Technology has been revolutionizing every industry around the world and education is no exception. The concept of integrated technology in classrooms is nothing new as most of us are familiar with computer-assisted teaching. It has been in practice for over two decades.
However, in the last couple of years, we have been experiencing the dawn of a new era called EdTech, where technologies reserved for enterprises and other heavy industries have been increasingly adopted and incorporated for teaching purposes.
Yes, technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), IoT (the Internet Of Things), data science, Big Data, and more have enabled educators and institutes to leverage the full potential of technology and pave the way for enriching classroom sessions.
Today, there are modules that can automate assessments, feature the entire course curriculum in an app, automate the process of marking attendance, deploy advanced and interactive learning modules, and more.
The benefits offered by EdTech have been so evident and real-time that thousands of schools and institutions around the world have incorporated the concept in their own unique ways on their premises.
That’s why EdTech is anticipated to be valued at around $7tn by the year 2025. Ironically, however, education is also one of the least digitized industries in the world with global expenditures on education being less than 4%.
If you belong to 96% of the institutions that have not incorporated EdTech to foster a better environment for teaching, learning, and managing your institute, here are 5 compelling reasons you should integrate EdTech into your classroom today.
Personalized Learning
Education is holistic but learning isn’t. Not all students have the same learning capabilities and speed. While some students can quickly grasp concepts, there are those who take a little extra time to understand them as well.
The current teaching methodology does not give space for slow-paced learners to cope with others, adding unnecessary pressure on such students to forcefully learn topics and subjects.
However, with EdTech, this is not the case as it enables personalized learning. AI-driven modules detect patterns from student assessments and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. By understanding a student extensively, AI systems recommend individual learning paths to them.
For instance, if a student is good at English but struggles with math, the system recommends more resources and materials on math to the student so they can work on their weaknesses.
There is no pressure whatsoever but only clarity on what students should learn. So, at any given point in time, the learning paths of two students are not the same.
Better Assimilation Of Information
Back in those days of conventional classroom setups, sessions were usually one-sided and non-interactive. Teachers came, took classes, explained concepts, derived theorems on the board and solved problems, and left. Students were just passive listeners in classrooms.
However, EdTech has revolutionized this by bringing in audiovisual elements inside classrooms and actively involving students in the learning process.
Teachers today can pull out videos and graphical visuals of complex topics like Young’s Double Slit Experiment, the human digestive system, relativity theory, and more and simplify tough concepts for students.
With a visual aid, students can also assimilate information better and retain concepts for a long time. Besides, they also learn to apply concepts and gradually grow to become problem solvers.
Isn’t that supposed to be the goal of education anyways?
Besides, reports and charts of students can also be automated to be shared with parents in real-time.
Sentiment Analysis And Automation
It is safe to say that AI is the backbone of EdTech today. It has enabled the automation of several processes and tasks that teachers and institutes have been executing manually.
Attendance, for instance, is a task that takes up close to 7 minutes of a teacher’s time. In an average session duration of 40 minutes, teachers spend 7 minutes marking attendance alone. This gives them less time to teach.
With automated attendance systems, computer vision and cameras automatically mark the attendance of students. In fact, they go a step beyond and even perform sentiment analysis on them by assessing students who were active, those who zoned out, during the most active hours of the day, sessions that were the most interactive, and more.
All these crucial details allow teachers and institutions to alter their teaching, managing, and engaging methodologies and optimize the classroom environment for more learning and fun.
Streamlined Communication With Guardians
EdTech does not rely on students to take their report cards to their parents or guardians for signatures and acknowledgment. This happens in real-time as we mentioned.
Immediately after assessments, the results get shared with guardians so they can have a look and understand where their kids stand in the learning process. Thanks to personalized learning, they can also know the strengths and weaknesses of their kids and act as their pillars of support.
From meeting on a quarterly basis, EdTech allows weekly collaborations and sync-ups with guardians through detailed reports, comments, feedback, suggestions, and more.
Better Collaboration
Students have always been asked to maintain individual notebooks for different subjects and carry them to school. With EdTech, this burden is eliminated as all notes and journals are digital and stored on the cloud. They can easily access and retrieve them whenever they are required. They can take printouts only when they want to. Otherwise, every single study material is available on associated platforms. Not just that.
Teachers can also share their notes immediately with their students through EdTech platforms. From handwritten notes to the ones written on virtual whiteboards, they can all be shared immediately. Besides, they can also pull useful resources from other websites and video streaming services and share them for additional knowledge. This makes for a wholesome learning experience.
Wrapping Up
Apart from these, EdTech offers extensive benefits like instilling problem-solving abilities in students, incorporating gamification, automating assessments, bringing in better classroom infrastructure and inventory management, nurturing creativity, and more.
Students backed by EdTech systems always experience better learning outcomes. So, if you’re looking for an innovative technology platform to power your classroom, check out Edumatica (www.edumatica.io) and sign up for a free trial today.
Edumatica is designed to tackle modern-day teaching concerns and optimize the entire ecosystem for better results. The platform offers all the benefits we’ve listed (and beyond). So, check the platform and reach out to us today to find out what difference Edumatica can bring into your classrooms.
