Is EdTech Shaping the Future Of Learning? Surfing the edtech wave: technology-assisted learning is the future of the space

Technology assisted learning has been prevalent in the higher education space for a long time. Both, the formal and the informal setup, have been leveraging technology to assist learners to gain. However, the last two years of pandemic have, by design, exposed the technology assisted learning in the K-12 segment. Even though schools are the safest place to learn for young learners, three things took precedence in the whole-hearted use of technology inside schools to create a sustainable learning environment; (a) pandemic enforced lock-down of schools; (b) access to Internet; (c) will of the school management to experiment with technology at scale.

While the need of digitization and automation of educational infrastructure have been in the radar for more than two decades, the emphasis laid down on the same in the transformational NEP 2020 couldn't have come at a better time than the year 2020. And the role ascribed to the edtech companies have provided a kind of legitimacy to schools to collaborate well with them.

Not to forget, today's digital-first generation is secretly hoping for a more congenial learning environment, which matches to their current exposure to technology and content. In fact, from very early years, these young learners are becoming content creators themselves and deploying technology to broadcast.

Edtech: Future of education

The future of education can be looked at from multiple aspects and here are a few to start the dialogue.

1. Digitization and automation of the school management can help all stakeholders unite a lot better for the overall better learning outcome of a student.
   1. Teachers today are engaged in non-teaching tasks at schools, and this digitization and automation will empower them with more time at hand to focus on quality of education.
   2. Progress tracking of a student can become far richer than just reporting scores/ grades on subjects. Students can be tracked on their hobbies, interests, character building and improvement areas and the parents can be engaged more than through just a PTM.
   3. Resources like digital library, safe and virtual labs for Science, Math and Language can be administered inside schools.
   4. Schools' admin will be more efficient and communication with parents will be frequent and more targeted.
   5. Safe environment of a schools can be further reinforced through digital tracking of visitors inside the school as well as tracking of buses while plying on routes.
2. While many schools have play-based and experiential learning pedagogy, however, technology will make it accessible to a whole lot of more schools and from very early years of learning. Availability of data analytics will further enable richer engagement between educators and learners.
3. Textbooks have a huge role to play. And this can be further enriched with the help of digital aids on subjects, topics and interests of learners. This will truly help in diminishing the distinction between curricular content and extra-curricular content. No two children are the same, hence, their learning styles aren't as well. Hence, technology enables democratizing access to personalized/ customized learning aids for an overall development of students.
4. Technology also makes subjects/ topics interesting, engaging, and immersive through gamification. And there's enough data to support that this leads to higher learning outcome.

While a few schools shall manage the above elements on their own, the larger universe of schools will require assistance from edtech companies. Moreover, to handle this transformation, educators and administrators inside schools shall require an urgent re-skilling. EdTech companies will come in handy there as well.

Hence, the future of education is heading in the right direction with experts being called out to do their respective jobs well.