K S Muraldihar,
CMD, Learnsmart India

The Learnsmart’s application maps the progress of a student and highlights the strengths and also the weaknesses

The knowledge that reaches the students comes through various avenues. It comes through content providers, through schools,  teachers, tutorials, parents, and E-learning websites. With there being such diversity of resources, there is the need for an application that can intelligently assess the conceptual understanding/comprehension in the subject.
It is in this area that Learnsmart India Pvt Ltd has taken the market by storm. Its cutting-edge application, 24x7guru.com, is based on the belief that once a student gains understanding of a concept, he or she is less likely to forget. Hence, the emphasis of education  should be on facilitating understanding, rather than on rote learning.

Web based assessment
24x7guru.com is a web-based assessment application that enables a student to take tests as per the course curriculum: chapter-wise, periodic and customised! Students can take these tests at their convenience and from any browser. The application is parameterized in terms of complexity levels and it provides a new set of questions each time a student attempts to answer. The scalability is  scientifically designed and is aimed at drilling down conceptual comprehension as well as functional and relative clarity amongst  students.
The portal comes with objective-type questions and it can offer instant results, which are embellished with analytical feedback to track diverse aspects of the performance of the child. The application maps the progress, duly highlighting the strengths and also the areas of improvement. Students can take tests as per the course curriculum: chapterwise, periodic and customised. The application is parameterised in terms of complexity levels and provides a new set of questions each time a student attempts to answer. The  scalability is scientifically designed and is aimed at drilling down conceptual comprehension and clarity amongst students.

Sudha Goyal,
Principal, Scottish High International School

Focus has to shift from teacher-centric to child-centric methods of teaching

For best educational outcomes, teaching should comprise of a healthy mixture of traditional teaching methodology and the latest technological systems. A teacher, a facilitator, has a wide variety of technological tools at his or her disposal.
Video games can help activate critical thinking skills and problem solving skills. Focus has to shift on improving the instructional methods. From the teacher-centric approach change has to happen in the passive transfer of knowledge. In student-centric approach change is needed in engaging the students actively in learning with methods best suited to them. The best way to achieve this is to have a clear descriptive and feedback mechanism for students.
The different learning needs of students have to be taken into consideration and assessments have to take place to facilitate thinking of  high order. Through technology students can experience the lessons and pick up the best for his understanding and learning.
With incorporation of right technology, we can transform a typical teachercentric classroom into a place where problems get solved.  A number of curriculum related developments are taking place in this regard, but for maximum benefits we need to have professional  development of teachers so that they are able to keep pace with the changing times.
Teaching is a continuous learning process and to keep this process running smoothly, an innovative system of partnerships has to be  developed. Perhaps,we can have a system of partnership between schools and universities for exchange of information regarding the advanced learning processes.

Poonam Singh Jamwal,
CMO, Extramarks

We should look at technology from the angle of improvements that it can bring inside classrooms

Technology helps us in more optimal achievement of learning  goals. Students in a class have different skill sets and technology should help us reach out to all children in learning and understanding the concepts. The challenge today is that we look at technology just as hardware. Instead, we should be looking at technology from the angle of improvements that it can bring inside the classrooms.
While we deliberate on the important question of what we are going to teach, we should also ask ourselves why do we really teach  Science or any other subject. We teach Science with the intention of imparting the knowledge of the real world to the child. The child is  instinctively curious about the environment and Science helps him develop a sense of reasoning. So science is all about ideas, concepts, and theories that are being used to interpret the world. As Einstein once said, “Science should be taught by forming  connections between reality and physical theory”.
At Extramarks, we have taken a twofold philosophy. One is that there should be hierarchical learning from simple to complex and secondly we should be able to relate the classroom to the real world outside.In the course on skeleton, we teach children about the bones, number of bones there are in body etc. We need to teach him about -how he is standing, how he is working, what is giving him structure and how his bones work together. In Extramarks, we introduce an idea in the classroom, and then it is thoroughly explained by the animation part. In the classroom, teachers often find it difficult to explain different concepts to the students with the traditional chalk and board systems. Technology makes the courseware more accessible to the students and they are able to visualise the content  in form of animation and videos.

