The education system has undergone various changes and spells of evolution in tune with the changing times, to live up to the demands of the day. And, when technology has made its way to almost all spheres of life, it is no surprise that the education sector is also drawing heavily on the wonders of IT and other related technologies.
Technology is capable of playing a crucial role in connecting discontinuities and loose ends, changing business models, improving the learning ecosystem, and for that matter, changing the world order itself for larger good of the human race.
One of the numerous technologies seeing rapid adoption in India is cloud computing, suitably tweaked to meet the growing demands of the Indian education sector. New technology-aided smart classes are fast pushing the traditional methods of imparting education, like the chalk-and-talk one, to the brink.
The emergence of cloud computing has provided the education sector a major push; it has brought innovative outcomes in K-12 as well as higher education. For example, barring a few, most of the schools are low on budget for setting up full-scale IT infrastructure. But cloud is one technology that can fill the void, as it addresses most of the data storage and security-related issues.
However, the most significant contribution of technology lies in minimising the studentteacher ratio. As the number of students is rising much faster than that of teachers, the widening gap can be filled only through smart classes, where a teacher can address the pupils even from a remote location.
In view of the apparent advantages of IT that can be cashed in on for escalation of education as well as to improve the overall quality of teaching across the country, DigitalLEARNING spoke to the policymakers and the stakeholders of the sector to know their views on technology implementation.
With a view to understand the pros and cons of increasing IT adoption by various educational institutions, this issue of the magazine dwells at length on the subject. One interesting fact that emerged from the interactions is that technology implementation is not limited to just big cities, IT in education is also gaining wide acceptance in Tier II and III cities.
It is this cross-territory penetration of technology in the sector that is likely to push the market size of the Indian education sector in FY2015 to a whopping INR 602,410 crore in India. Hope you discover more during the read.
