Role of digital platforms in the education sector_An essay by Priyambada Sarangi

We are presenting the series of essays submitted for the 1st Annual Pharma Literati Essay contest. The opinions in the essay are by the authors and need to be endorsed by Pharma Literati team. 

             Education is the process, which advances learning and creativity. Creativity is the accumulation of skills, values, beliefs and habits which works as add-on to the thinking power. When this thinking power expands it provides Knowledge. A developed country is one that has the capability to strengthen the national security, accelerate the wealth along with proper blue print of technologies and aim to achieve the goal in upliftment of the lifestyle of the fellow compatriot. To this respect, education is the sole requirement to meet the developmental goals.  In ancient era education is used to impart knowledge of religion, scriptures, philosophy, literature, warfare, statecraft, medicine, astrology and history. But in this twenty-first century education is not confined to these conventional sectors only. Now the education sectors spread their wings with fusion of two or more sectors to provide new possibilities to the world. For this, use of technologies especially digitalization of education sectors play as the driving force.

         Digitalization is bestowed on the application of online education and development of novel flexible methods with digital tools for acceleration of active learning. The use of internet is the key mechanism by which the students can acquire ideas and knowledge to enrich their career and can sow the economic opportunities for the future. It can be concluded that in recent time all the knowledge the world has to offer is through worldwide web (www.).

         But the education sectors will not be able to meet the need for secure, fast and uninterrupted apps without the necessary application supporting services. In this 21^st century the adaptation of the digital or smart classes have created a novel era of personalised learning. It is worth mentioning that the integration of technology within the education sector can fundamentally transform how learning is received and delivered. If we will analyse the prospective of digitalized education in various sectors, then we can find that in every field digitalization saves lots of time as it makes easier searching of the requirements for both teachers and students. It also helps in perfect decision making and easier communication between parents, students and teachers within no time. As the digital class rooms are well equipped with internet availability, hence it furnishes deeper learning through various learning platforms like Google, Wikipedia, Wikimapia, Youtube, Research gate and other on-line query gates. The deeper learning with lots of queries and getting their solutions through these on-line platforms is quite easy within few seconds, which induce greater interest and passion for acquisition of knowledge amongst the students. This ultimately generates the youth with ignited minds as these digital platforms are providing a better scope to grow up and move ahead. Digital platforms are also helping to reduce the heavy school bag burden on the students as the books are being replaced by tabs in some schools. We, the human beings can remember the visual representations of a concerned subject better than the theoretical presentations. To this end, smart classes are the well-known digital platforms which are easily explaining the subject matter through its audio-visual presentations and putting a greater impact on students. By digitalization of the education sectors everyone is now able to access the different teaching patterns and subject matters worldwide. It also makes easier to get connected to the friends and to know their views if required. Now digital platforms have changed the conventional style of class room teaching. The teachers are considered as the potters who give shapes to the future of the students. Therefore an intelligent teacher must know the use of internet and also must be able to teach through smart classes.

            Now the whole world is running after digitization. The country which is well equipped with digital services in its each sector is considered as the developed one. Digital platforms have their grips on almost every field that exists in this era and provides ideas and knowledge to the students to enrich their creativity starting from ground to space. But the education system is one field that hasn’t still been fully powered by digital world. There is a lot more requirements in the education system which is yet to get digitized.

        India has one of the largest higher education systems in the world. The current study shows that our country has more than 1.4 million schools with over 227 million students enrolled and more than 36,000 higher education institutes. The education and training sector in India has witnessed some major investments and developments in the recent past which aims to increase the digital literacy to at least 50 % of Indians and to make them experts through effective training programmes by 2020. According to the Union Budget 2016-17, 10 public and 10 private educational institutions are to be made world-class and the digital literacy scheme to be launched for covering six crore additional rural households with the objective to skill one crore youth in the next three years under the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna (PMKVY).

       Our ex-president and the greatest proponent of digital education, honourable Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam said, “When the students pass out of senior secondary schools, they should have two certificates of passing 10+2 examination and of a specific skill via digital education acquired by him during schooling. And the introduction of a particular skill set at a younger age will promote entrepreneurship in the country which will generate job creators instead of job seekers.”

       Digitalization is the technology that makes the life not only just much easier but also pretty smarter. It is to say that technology has grown leaps and bounds in the education sectors. Therefore, digital revolution is the need of the hour for development of a nation in this fastest moving world.