Alisher Umarov,
Programme Specialist for Education, UNESCO New Delhi
Cluster Office for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Maldives and Sri Lanka

Blended learning is not a panacea for every school related issue

Our new generation are ‘digital natives.’ Most of the time teachers come to class for their own learning rather than teaching. If we can’t  empathise with the concept of this kind of learning, then we are not in tune with today’s world. Teaching has become Teaching 2.0,  instead of Teaching 1.0.
Teaching 2.0 is a situation where we enlighten everyone who is involved in the process of learning and teaching at the same time. That  is the new paradigm that we have brought in through blended learning.
Blended learning is important, but it is not the panacea to all school related issues. We need to understand that blended learning is not  blind learning. It requires massive effort from everyone involved in the organisation and there are certain ingredients without which you cannot make a nice dish.
We already have everyone on board – teachers, students and others. What else do we need here? The answer to this question is quite  simple. We need a good policy from the government to ensure that our teachers have access to all the latest tools that they need to  bring about an improvement in the quality of our education.
At UNESCO, we work on three different levels – we work on policy level to resolve challenges through certain legislative policy measures; we also provide all kinds of resources; we provide certain best examples from around the world. Finally we work by setting  up better standards that entities working in the education space can follow.

Milind Shah,
CEO, WishTel

Tablets facilitate personalised learning, by enabling students to access information in a quick and seamless manner

WishTel, a young and dynamic company aiming to bridge the technological gap in the education industry, is the maker of IRA tablet.  Today, IRA is being regarded as a worthy product for donning the mantle of Aakash 2, the government’s low cost computer project.  For WishTel, the journey from building prototypes to commercial models has been very exciting. Today the company possesses in- depth expertise and experience with real time embedded systems and development tools. It is fully capable of building an ecosystem  of highly integrated hardware and software for Tablet PCs and multimedia boxes.
We have implemented a pilot project on digital education in Maharashtra. This project is giving us an overview of how implementation  of tablets in schools actually works at the ground level. It is a pathshala where we have implemented this project. Here, many students  had the first time experience with an entire digital eco system.
Tablets facilitate personalised learning, as they enable students to access information in a quick and seamless manner.

Sucheta B Phadke,
Senior Vice President, Core Education & Technologies Ltd

The problem in education today is lack of integrated and holistic approach

While speaking about fostering innovation in education, we should look at the challenges that are being faced by the education system.  These challenges are due to limited infrastructure, shortage of teachers and quality of teaching. The dropout rate of students is alarming and at the same time we have millions of youth who want quality education which can help them in getting employment.
On one hand there are new ways of teaching with digital classrooms and on the other hand there is poorly designed content for this technology. The problem here is of a lack of integrated and holistic approach for changing pedagogy to epedagogy.
The human element in learning is always going to be around, but we have to look at blended models of learning in an integrated fashion  to be able to inspire minds and transform lives.
Learning can happen in students when we promote curiosity, problem solving, critical thinking, high order thinking and collaborative  learning. So the question we need to ask is how can we create collaborative learning platforms for teachers and students? How are we  going to blend technology with hands on learning to help the children practice efficiently? How can we enhance the learning delivery  through innovative access to devices?
Children are inquisitive by nature, but instead of feeding them formulas and killing their creativity, the learning solution design should  be innovative enough to facilitate building of skills for observation, comparison, expression, interest, imagination, reasoning, clarity of thoughts, and freedom of expression.
The teacher has to act as facilitator and friend to help the child in discovering his or her potential for creativity.

Sushma Berlia,
President, Apeejay Stya & Svran Group and Chancellor Apeejay Stya University

Innovation needs organised chaos for fostering change

Innovation is something that leads to the creation of new ways of life. It inspires us to transform our mental makeup and create values. We need to have an ecosystem, which can act as a principle catalyst for fostering rapid innovation. These innovations are the  fountainhead of large scale successful institutions. India faces unique challenges in the field of education like in the board school  education, vocational education and higher education. These problems can only be addressed through our own ecosystem for  innovation. The innovations must be allowed to grow from ideas to implementation.
If we take into context the post industrial knowledge economy, the most critical factors that drive these economies towards a sustainable future is research innovation and entrepreneurship. Innovation therefore reposes heavy responsibilities on the educational sector of the economy for fostering innovative research and reaching newer frontiers of knowledge.
The need of the hour is fostering of an innovative culture that facilitates meeting the educational needs and goals for a sustainable economic development. Innovation needs organised chaos and this means that we need not have a top down instructional mode,  rather a system of broad guidelines and the freedom to apply one’s mind will lead to best results. The performance has to be measured by flexible tools, plans and goals.

Ashutosh Chadha,
Director, Corporate Affairs Group, South Asia, Intel

Better education leads not only to higher individual incomes, it also contributes to a nation’s long-term economic growth

Now we have access to a range of new technologies that offer fantastic creative opportunities to teachers who wish to use innovative  ways for furthering learning outcomes. The school leaders are open to new ideas, they are positively keen to foster the dynamism and  creativity in the learning process. There exists vast untapped potential for fast forwarding progress by getting another billion or two of  today’s bright minds hooked into the networks that are already allowing ideas to flow in novel ways.
Today innovation is not really restricted to organisations, and it is not restricted to countries, it actually flows down towards students  through the medium of an unstoppable digital river. However, the advancements in technology are so incredibly fast that we cannot always be assured of a positive outcome. It is easy to be led astray in a world that is full of so many devices and solutions. Perhaps, it is true that in advancing the way our society in particular has, we have backed ourselves in a corner in more ways than one. We have to relook at the innovations in our education system.

