5 Big EdTech Trends Worth Knowing About
By Hardik Parikh
The EDTech industry is yet in its infancy and is expected to grow cumulatively at the rate of 23 percent in the next five years. It is anticipated to be a $255 billion global business in the next 5 years (by 2017) as per GSV Advisors. E-learning is undoubtedly the future of the education industry. While the future is yet to unfold itself, we have a countdown of some interesting tidbits from the year 2013.
The Runner Up: MOOCs
If the most promising contestant of the year is to be awarded to e learning, the runner up award for 2013 is bagged by MOOCs. The free massive open online courses did score big in 2012 and a couple of start up even did score eight-figure funding. However, the same magic did not continue in 2013.
Most of the ED-Tech organizations were reinventing themselves and more emphasis was on finding and being better. MOOCs make the best courses from the best educators and best universities live online for free.
In 2012, just one of the largest universities had over 36000 registrations in a single course. Now, over a dozen universities plan to launch MOOC2Degree, a hope based model that thrives on belief that the students from all over the world will educate themselves with the best resources and will pay for it once they graduate.
Flipping The Classroom: Encouraging More For Less
Giving an example and to make students understand a concept and then to provide them the term and its bookish definition is no longer considered the best way to educate. Why to waste time and energy of the teachers (supposedly the best researchers and of course, the dedicated intellect molders) on delivering repeated lectures, explain the same concept in the same tone each year.
With flipped classroom concept, the teachers can even record and upload their own lectures for the students to learn as a part of the homework. In the class, the students have concept clearing sessions, debates and discussions, etc. that helps enhance their intellect.
The educational videos and resources created can be used by the students from anywhere and can be played repeatedly. Since each student has a different speed of grasping the concepts, flipped classroom is one of the best EDTech that is bound to work successfully with all sorts of education.
Learning Can Be Fun, Too
The grasping of education is much better with audio and visuals. As it is a proven fact that interactive learning is much more fun, it helps learn better, faster and remember and recall as and when required, why would we just stop at making educational videos.
With the highly advanced technological developments and cloud, computing options clubbed with the TED revolution, even the dynamic and engaging presentations seem just “okay”. We expect more and we have seen some best educational software that proved games and interactive media presentations as fun as a way of education.
The Gates Foundation granted $3 Million to MIT Education Arcade to come up with a game in which students can participate and learn science, math, geography and more. The students from all over the world will be able to participate as scientist, explorers, mathematicians or literary genius, etc. to learn and discover.
One For All & All For One – A New Education Mantra?
With so many forms of connectivity, the virtual world is growing as big as the real world, real fast. Earlier, when we had questions, we went to teacher or go to the library or to a trusted elder to sort the query. However, all we do now is “We Google it”.
With so many resources online, with such wonderful sharing communities and with such abundance of digitization, all sorts of information are just a few clicks away. If you want to learn to cook, want to educate your children, want to find the best tutor for your kids, want to understand how things work, need to find an answer to an emotional issue, no matter what is blocking your progress, online communities and sharing of resources is an answer to your question. Simply, log on and find out.
The same applies to teachers as well, learn about online schools, share information with your peers, educate others and get answers to your own queries, all this and much more on demand as and when you need. Be it language or be it math, you want to share it, IT assists you.
Low income, high income or no income – Education has something to offer everyone who has an appetite for it, at least in the virtual world. With the dynamics changing so rapidly, we welcome 2014 with the hope of some real amazing developments.
No comments:
Post a Comment