The education industry is constantly evolving. Today, information is available at the click of a button. The wide use of technology has opened up a window of opportunities for schools to re-visit their educational program and enhance its teaching practices. Technology and education are a great combination if used together with a right reason and vision. If used effectively, technology in classrooms can act as a tool to promote and extend student learning on a daily basis.

The world of internet is so vast with immense material, offering numerous learning aids that further facilitate the classroom learning. Information is available in different forms such as images, videos, audios, graphics and text, enabling easy understanding for all forms of learners.Technology in classrooms becomes more effective and meaningful if its usage is spread across the curriculum with frequent interventions throughout the year. It helps change the monotonous structure of the classrooms into an active and interactive mode of teaching. Students become more attentive and are able to participate in discussions, share feedbacks and also connect with the real world challenges and situations.

New age Education Approach in Schools

Integration of technology in schools has grown much more than conducting a computer class during the school hours. It has moved much beyond than having only one teacher who educated students on the basic computer skills and software programs. Now, all teachers, irrespective of their teaching subjects, are encouraged to become tech-savvy. This is to enable them to impart education and interact with their students in a very different context compared to that the earlier generation did a decade ago.

With the rising acceptance of technology, schools areconstantly focusing towards redefining their teaching-learning processes, adding newer tools to enrich the process. However, the integration of technology in the learning system needs to be thoughtfully designed. It is important to understand the learners’ psychology at different age groups. Young children, studying at the pre-primary and primary level are usually more visually inclined. Audio and video aids serve as basic technological support to enrich their learning experience. Similarly, older students can be encouraged to use the internet for research-based learning and present their projects digitally. Students also get an array of opportunities to connect with the world outside, exchange ideas, learn collaboratively with students from other countries through Video Conferencing, and other such tools.

Technology in classrooms becomes more effective and meaningful if its usage is spread across the curriculum with frequent interventions throughout the year

Blending Technology with Education

Technology can be integrated in almost every subject to make learning more effective. For example,

English:Students can take real time assistance from the world of web to improve their language, grammar, spelling and pronunciations;

History: Make History real with a quick visit to Today in History or This Day in History;

Science: Sign up for a science experiments online to make learning fun;

Geography: Use web to research on distance between two cities and countries or take a quick view of the origin, culture, heritage, favorite destination; and so on.

Benefits to all Stakeholders

Learning with the help of technology offers several benefits to everyone associated with education. Students are the primary audience around whom the entire educational system revolves. Considering each child is different, they get an opportunity to learn at their own pace and ability level. They also become capable of doing more complex and creative work by using digital and online applications and tools. Apart from learning and grasping knowledge, technology also plays an important role in refining students’ skills of problem solving, team work, learning independently, time management, leadership and many such others. Children also become technologically skilled and literate to meet the requirements of modern workplaces.

Teachers get a chance to deliver more personalized content and lessons to students. It allows them to keep abreast with real time information on multiple subjects, making their classroom sessions more meaningful and impactful. Teachers can also clear students’ doubts;refer to international teaching practices; enhance their skill sets on a regular basis.

Schools too, get a chance to improve their administration and management by making it easier to gather information on the students’ progress levels, while also guide teachers with suggestions to improvise their teaching methods. They can further centralize their teaching mechanism with common lesson plans and teaching aids to ensure consistency across different classrooms of the same grade, while also in different schools of the same group.

Parents, another important stakeholder, can also be benefitted from the system. Many schools have already introduced an online platform to interact with the parents on a regular basis.Through this system, schools constantly engage parents in their child’s learning process; update them on their child’s progress; and also provide them with regular updates about the events and activities conducted in the school.

To summarize, with the integration of technology, the entire process of teaching-learning has matured over the years. This has led to making education more meaningful and fun. The current generation of students are able to benefit learning with a global perspective that allows them to widen their knowledge horizons. Teachers are also now seen as role models, adviser and content expert who no more deliver the textbook-oriented teaching in classroom, but bring the world under one roof through the web.