Technology And Education
Educational aids have evolved over the times. They are important accessories in administering education. Not all learners have identical cognitive structures. These differ from individual to individual. In some it is numerical while in others it is pictographic. Nevertheless, when any phenomenon is explained through a demonstrative simulation it is best understood by all. Technology has thrown open an entire universe of tools to effectively administer education. These are tools not just for tutoring but also for testing. E-learning has existed for almost a quarter of a century and has evolved over time. With hand held devices, it’s possible to administer education remotely with a high degree of penetration. Needless to say, technology has become the game changer in education.
As we can see, children today are exposed to hand held devices as early as 3 years of age. As they learn to speak they learn to handle hand held devices in parallel. This has made it possible to administer education even at the most basic level. During the COVID pandemic, it has been technology that has made it possible for schools and educational institutions to maintain the much needed continuity in administering education. Physical classrooms have now become virtual classrooms. Home schooling is the new normal and this is largely because of the availability of the technology necessary. Getting further into the depths of the advantages of technology, with channels such as youtube it has become possible to access multiple educational videos to demonstrate articulately anything that one wishes to learn. It’s all available on a click, right from the laws of physics to recipes for aloo mutter.
Learning has become easy and the kids today are technology savvy. There however is a flipside for which parental supervision is paramount. If as parents we are not careful, there always remains the element of misuse of technology. Apart from the addiction of hand held devices, there exists a lot of roguecontent available that would have a negative influence on one’s child to the point of causing serious psychological damage. There are predators located in different parts of the world targeting impressionable minds. As parents we need to follow strict guidelines to ensure that technology is used appropriately for child development.
Schools and educational institutions today are already using technology to administer education. Technology has brought in fundamental structural changes integral to achieving significant enhancements in productivity. Beneficial to both teaching and learning, technology provides digital learning tools.These include software and hardware. The software would include computer or mobile applications, learning content and videos. The hardware would include computers and hand held devices. The Dhruv Global School, Pune founded by the Malpani Group has introduced innovative methods in mentoring extensively involvingthe use of technology. These methods have successfully increased student engagement and motivation, and have significantly accelerated learning. Technology has the power to transform teaching through this new model of connected teaching. It links teachers to their students and to educational content, resources, and systems to facilitate their own instruction and personalize the learning process.
Each individual student is unique, different in cognitive and affective development, social maturity, ability, motivation, aspiration, learning styles, needs, interests and potential. Other differentiating factors may include innate differences in intelligence, differences in social and economic background, variations in past learning experiences, and perhaps variations in the level of congruence between the learner and the curriculum. Recognizing and addressing these individual differences is key to bridge the gap between individuals in order to even out their abilities and performance. Mentoring should aim for understanding why students are able or unable to learn effectively and evolving appropriate methods to facilitate betterlearning.
Dhruv Global School has the conviction that all students can learn. To address the needs of students, teachers have been trained to provide them with a variety of learning tools and opportunities for effective learning.This involves the utilization of diversified resources instead of relying only on textbooks.Making use of a wide spectrum of intelligences and multi-sensory experiences is effective to tap the different potential of students. Schools need to adopt different modes of assessment to identify the strengths and weaknesses of students before deciding on the appropriate curriculum, and learning and tutoring strategies applicable.
The two main kinds of individual differencesare the quantitative and qualitative differences.Quantitative differences are those in the quantity, speed and depth of learning. Some students may understand a new concept after one lesson whereas others may need to re-examine an idea several times before being able to grasp it. After a series of lessons, the learning abilities are well understood. They vary greatly across students. Observations on cognitive development reveal that children move, in general, from associative, pre-logical thinking to more formalised, logical thinking. Across individualshowever,the transition occurs at a more or less early age and there are differences in the extent to which formal reasoning is achieved. in Cognitive abilities include information processing, memory, reasoning, abstraction ability, etc. there are conative differences between students. In addition,quantitative differences also include conative differences concerning personality traits, motivation, needs and interests. Students differon their level of personal autonomy, level of achievement motivation, tolerance of ambiguity, and test anxiety. Qualitative differences on the other hand inthe ways that students learn best. Some children focus on spelling rules. They correctly pronounce or spell new words that follow the rules but have trouble with exceptions. Othersdevelop specific associations for each word in order to remember how to pronounce and spell words. Some prefer to begin with tangible details and then arrive to a larger vision on a topic whereas othersare comfortable with the exactly opposite approach when beginning on a new topic. Some learn well when working alone whereas others do best in learning through small group situations. Thesedifferences are the cognitive orlearningstyles, which suggest the student’s approach to tasks in qualitatively different ways, if given the choice. In addition to the distinction between quantitative and qualitative differences, we can contrast inter-individual differences i.e. differences between peopleand intra-individual differences i.e. differences within a given person. These are the techniques to measure how students differ in a given knowledge domain, such as mathematics.We can also observe how an individual student differs across domains, such as math, reading, and writing. Some students show homogeneous profiles across tasks whereas others have strong points and weak points depending on the learning domain.