Ajay Shukla, Vice President and Managing Director, McGraw-Hill Education, on the role of tablets and e-content in pedagogy
We see tablets, as a major change agent in the education worldwide. The key drivers for current and future growth in our view are advent of low cost tablets, falling bandwidth prices, increasing telecom network reach, growing population of technology natives. Unlike smart boards and web based learning tools, tablets will find greater acceptance and adoption within institutions and teachers, as lot of heavy books can be carried as e-content inside the tablets. Enormous opportunity exists for e-content companies like ours, as content is at the heart of the learning process, while technology is just an enabler. We are partnering with device manufacturers and technology providers for distribution, marketing and consumer insights.
Tablets are a very effective tool for education, as they reduce the number of books a student has to carry in his bag. Tablets also lead to better opportunities for search, writing, quick noting, as a feature to the child. Tablets are compact and can be easily carried in the classroom unlike laptops and desktops. The multimedia option they offer are conducive for better learning. Currently digital education has turned into projector based system, which does not allow a child to take learning to home. Tablets offer them a platform to practice everything they learn in schools.
Education is a paradigm that helps in acquiring knowledge. Research is the heart and innovation the soul. Together the growth vehicle would speed and in the absence of any of these, would sputter and backfire.
An interesting analogy that comes to mind is that of Abhimanyu: the warrior prince in mahabharata who was entrusted with the task of penetrating a Chkaravyuh (certain formidable formation) of the enemy. His advantage was that he had learnt this very critical aspect of warfare when still in his mother’s womb through his warrior father who had narrated it to his mother. However, the paradox of his prowess was to be his ignorance of how to exit the same having successfully vanquished the enemy.
As Head of one of the first schools in Andhra Pradesh to introduce Technology in Teaching and bring in the concept of a Smart school, I believe that tablets have helped to bring a paradigm shift in the Teaching and Learning process. The 21st century learners need to be a critical and creative thinker who can work collaboratively towards designing and solving problems. Easy access to content and information has reduced the relevance of memorising facts and figures. Students today need to connect their learning to real world situations and apply what they learn.
At DPS Surat, we have tried all options over the last nine years: Projectors, Interactive boards with Projectors and a whole host of variants of the interactive board. However, on the ground our research shows that teachers are quite comfortable with operating the television. So we have given all our teachers iPads. In our classrooms, we have 50 inch televisions, in which the teachers can plug in their input devices. The iPad makes up for the interactivity in an excellent way. This can be projected onto the TV with sound and without loss of resolution to a large extent.” 
Low cost tablet computers can have many uses in school and college education. For a start, all textbooks could be made available on tablets reducing the costs of printing and distribution and also reducing the weight of school bags. Tablets would enable interactive lessons for self-learning as well as for viewing recorded lectures. They could be used to access educational content on the internet. The small size of the tablets and their low cost enables them to be carried to the classroom by each student and they could be used for conducting mini in-class quizzes. Finally, they could be used as a computer for small scientific and engineering calculations.
