COVID19 has impacted the world in a way no one could have ever anticipated. It’s what economists call a Black Swan event, which has affected all business sectors from Aviation to tourism, from the corporate world right to the regular common man. No business sphere has been able to get through unscathed, and the education sector is no different.
With the country having been in a state of either a complete or partial lockdown for almost four months now, schools, colleges, and universities have had to close their doors for students ever since. The pandemic has brought into light the importance of social distancing norms, and not stepping out of houses unnecessarily.
This has however only restricted the students’ physical access to classrooms because this has stopped neither schools nor colleges from imparting education to their students, thanks to online education curriculums and virtual classes. All of this can only be contributed to technology which the Indian education system has embraced with open arms.
Ed-Tech, which seemed a distant reality until a few years ago, has been sprung upon us due to this pandemic, and with over 37 million students in India’s higher education sector alone, it won’t be a stretch to say that it has come as a blessing. Technology has mitigated immensely the damage that could have been done to the sector and moreover to the students.
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Today, every student can have access to online classes in one way or another. Schools have been doing it through multiple platforms such as Microsoft Teams, or Google Classrooms, etc, all of which have only resulted in proving once again to us the potential technology holds to reshape the education system for the better.
A tech-enabled education system will be a pandemic-proof solution, that can also be something that can continue after the pandemic. It’ll only allow the schools and colleges to widen their outreach and reach thousands of students, by simply adapting to a digital curriculum. One might wonder how online and offline curriculums will ever be able to match each other, but that is where one should realize that they are not too different, to begin with! Similar to that of a physical classroom, a student follows a time-table for their virtual classrooms, teachers switch lessons, students get breaks, they take assessments designed for an online mode, and to top it all off, all this happens while being at the comfort of their rooms/homes.
This mode of education can not only prove useful for students in schools but is also something big corporates are taking up to conduct virtual placements for fresh college graduates. This allows them to be part of the full circle, minimising the impact of the pandemic. So if one was to ask me how important technology has been for education in India in this pandemic, the answer would be – beyond we will ever be able to comprehend.
Courtesy: expresscomputer
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