Disrupting education with digital technologies

Education, over the years, has gone through various changes. However, we have witnessed some of the most significant developments in the education sector in the past decade with smart technologies transforming education into newer, more effective ways of learning. And one of the most important components of this smart education ecosystem is mobile application development. Since their very invention, mobile applications prepared the base for various other technologies, and flared that mobile education is up for widespread acceptance. Starting from mobile applications, the education sector has come far enough into using digital space and technologies to create comprehensive courses and teaching methods that have been proved to be more effective and efficient, irrespective of the batch size. So, let’s take a look at how different digital technology and platforms are being utilized in imparting better and equal education for each student:

Mobile Apps
Today, children learn operating smartphone before they could even learn the alphabets. They just love using mobile phones because it is an interactive, audio/video enabled device that they find interesting. This is exactly why students like learning from mobile apps and notebooks are slowly being ousted. Moreover, mobile apps allow students to learn freely, anywhere, anytime. Apps like Khan Academy have exceeded what the world expected from mobile education, by providing ‘free education for all’ through easily understandable courses. In school management systems, mobile apps have come up as quite a handy tool in managing elementary to advanced tasks like attendance to tracking overall performance of a student, and even sending out daily, quarter, annual reports through the mobile apps with customized access for parents.

Virtual Reality (VR)
Majority of the innovators and leaders in the field of education know how important it is to help a student understand the fundamental concepts of what they learn. While there may be other techniques, virtual reality is the most effective as it shows exactly what a concept has at the core of it. Helping students understand the structure of atoms, compounds, or even how a mathematical equation works, can be achieved with a VR set and a compatible phone. Among the three types of VR, the fully immersive VR is currently being applied in many schools to help children understand and absorb concepts more effectively than ever.

Augmented Reality (AR)
Augmented reality does something similar to virtual reality does, the difference between the two is that AR allows students to interact with their surrounds or even create a 3D model of anything, without the need of an external gear like that needed in VR. What is remarkable about using AR technology in education is that it hands over the control to students to create what they are learning, without the need of an instructor or teacher.

Artificial Intelligence
The applications of artificial intelligence in digital education have shown us that there could be a one-on-one interaction between a student and teacher, without the need of real classroom sessions. Although classroom courses are still quite relevant in our education system, artificial intelligence creates personalized study material, tailored tests, progress reports and identifies weak areas that a particular student needs to work on. Integrated with smart apps, the basic idea of artificial intelligence is to recognize that every student is unique and needs a different method of learning to assimilate the concepts. On the other hand, for teachers, AI can handle simple tasks like grading, preparing notes etc.

Social Media
Social Media has reached almost every corner of the world, presenting us with a perfect platform to connect with people and the topics that we want to know more about. In the light of the huge number of people these platforms connect, including students and teenagers, social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube are being used by institutional players to bring comprehensive, quality content to students of all ages and categories. Most of the mobile app development companies that create mobile apps, are also asked by the client to create social media channels as well, looking at the traffic that reaches these channel every day.

Education is not something that can come from a single type of source, as there is knowledge in anything and everything. We just needed to develop methods to extract knowledge from these sources, which is currently happening with the rise of digital technologies.

Written by: Namratha C K