Technology in Education - Life savior during the pandemic 2021

As the Pandemic struck hard on the workforce in many industries, basic functions of lives are put to a sudden halt, and the most notable field affected during these days is education.

Thousands of schools are shut down to secure social distancing. Teachers are under the pressure to finish the schoolyear within a short amount of time. According to statistics, there have been 1.2 billion children locked out of the classroom after a year of Covid-19, and this number is expected to grow more due to the outbreak of the Covid Delta variant in 2021.

These alarming numbers predicted quite a gloomy outlook on the world’s education. Even in the most developed countries, there are only approximately 30% of schools are fully open. This number even goes lower for the third-world countries and overpopulated nations.

Under this circumstance, educators and policymakers have resorted to information technology for a wide range of tech applications in education system to gradually keep it running.

Versatile application of IT in education

Some might think of education and information technology as two separate industries with no overlapping. In fact, the application of IT in education has been there for quite a few years, but it was not until the outbreak of Covid-19 that the term Ed-tech became more popular.

Before digging into the term Ed-tech itself, if you take a look at the usual IT application in education, you can see a pattern of managerial software to dominate the market.

Technology in education – traditional classrooms

With educational institutions, it is the platform connecting parents and school boards that keep the communication going. These platforms act as a dashboard for updated information of school events, examination results. For some platforms, it is even possible for teachers to send private messages to parents, forming a synchronized and systematic means of communication.

These platforms do not limit themselves to just two-party communication. In fact, homework and extra curriculum activities are also notified to the parents.
With these basic functions, the implementation of information technology goes a steady way yet unimpressive in the world’s market. However, since the pandemic took it tolls on the world, the global market demands more from IT application in education, especially for effective e-learning systems.

Edtech and how we improve our education

To put it simply, Edtech is deprived of the term education technology in which we can understand it as the act of technology implementation in education to create more engaging, inclusive and individualized learning experiences.

Edtech has taken its initial steps in recent years with minor achievements and a limited reputation. It was not until the outbreak of Covid-19 that the major public realized the importance of multi-functional and tech-infused platforms for online teaching.

Technology in education – Online Teaching

Online teaching, or e-learning industry, benefited from a technology-driven marketplace in which everyone is familiar with tech presence and is willing to embrace it into their lives.

Since the pandemic, experts and researchers have posed a question of the most effective way of teaching online, the most satisfying answer lies in edtech platforms.

How edtech helps students

As students are more exposed to electronic appliances, especially smartphones, the idea of e-learning may sound more fascinating for the digital natives. Moreover, the influx of technology is of great help for the students to cope with the fast-paced learning on technology platforms.

The three major aspects that can benefit students when using edtech are:

– Around-the-clock access to learning: As lessons, worksheets, homework are stored on a server for permanent use, students can get access to the lessons’ database no matter when and where. With this feature, students become more proactive in their learning and do not limit themselves to the fixed class scheduled.
– Interactive lesson-related activities: With the help of edtech platforms, students acquire their knowledge not only from the original sources of teachers or books but also through the interactive lessons on the platforms.

– Overall student assessment: With the help of technology in assessment, students can prove their overall development through multiple metrics that are not particularly focused on the results of stress-inducing tests.

How edtech helps teachers

Another party that gains huge advantages of edtech application is the teacher. As edtech platforms are the bridge connecting students and teachers, they also are the tool for multiple class operations, including:

– Automated Grading: With the innovative adoption of technology in education, grading is no more a nuisance. With pre-programmed scripts for grading, teachers are free of the time-consuming and dragging process of grading. In fact, some recent edtech platforms started to involve machine learning and AI in grading, in which the machine will assess students’ involvement in class and their test results to give a comprehensive assessment of the overall performance.

– Paperless Classrooms: On edtech platforms, storage capacity is also a major feature that can help teachers and schools unburden themselves of the additional printing costs.

With books encrypted within the system, students can get access to this knowledge source at any time without having to buy the expensive course books (of course, the school will be responsible for buying the books online).

With classrooms going digital, paperless classrooms are the most favorable ones. This is because paperless classrooms not only help safeguard data, they also contribute to green policy in the classroom.

With the booming application of information technology in education, both students and teachers can benefit greatly from this innovation.

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