let me organize my thoughts on recent visit to Chattisgarh for teacher training (technology in classroom). there are so many assumptions about technology:
- it can transform our educational system,
- it makes child remember quickly,
- it helps children to score more marks, and
- it is impossible for the rural government teacher to use technology in classrooms
- rural children do not make any sense of technology
- computers would replace teachers
as hear these assumptions, i wonder, teachers have many assumptions. and i am here to demystify their thoughts. i am here to introduce technology but that's a long journey. i need to work a strategy to unlearn. let me try to address the above assumptions, one by one.
certainly, technology would transform our educational system. it can reduce 30% of the workload of the educational functionaries, trying to work with numbers, manually, when computers can ease their work. saved 30% of our educational functionaries' can be well utilized for suporting our teachers. this means that 1/3rd of our educational functionaries' time is gone! one can increase work efficiency by 30% without spending on either good HR training or bombarding with HR theories! great idea, but how to do? there are 5.5 million teachers and equal number of functionaries, how do i reach each and every one.
i donot agree that technology can make children memorize quickly to reproduce/vomit in the rotten exams. yes, it helps child to grasp concepts quickly and child can concretize issue, abstract in the classroom. to some extent, it may help child to score better marks, where is the scope to express child's imagination in the current examination system (asking children to write in 100/200/300 words).
I donot agree that rural government teachers cannot handle technology. let me ask you, is not teaching a technology? then who says our teachers cannot. believe them, support them and behold! no one can stand in front of our teachers, who are handling children with various backgrounds (sometime child is hungry!). can anyone manage this, without any capable training. give them a perspective about technology and do not introduce it as a program. 1970: radio, 1980: TV, 1990: Computers, 2000: LCD projectors, 2010: mobile phone, 2020: robots, this would not work. give them a perspective on education-learning-technology, alas! each teacher would be unique. how do i do this to all my 5.5 million teachers. is anyone listening to this?
how can one say that rural children cannot handle technology, what's happening to electric pump at the borewell, TV remote, mobile phone, radio. did anyone give training to handle these. all children learn, pace may be vary. create opportunities, all children are capable of doing.
never ever, computers can bring human interface.
