Classrooms Of 21st Century - Are We Ready To Toodle-Oo Traditional Lesson Rooms?

We live in the era where every sector is dominated by technology. From on-demand economy blessings by Uber or Postmates to artificial intelligence inclusion by Google AI, the world is disrupting in a way we would have never imagined before. Blockchain made a hype in every corner of the world recently and it might not be a surprise if you hear people around you talk about their promising bitcoin investments.

Amidst all this, do you know per BI intelligence, there are going to be around 24 Billion IoT devices on Earth by 2020? And $6 Trillion is expected to be spent on IoT market in the coming 5 years. Needless to say, we must get ready for some massive disruption coming our way!

Education Sector & Technology Inclusions

We are witnessing a huge transformation everywhere and the education sector is no longer deprived of the tech touch. At many corners of the world, students are no longer reading one textbook in the classrooms, majorly dominated by whiteboards. Instead, they are enjoying lessons on their computer screens with appealing visuals and many are already leveraging the bliss of living in the era instead of just reading about it, thanks to AR/VR!

Not only students, teachers are also quite happy, being able to see the students grasping things at a pace and depth, that could have only seemed like a good dream. No more surface understanding & promoting the fulfillment of shallow learning inducements, say rote erudition.

7 out of 10 teachers say that they want to stimulate experiences related to the lessons instead of just superficially going through them. Who wouldn’t like to stay on the stock exchange floor and grab deals instead of just reading stodgy numbers in the textbook?

Not just the inclusion of AR/VR which is making the students’ and teachers’ lives better, there are much more to advancements in the classrooms. Be it a small move from chalk and board learning methodology to taking computer aid to make it livelier or a thorough transformation of one teacher and many student classroom lessons to the use of adaptive learning software to provide students with personalized lessons, technology is certain to evolve the traditional classrooms to modern 21st century lesson rooms for good.

It’s Not Just The Physical Lesson Rooms After All

Modern classrooms are good, but what do you have to say about virtual learning? Yes! A part of modern 21st-century classrooms also talks about the virtual classrooms. No one needs to be physically present to understand a concept anymore and I know this has already been embraced by most of the institutions spread across the globe.

Different platforms like Coursera, edX, Udemy, among others are already striving towards providing the best e-learning experience to the students.

Apart from this, teachers also want their lessons to be out there in the world for everyone. No more confinement by the physical classroom boundaries. Students who do not have the wherewithal to go abroad and study can make the most of such opportunities. This might just be a reason among thousands of others, but surely such advancements make me imagine the colorful world of education with the out-and-out tech embracement!

Apprehensions - Is Absolute Tech Indulgence The Best Way Out?

Pros don’t come alone to play, there are always apprehensions around a great idea. Where technology is revolutionizing our lives for the better, that’s what we want to believe in, some apprehensions indeed make us doubt the same. We all know how cybercrimes & data breaches are making headlines every other day.

Yahoo facing data breach of 3 billion and eBay requesting its 145 million users to change their passwords is not a small thing, right? If you think the education sector is out of all these security hazards, let me tell you that among the compromise of 32 million records in 2017, 13% were related to education space. I think it's time to reconsider the evolving education sector.

Apart from the data threats, there are also a few more apprehensions that revolve around the amalgamation of technology and education. First, due to minimal to no teacher interventions, students may stay detached from human touch and face-to-face doubt clearing learning process, which to be true has its own charm. And, for sure you would agree that pre-recorded video lessons won’t be any good in that case. Another thing that comes across as a worry is a complete acceptance as well as the provision of the internet across the globe. Some parents and institutions still take pride in reading books and taking assistance from teachers over the use of the internet for lessons. Talking about the internet provision, per a report, as of June 2017, only 51% of the world’s population had internet access.

Contemplating around the choice to be made? Let’s talk!

The Bottom Line Is

I can’t help recalling this old maxim - “Change is the only constant”. Yes! Change is what we all want to see, and it stands true for the education sector as well. Progressively moving towards growth, this space is yet to build a place for the students, where they can learn to understand instead of writing test papers, where they can have fun learning new lessons instead of looking at the clock and get done with their classes. Apprehensions are here to stay, howbeit, nothing can be better than finding counters to the same. If we talk about the internet access, you must not forget that there was no internet available to people before 1991.

Not only this, if we say, let’s just trust technology and take no help from teachers present in the classrooms, that will be wrong. I’d rather second on keeping it blended. Let the teachers help students to stay up for learning new lessons, take charge of fostering and imparting the passion for learning, compassion for their fellow-mates, introduce best of technologies to the students and help them make the most of it. Nonetheless, with all the shifts and transfigurations happening around the world, I believe something big is taking shape in the education space. Can’t wait to see how this unfolds in the coming years. What do you think?

Anjli Jain

Guest Author Anjli Jain is the Managing Partner at EVC Ventures, a $50 million Chicago based Venture Capital fund focused globally on growth stage startups.