Shekhar Jain is the CEO and Cofounder at “ON MY OWN TECHNOLOGY” or OMOTEC. He spoke to Digital Learning Magazine about Robotics in education.
How can robotics become a supporting tool in ensuring better and more creative education for students?
In recent years, robotics has played a prominent part in learning process that takes place in both- formal and informal contexts, primarily in STEM-related subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) It helps in soft skills development as it requires working in a team to find a solution or completing tasks which allows for the promotion of social connections between students. Robotics integrates conceptual knowledge of Math and Science subjects with practical hand son activities which augments the students learning and promotes curiosity. Robotics is a great way to look at how real-world creativity evolves from students’ interactions with their social, physical, and cultural surroundings. Learning robotics involves cognitive, conative, and environmental aspects which contributes to students being globally aware citizens. Robotics also develops both conceptual and innovative strategies and skills which contributes to creative mindsets.
There has been a lot of hue and cry on how much coding should children be taught. What is your take on this and what is the level of coding that children should be taught?
In my opinion, just how human communication is inevitable be it with words or actions, human communication with computer language too has become a need of an hour. In simple terms, Coding is a set of sequential steps to be performed by a machine to get the desired result.
The demand for coders is only rising. Learning coding delivers the competitive advantage for job, internships and college applications. Coding allows kids to understand the working of real-world technology better. It spikes curiosity, creativity and improves problem solving skills. There is no “level” to learn coding and its never enough as we believe innovation and learning never stops.
Excess use of technology is also said to be hampering education and creating a disruptive environment. How can this be managed effectively?
Of course self discipline is important but Gone are the days where technology was separated from education.. Infact education has got better with technology. It feeds the curiosity of anyone, anytime, anywhere who wants to learn by parting knowledge in the form of audio-visual, However excessive use of technology can work detrimentally towards social interaction which is a big part of being HUMAN. Balance and discipline is the key for all walks of life. We need to guide students in a way that they can draw limits and use technology to make living and environments better instead of using technology in a haphazard way.
Please share a bit about your brand.
OMOTEC, as the name suggests stands for On My Own Technology where there is an emphasis on the words “On My Own” which is about creating technology on your own and applying it to solve real problems compared to using technology. We believe in Learning by Doing which allows students to transform Ideas to Execution.
