A survey that evaluates the challenges and opportunities of teaching school children with technology in the country.
A hot topic of debate amongst the finest educators in India is “Adaptation of Education Technology (Ed tech) in Teaching”. Those in favour believe that it can absolutely revolutionize the way teaching is done, big improvements can be made in education as teachers are often unqualified and ignorant or absent. While the critics assume that its performance is rather depressing till now.
In a report prepared by Central Squad Foundation, it was found that Edtech campaigners and critics are both right.The report compiled the evaluations for a dozens of products like learning management systems, digital learning, live sessions, Apps, etc.The report also took feedback from 1500 stakeholders--students, teachers, parents, headmasters in ten states across the country as well as the product use data of thousands of students,parents and teacher in India.
Overall, it was found that Edtech has huge potential to increase student learning and engagement levels. The market is also considering that the industry is booming, with companies like Unacademy and Byju’s becoming new Unicorns.
Yet there are many challenges also, firstly-the quality varies significantly making it difficult for school management to choose the right product. Secondly,very-few products are designed to keep low-income students in mind.Third, it requires monitoring by utilizing the human resource potential of the school, which the staff is either unable to handle or lazy to do.
Despite challenges, it was observed that several Edtech products seem to work effectively and enhance students' experience of learning. In many cases, the lessons were carefully created according to the student's need. Also, for slow-learners, the provision of pausing a lesson is a boon.Overall reasoning power of students in many schools has also increased.
So conclusively it can be said that the new methods of teaching introduced by education startups are effective. If the stakeholders upgrade themselves, it can bring a miraculous change in the Indian society.