Education Special: Over-reliance On Technology? Where Do Students And Teachers Stand?

Technology cannot teach you everything.

Over-reliance On Technology In Education Sector: Everyone knows that technology is transforming the education sector. However, technology cannot teach you everything. If that were the case, human instruction would become obsolete. When students overuse calculators, sentence correction software, and Google to find “right answers” without checking the logic, they reduce their brain’s ability to think critically and creatively. A reliance on technology is keeping students and sometimes teachers away from the why, how, and what’s, consequently impairing their logical reasoning! The stakeholders tend to simply jump to responses found on search engines.

HOW TECHNOLOGY HAS SHAPED COURSE OF HUMAN HISTORY

Technology has shaped the course of human history right from the stone age to the present era of information technology. It is helping humans reach beyond the physical limitations of earth and explore space around us. Thus, an adaptation of IT-based applications in academics is both an advantage and necessity of present times, says Akshay Marwah, co-founder and co-CEO, AAFT.

He adds that Edtech platform provides immersive, engaging, and personalized learning for students and teachers using the latest learning tools. This allows students to study at flexible times. And for teachers, technology has enabled them to become more facilitators, mentors, and coaches than just teachers. In the technological integration classroom, the role of the teacher changed from the “sage on stage” model to that of a “guide on the side”, as students take on greater responsibility for their own learning by using technology to gather relevant information.

TECHNOLOGY AS DOUBLE EDGED SWORD

It’s really a double-edged sword. Tech-enabled classrooms have democratized education by making it accessible, affordable, and customizable. But (to scale it up) it also has dehumanized the process and by isolating individuals, it has distorted the social interaction between students and teachers, says Sajal Singh, Founder of Civilsdaily. A readymade straitjacket approach where solutions are spoon-fed to the students has greatly affected and weakened their ability to think creatively and form an opinion. Easy availability of information has impacted their attention span and out-of-the-box thinking.

(Inputs by Athena Education)