardner theory of multiple intelligences, by far, has been the foundation philosophy of all our educational initiatives and we strongly believe that each child is intelligent – we just have to device innovative tools to bring out the best in our learners. Our educational content should successfully engage the students and teachers in the knowledge sharing experience and digress from the rote system of education. Teachers - the key to success of technology-driven classrooms are usually reluctant on use of technology. How do we overcome this roadblock? It is true and we have experienced that teachers are apprehensive on use of technology in curriculum delivery. They are not quite often to view it as an enabler to assist them in their classrooms, owing to conventions. Even though, in our workshops one would find that on one hand the students are very proactive in adoption and using new learning tools, many of the teachers today continue to be comfortable in the conventional mode of curriculum delivery. In addition, when introduced in schools, teachers find it difficult to mould themselves and their teaching styles with digital content that is introduced. We have taken this as a challenge and at Mexus, we ensure that the teacher is at the core of all our classroom solu-
tions – by periodic training programmes and user-friendly software with simple instructions and use of devices. The challenge is always to connect and motivate them to use more of the digital content in schools –and to bridge the gap. We are always progressive on our innovation and software design that has made us successful in making our products more teacher-friendly and effective in classrooms. Tech tools for 360 degree learning, what are the key elements on this mode of learning? The main challenge of the teacher today is to engage with the students in 40 minutes and make them understand a concept thoroughly. In our 360 degree model of learning, we have made a string of
fore retained in their memory for a longer time. Our movies are not just hightech animation – it is created on the pedagogy of experiential learning that addresses disconnect that currently exists between what is taught in our books from the real world. Future of education lies in edutainment, your views on the same? Initially we were followed the similar stuck solely to digital content but when we found that it is not successful in making learning fun in classrooms, we revised our products line and used technology innovatively as a tool to make curriculum a source of edutainment in classroom – both for the teachers and students alike. We realized that our solutions should help teachers address
Our educational content should successfully engage the students and teachers in the knowledge sharing experience and degress from the rote system of education engagement activities for the teacher with innovative use of technology aids to ensure that the teacher is successful in her deliverable and the students enjoy learning the topic using interactive tools and experiencing the concept. In an Iken classroom, we begin with a mind map that plays a vital in introducing the concept to the students – it defines the background on the learning concepts that will be taught in the classroom. Mind maps are used worldwide as a retention and learning tool and we aim to bring the same for schools in India. This is followed by a power point presentation on the details of the chapter. A movie based on the topic is then showed to the students - this plays the role of connecting the topic to the real world. The students enjoy learning the concepts through the characters in the movie that take them on a journey related to the topic of the subject as applications in the world that surrounds them. They therefore build an instant connect with the concept and is there-
disparity in aptitude of students while students remain engaged in subject topic through entertaining media like videos and animations. Our philosophy of Edutainment i.e. Education as Entertainment seek to make the education effective and application-based for students to absorb all the knowledge as lifelong learning and not just education for a degree. Our innovations like talking books and comic series encourage such experiential learning paradigms with sketchy cartoons in simple language that are already attracting attention of all the education fraternity. The education system in India is in dire need of such unconventional pedagogies of learning like experimental learning, activity based learning through concept simulating games and has incorporated various inputs and research findings gained over a period of time to develop product that explain the academic content through various modes of learning. \\ digitalLEARNING / may 2011
47