If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow, John Dewey.
The latest trends should be adopted in the education industry as they surely affect the teaching and learning process. Moreover, such trends make learning enjoyable, negate boredom and help students to avoid rote memorization of the concepts.
Many schools and teachers have already started using new technologies, the process saw acceleration during the Covid 19 pandemic. Technology-enabled teaching/learning are slowly replacing the conventional blackboards, chalks and textbooks. In this blog, we will be discussing various trends that instructors are using to make learning effective and engaging.
Trends in education technology
- Augmented Reality: It is a detailed and descriptive version of the real, physically present world that can be achieved with the use of technology through the use of digital elements like sound, video, 3D simulation etc. It is a very effective method and is used throughout the globe today.
Example of augmented reality: There is this app named Google Expeditions, which helps users to visualize 3D objects in the classroom. More than 100 expeditions are present over this platform like dinosaurs, volcanoes and even complex structures like DNA.
Benefits of augmented reality:
- It provides a user-friendly interface
- It does not require the use of any special equipment and most of the student’s smartphone is very much enough for AR.
- It enables collaboration among students and hence, promotes teamwork.
- It is more inclined towards practical learning which is very easy to memorize
- It is for all levels of education i.e., from playschool to graduation level and in some cases, even beyond.
- Virtual Reality: It is an artificially created environment in which users can interact within 3 dimensions using technology-oriented devices for example glasses with screens, sensor-enabled suits, etc. Students can possess multiple benefits with the use of virtual reality. Some of them are explained below with the help of respective examples:
Benefits of virtual reality:
- Making theoretical concepts real. For example, with the use of VR gadgets and equipment, a student can travel inside the human body which helps him/her to understand the concepts of biology like how digestion takes place, working of four chambers of the heart etc.
- Immersive experience. VR makes users feel that the virtual world in which they are, is real. It is done with the use of prominent sound effects, ultra-clear visuals etc.
- Also, VR boosts efficiency, creativity and craving to delve more and more towards the associated topic.
- Use of games: A very fresh concept in the field of education. e-games are loved by people of all age groups, especially students. So why not convey education through this wonderful platform? Games are slowly becoming an integral part of the e-learning curriculum because:
- Help students to build strategies in real-life education, same as they do in e-games.
- Various awards in such games motivate students.
- Concentration increases towards doing a specific task
- Such games are very funny and interesting so there are fewer chances of distraction.
- Artificial Intelligence: It is defined as that form of human intelligence that is produced artificially by robots, machines etc. This technology is emerging regularly and has numerous facilities connected to modern-day education. Various roles of artificial education are:
- It helps to automate various activities of education like grading of marks, adaptation and up-gradation of software according to the needs of the instructor/ student.
- Detect errors and can point places where there is a need for improvement
- Alert teachers where there is an issue regarding the performance of a student. Moreover, it provides valuable feedback for both instructors as well as learners.
- Learning over the web: Also known as virtual learning, this particular platform uses video conferencing, facetime etc. to establish a link between a teacher and his/her students. Examples of such platforms are: Google meet, Zoom etc.
- This mode of learning is very much similar to traditional teaching methods because it offers a combination of e-learning and in-person interaction.
- It increases the technical literacy of both instructor and student
- This method is very cost-effective, unlike the classroom method of teaching
- It enables the learner to follow a consistent schedule
- Study materials related to various topics are provided to students and the most important advantage is that if the student faces a doubt, it can be asked as many times as he/she wants.
Key Takeaways
Access to learning is continuously increasing, thanks to these new trends in education. Students are developing interests and are following an interdisciplinary approach towards learning. Various platforms are helping students using these trends like for example speedlabs.in which uses both virtual learning and artificial intelligence stimulated software’s to help students in making education free from boredom.
Also published on Medium.