Acceptance of Technology in Education

A couple of weeks back I had the opportunity to visit the city Haldia, in the eastern part of India. Haldia is just over 130 Kms from Kolkata and is popular for its port and petrochemical industries.

I was addressing a small gathering of around 20 people mainly from NGOs who were working on behalf of various corporates in that region. The agenda of that day was :-

“How Smart Class can be implemented in schools and to showcase some of the benefits of smart class to the NGOs.”

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The discussion went on for a few hours where I sanitized the members on Smart Class focusing on the benefits it will bring onto the teaching methodologies of the teachers in the schools and the ultimate benefits will be that of the students.

I too had the opportunity to interact with them on various aspects pertaining to the education ecosystem of which the main points to understand were:-

1. Acceptance of technology by students

2. Adoption of technology by teachers

3. Understanding of technology by the parents

1.Acceptance of Technology by students

Though the technology acceptance has been highest in the metro cities the Tier B and C cities are fast catching up. Student of 5th standard too uses a mobile with a 3G or 4G connection to spend time on YouTube and Facebook (the most popular of all platforms). Students are really curious to know and use technology in their daily lives to the extent possible.

2.Adoption of technology by teachers

We have to accept the fact that many of our teachers in the education system hailing from the Tier B and C cities are deterrent of adapting themselves to the modern needs. They are the respected strata of the society and hence they view CHANGE as something against their practice. In contrary they have to be the ones who have to come up and willfully accept and adopt technology.

The teachers have to be the leaders who will introduce technology to the students.

3.Understanding of technology by the parents

Most schools and colleges ponder upon the fact that if the parents do not approve of the increase in the fees due to technology implementation in their schools. Well this is still a challenge but not as much as it was 5 years ago. Parents now do realize the need of technology which may not be in the deepest level of understanding but at least to approve the use of modern methods in educating their wards.

In our times a color diagram showing the heart and its components were all that we could come across and the rest was left to our imagination but today when a student can see the pumping of the heart and blood flow through our body in an animation why should he/she be deprived of it?