TECHNOLOGY IN SCHOOLS NEEDS RE-POSITIONING

Down the memory lane, when the information technology was at its embryonic stage in late seventies, with the induction of a few BBC computers gifted to Indian Schools by Her Excellency from Britain, - I go back to the classrooms of my school in 1982 when I learnt and started teaching basic computer science to the students of senior classes. (Sorry, Today I am just a nursery child in technology)  I knew it was a breakthrough in schools, though the focus was just on the fundamentals of the basic language and running a multiplication table on a desktop. Yet, people looked at it with a sense of awe! Three HCL workhorse computers with a 256 Kb memory...spending about two lakhs..

The world has moved.. Technology has penetrated intensively into the learning and life styles of people world over.. The Indian schools have also adopted and adapted technology to a meaningful level.. in spite of the challenges of resources, connectivity and the teachers.. Still there is enough to do..

But the worry is.. Are we doing the right job with the use of technology in schools? Of course, schools have moved away from using them as show cases for their schools, because no one would 

accept that version any further...

Technology has been integrated to do administrative servicing, communication with parents, accounting and to certain extent searching for content and the like..

Vendors from the private industry rose up to the occasion to bring content on technology platforms, sometimes failing miserably by putting the text content into the e-content! The mismatch between the pedagogy for both was neither realized nor understood.. Nevertheless, it helped in bringing some smile in the face of the learners, if not the “Aha” experience! The real question is when do we move to that?

It is time we move from the world edutainment, gaming, thrilling to some real time experiential learning..Provoking thinking, facilitating learning through empowering differing intelligences, researching and team-play at work..

There are roadblocks, for sure... :  The first.. the empowerment of teachers..  This can be done only when teachers are involved in the design of the content.. They need to Prosumers (Producers & Consumers).. Till such time the gap will retard developing really effective products. I wish the companies take some serious note of that.. The challenges is that a lot of these content need authentication and validity.. Oftentimes in a play way mode the message is misconceived!

The second: Re-positioned pedagogy. The market should understand that it is not “Quick fix” situation, to put some content on a short term for sale and then get away with the early rewards... learning methods for interactive, experiential learning will be too personalized and hence a “mass drill” on the  technology platform will not help in the long run! The pedagogical insight in e-content or m-content has to be appropriate, focused, enabling and facilitative. It should meet the diverse needs of the learners.

The third: The Curriculum and the Boards..While every Board wants to focus on quality in learning, they are unwilling to let the schools, the teachers and the students experiment and innovate.. Can’t we let the schools this freedom at least upto the middle school level? Why should we hold on to the Licence-Raj even in learning at the formative levels? Are we nurturing mistrust in our social systems?  The governing agencies should mentor and monitor rather than dictate.

Research, innovation and creativity are not the prerogatives of the elderly and matured, but they are best practiced at the early stages of learning... this would help to rehabilitate our science learning in schools..

It is time.. The country and the policy makers see the future, rather than feeling safe with the present!!