The power of education
The rapid growth of China, India, Brazil and other emerging powers has dramatically altered the complexion of the global economy in recent years. Better education leads not only to higher in-dividual income, it is also a necessary, although not always sufficient,  precondition for long-term economic growth.
The tech sector plays a leading role in the economic boom of the nations. It fuels the Internet and the many technologies associated  with it. Likewise, the subsequent ‘tech bust’ is identified as a key contributor to the national recession. The production of high-tech  goods represents a significant component of GDP.
We generally assume that the level of education in the society is a determining factor in the level of advancement, but the empirical evidence for the same does not exist. The connection between education and material prosperity can be regarded as hazy, at the most.  The success of knowledge based systems lies in the quality and extent of the knowledge available to the system. Acquiring and validating large groups of consistent, correlated knowledge, is not a trivial task to achieve.

HE Dr A K Jugessur,
High Commissioner of Mauritius

We have to strive to make knowledge-based society a reality so that incidences of digital divide vanish from society

Development of education is of critical importance for ensuring societal transformation. Every generation of thinkers, has considered education to be a fulcrum for change.
The 21st century faces many new challenges. These challenges can only be resolved when the educational institutions develop the  capacity to operate in a knowledge driven society. Knowledge lies in transforming teachers from a content, transmission mode into  mediators of knowledge.
Students no longer have only teachers and schools as primary source of information. Information is now becoming accessible to all through TV, Radio, Newspapers, DVDs, Internet, and Mobile Technologies.
However, we also need to keep in mind that in the field of education, even more important than the technology is the implementation of the technology. It is important that we plan a process. Countries should carefully choose the model to expand the education. What has worked in other locations may not necessarily be suitable in our own developing nations.
Training of our teachers is as important as having latest computers, because it is the teachers who are going to teach the students.
The teachers have to be empowered and given the means to successfully implement a digitisation process. Miracles cannot be  expected from the existing education system, if teachers are not fully trained, and the basic infrastructure like electricity is not here.

Prof Parvin Sinclair,
Director, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT)

Of around 13 lakh teachers across the country, many are only partially trained, and yet they continue to teach as we face shortage of teachers

Every one of us had at least one teacher who we can look up to; this could be the teacher who ignited our minds with the desire of  learning. We have to ensure that every child in the country has access to such teachers. The Right to Education Act was introduced in  2010. We could have been close to achieving the goal of universal education, if we had access to good quality teachers.

Lack of teacher training
Of the around 13 lakh teachers across the country, many are not properly trained for teaching. Despite not being fully trained for the  profession, they are doing it because we are in need of teachers. There are several malpractices in the system. The semi-trained and  un-trained people are hired with the thought that they will catch up with time and that catching up rarely happens. We have come up  with the teacher education scheme of 630 crores which is far short of what we need. We can leverage different methods of open and  distance learning, which we really have to. In a country like this that is the only answer. Some universities care about quality, some  universities don’t. So how do we monitor that carefully?
One has to go to the field and live with the people in the rural areas. Most educators have not done this. If you look at national  curricular framework that the NCERT is developing, you will find that we are opting for a very constructivist way of learning and  teaching in a classroom. This kind of a system represents a sea change in the way think. But making it part of the school education  system is a key challenge. The teachers, the teacher educators, the parents, the administrators, understand the requirements of  constructivism. , This method of teaching grants more time to the learner to deal with each concept in his or her own way. But the  system also requires flexibility of a certain kind. It requires an individualisation of the process in which the education is being  imparted.

Changing the education system
It is imperative to bring changes in the way we provide learning to our students. Open  learning allows that, but it requires a certain background, a certain maturity, a certain framework of thinking and working.
We also  need to understand that if vocational education is only for profession, or is it for something more. Most of us have noticed that the world is becoming less humanist. So does that have something to do with the quality of our education and kind of areas that  are left out in even professional education space? For instance, liberal arts are left out completely and so is a subject like moral science.
Inclusion is also very crucial. When the RTE Act was first framed we left out the disability sector, which was corrected subsequently.  However, it needs a lot more thinking, doing and caring by all concerned. It is so inspiring to see people, who are eager to get into the  educational mainstream. They positively want to be a part of everything. We need to look at some ways of bringing them in. Each of us  is disabled in some way or the other. Education is for living, for sharing, for growing, for culture, and for civilisation. We simply can’t  afford to put it aside.