Recently, a news article highlighting the advent of ‘Paperless Education’ in Indian schools described how tablets are making digital inroads in smaller schools in rural areas, from the Muslim Educational Society (MES) International School in Pattambi, Kerala to ‘Adarsh’ Anganwadis in Chhindwara, Madhya Pradesh. A move from textbooks laden bags to just a few grams of tablet shows a vast change in the education system of our nation.
I can still remember, how a few years ago, the furor with which the low-cost Aakash tablets were introduced in the year 2011, primarily for education purposes.
With state governments like that of Uttar Pradesh, distributing free tablets to the students clearing Class X exams, after winning Assembly elections and that of Tamil Nadu pledging to provide laptops if they win elections, it was all in the news. The paperless education model has been successfully implemented in many countries such as US, China, UK, Australia, South Africa, Malaysia and South Korea. Now, India also boasts of implementing this in as many as 1.5 million schools till date, with 12.5% of schools claiming to support digital classrooms according to a report by Technopak.
Coming to the myriads of benefits this model brings to the students, what comes to our mind instantly, is the transition in the look of a tired, bent-backed child because of the heavily laden school bag to a lively, straight-backed child after returning from school. Such a happy site to their parents!!! Let’s come to other positive aspects point wise:
- Interactive: The tablets provide more interesting and interactive visual methods which make learning easy as compared to plain old textbooks. After all, we learn what we see better than what we read.Priyank Dxit from Lucknow, father to a 3 yrs old daughter opines, “I prefer a mix of both. The knowledge from the books can be coupled with visual aids, which can really build up the understanding of the child like nursery rhymes for my daughter. Paperless education in India, still has a long way to go. It might be an emerging concept in urban India, but it will surely face hard times in rural India.”
- Less Efforts: With the teacher’s notes written on white boards, automatically getting downloaded on the student’s tablets through Wi-Fi, students don’t have to put in extra efforts to note them manually. Yes, you don’t have to borrow an extra pen from your friend sitting close to you.
- Well-Equipped Devices: Tablets contain practically all the information necessary with all books in pdf form as well as dictionary accessible at one click.
- Countless E-sources: More and more websites and apps are available in addition to e-books to make learning more efficient. Some of them include- Byju’s e-learning, Math Formulae Lite, Brilliant, Shakespeare, ‘The Chemical Touch’, Wolfram Physics, Human Anatomy, etc.
- Global Us: This method of education brings students at par with the schools globally. Children won’t have to adjust much if their parents get transferred somewhere abroad.
Sounds all rosy, huh? Only if anything could be without any of the if’s and the but’s! Some of the problems with this model include:
- Infrastructure Costs: It has been observed globally that this system hasn’t managed to hold price targets. The XO, from Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop per Child project, were initially estimated at $100, but later brought an excess load of $200.
- Inequality: If the same model is not available to every student, then it will affect the results in common tests such as board exams. Here, the rich will again have an advantage and the poor will have to struggle with the old-school learning methods to compete with them.
- Maintenance: Initially distributing tablets to rural areas is easy, But, a greater challenge would be the availability of unlimited access to the Internet and regular electricity to power these devices. Something like what Julius Genachowski said, “If your kid doesn’t have broadband access, that’s a real disadvantage for participating in modern education.”
- Ill-use of Technology: Excess of anything is bad. So, is about the digital medium.
- It has been observed that the concentration with which a student studies from textbook under the lamp is far more than that 7- inch mini computer, which has a variety of options which can deviate student’s mind.
- Using tablets in schools for studies and at home for homework and games can certainly make child addicted to it. Would you like your child to have their eyes glued to those devices instead of spending time talking to you?
- Also, many a times, in lieu of using tablets for their homework, students cleverly switch to other entertainment websites and apps because the secure intranet of school won’t work at home.
Nidhi Pathak, an entrepreneur and a mother of a 3.5 year from Bangalore says, “I would not prefer a paperless education. Getting information or making online projects are fine, but I will always be skeptical about the security aspect as to what my daughter gets to access. Being technologically advanced is fine, but education cannot be only on tablets and entirely without pen and paper.”
This debate is a never ending one and it has many facets. India has come a long way in developing and accepting new ways and emerging technologies. Today, when Narendra Modi is all gaga about Digital India, there is still a sizeable amount of people who are below the literacy line. Education needs to be a primary right, available to all before it can be digitized. We want a ‘paperless education’ for sure, but a ‘primary education’ before that.
Ask a student, whether he is ready to give up the workbooks completely and stay glued to the tablets. Ask a teacher, if he/she wants to give up checking answer sheets and the blackboard. Well, the reactions will be mixed.
Nawomica from Bangalore, who runs a startup in the education sector and works on innovative ways to make children learn in a fun and engaged way thinks we should embrace both the aspects in their own implications. She says, “The aim of any education system should ideally be to make children “Learn”. Children should be able to apply and connect the concepts learnt with the real life situations. The content that they are receiving is more important than how they are accessing it. However, in the present education system we can’t be selective.While paperwork makes them imaginative and creative, paperless education helps them to get more information in lesser time. I think we cannot treat the two systems as mutually exclusive and we have to strike an optimum balance between the two.”
I would like to sum up with a quote from Keith Kruger:
“It’s important to remember that education software, like textbooks, is only one tool in the learning process. Neither can be a substitute for well-trained teachers, leadership and parental involvement.”
But, before I wrap up, I have a few questions, still lingering in my mind:
Are parents ready to choose tablets over textbooks?
Will it be a luxury for urban children under the high cost education system or a privilege for rural Indian too?
Are the children ready to accept digital education?
Are we ready to attend classes with laptop bags and not with pen and paper?
Think again, ARE WE READY?
Image Courtesy: Johan Larsson
