Every child is intelligent and effective use of technology can act as a tool to help students to discover and enhance their intelligence and capabilities. As the Director of an education innovations company, Mexus Education Pvt Ltd, creating futuristic technology based model for education Anil Goyal strongly believes that the next big trend in ICT in education will be the paradigm shift from IT hardware and software to edutainment as the mode of education delivery in each classroom in India. In conversation with Rachita Jha shares his passion for innovative use of technology in classrooms
What made you start futuristic technology based education business?
If we compare the kind of education that was delivered during the Gurukul times with today, we find that although there were many techniques used in those times the content/information was less. Today we have the requirements to expose our learners to new areas of expertise, new challenges in higher education and new skill sets. Parents today also want to highlight specific abilities in their child and chart out his higher education path accordingly. This is an area, where interactivity through technology has become important, as the teacher now in his/her 40 minutes of classroom interaction has to deliver the best of her learning to student. This can be easily done using an innovative mix of various digital tools such as multimedia, interactive digital content and concept-based stimulators. However, in the overall philosophy of quality education delivery, technology can only act as a tool to enhance the multiple intelligence capabilities of millions of school students who go through the daily grind in our education system each day and teachers will always play role of facilitators in connecting the knowledge with the learner.
Please tell us about the journey of educational technology at Mexus?
Initially when we started in 2008, the major thrust area for us was on innovation in education and classrooms. We spent most of our time and resources in understanding the teaching gaps, understanding the many constraints that the teachers face in delivery of curriculum and make it new and innovative.
To ensure that we do not replicate what is already present in the market, we interacted with schools, teachers and students to understand more on the challenges in using the existing array of digital content.
It helped us to get a hands-on understanding on the gaps that exist in the current educational technology scenario. What we observed is a dry presentation of content that is picked up from textbooks, that is windows based or explorer based.
The Howard Gardner theory of multiple intelligences, by far, has been the foundation philosophy of all our educational initiatives and we strongly believe that each child is intelligent
