Educational technology aspires to serve certain identified educational goals and the audio-visual materials, comprising interactive whiteboards, data scanning, imaging, software solutions, projectors etc, are a very powerful tool towards taking education forward.
India is now the world’s fastest growing market for audio visual equipment, a study by industry association Infocomm has suggested. As a result of spending in various sectors, including education, the audio visual (AV) market in India is expected to show a high compounded annual growth rate of 25 per cent to touch $5.1 billion by 2015.
In fact, the importance of audio-visual materials in the teaching and learning processes cannot be over emphasised. Experts claim that till very recently, universities were not keen to spend money on audio visual equipments, but in the last few years, there has been a rise in the demand of these products, thanks to the increasing awareness in the industry.
However, one cannot overrule the fact that AV medium in India is still not as exploited and utilised as other developed parts of the world. The stumbling blocks are many. In a developing country like India, these are the lack of funds, attitude of teachers and school management, inappropriate teacher training programmes, selecting the appropriate Audio Visual aid for classroom etc.
AV has a long history in India. It can be traced to the launch of the Indian National Satellite (INSAT) in 1980, and its availability for educational purposes, which led the Ministry of Education to take over the production of educational television programmes for transmission via Doordarshan. With today’s population explosion, technology is the only means to make education accessible to as many as possible.
It may be mentioned that projectors are one of the most commonly used AV tools. In one or two years, the use of projectors will become a common thing. About 50 per cent of projectors sold globally go to classrooms, and in any technically- enabled classroom, 25 per cent of the budget goes in projectors.
The huge impact of initiatives of the government like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan on the education industry in various states is leading to the purchases of projectors for government schools.
The concept of ‘Learning without burden’ can be realised in totality through the help of AV medium. As the world of education shrinks in size, thanks to science and technological developments, the Indian education scenario/market can turn into a completely new leaf.
