A golden time for social techno-preneurs in India – Dr. Madanmohan Rao
The classroom is changing. If you’re above the age of 20, it probably bears only a passing resemblance to how you learnt algebra, or the human anatomy in biology. Today’s kids are the first generation that has grown up with technology, and while they are ‘digital natives’, grown-ups – teachers, parents and school administrators – are immigrants to this world. With a plethora of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets, children are already immersed in a world of interactive, engaging content, and their attention spans for traditional methods of engagement are diminishing rapidly.
The digital era holds tremendous promise for schools, though. On the one hand, it creates an opportunity for children to take learning in a manner that appeals to their tech sensibilities. On the other, it provides a platform to democratize education and take knowledge to the furthest ends of our country. Inclusive education can now be a reality; one where each child can be taught in a personalized manner, at his own pace. The advantage: not only do toppers excel further, but the average learning levels in a classroom are raised.
Digital board classrooms are becoming a hub of inquiry, discovery and collaboration, enabling teachers’ to simplify complex concepts, providing better understanding and making learning more engaging and entertaining. Pearson Education Services, part of the world’s leading learning company, Pearson, envisions an India where students, teachers, parents and schools collaborate to make knowledge ubiquitous. With this in mind, we offer DigiClass – an ICT-based classroom solution that aims at converting traditional classrooms into interactive sessions by combining state-of-the-art hardware with syllabus- compliant multimedia content. This solution employs the DigitALly application (Multimedia Enabled Syllabus Specific Course Content). DigiClass complements the Pearson ecosystem of schools’ management, online tutoring, technology-enabled tutoring and test preparation to provide a child with a holistic environment aimed at nurturing academic potential and developing a generation of successful Indians.
It’s said that 80 per cent of what people learn is visual. Hence, DigiClass with its technology helps the students to make learning easy and practical. Digi-Class solution makes use of advanced Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions to provide a more engaging and rewarding learning experience for students and teachers. Teachers are able to move away from the traditional ‘blackboardand-chalk’ method, by making use of interactive teaching tools that make learning a real life experiences. This multimedia-enabled teaching tool helps teachers to customize their teaching sessions, keeping the learners’ pace in mind. This preloaded repository has several thousands of animations, self explanatory diagrams, 3D interactive animations, worksheets, quizzes, e-books and several hours of experiments, all designed to make the classroom sessions more engaging.
Along with these rich features and vast content, there are a few attributes that make DigiClass effective: compliance to Indian syllabi and locally-relevant content, and its foundation in the Cognitive Learning Approach. DigiClass provides syllabus-specific content for CBSE, ICSE, HSEB, IGCSE-I, IGSCEM, and Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, rajasthan, Orrisa, Gujarat and Maharashtra state boards. It covers Kindergarten to Grade 12 and contains content for English, Hindi, Mathematics, Social Sciences, Environmental Science, Basic Mathematics, Business Studies, Statistics, Accountancy, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. DigiClass content has been developed in India, by Indians for Indian students and therefore resonates in the Indian context. It brings children to points of familiarity – seamlessly bridging what they know with what they need to learn. By associating new material with something familiar, students understand complex concepts better, and retain information for much longer.
However, technology is only as effective as the teacher using it. Teachers need to possess adequate technical knowledge to efficiently use the Internet and other technologies to enhance the classroom sessions, to create interactive classrooms and to maximise classroom learning in a limited time period. With the objective of maximising benefits of the DigiClass solution to the school, Pearson Education Services provides a comprehensive teacher training, assessment and certification programme, which leverages Pearson’s global education standards and techniques.
The use of DigiClass thus not only engages students, but also empowers the teaching community to create interactive sessions where classrooms become spaces for learning and discovery, and the children under their care excel in all spheres of their K-12 experience.
Srikanth B Iyer is COO, Pearson Education Services Pvt. Ltd. He can be reached at srikanth@edurite.com
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