Will Tablets Replace Books in Schools?

Tablet PC is a device which is somewhere in between a laptop and a mobile phone. It weighs about 1 kg and run popular software. iPad is one of the world’s more successful tablet PC and several companies have their products in the market competing with iPad, still 75% market share is of iPad.

Many technology fans thought that one iPad – costing about Rs. 25,000 each- could replace school textbooks, notebooks and workbooks. This would lighten the bag load and help students work faster, smarter.  The cost will be definitely high if we consider that iPad would need to be changed every year, but if it lasts more than 3 years it would be affordable even to Indian middle class.  

Taking this approach LAUSD – Los Angeles Unified School District- bought iPads worth $ 1.3 billion – Rs. 8600 crore. This program got the best hardware, directly from iPad manufacturer, Apple. Since its launch in April 2010 it has been getting a lot of attention. It practically gave birth to tablet PC industry. Selling about 2.6 crore units till now it is supposed to be a very successful device in history.  They also loaded the iPads with the best software from Pearson. It would help teachers teach effectively and students can do homework on the iPad. The program miserably failed. The FBI is currently investigating it whether there was any irregularity in the purchase decision.  The prime question in the investigation is, was this requirement driven by vendor or did the staff really required the technology?

So will Tablet PC ever replace textbooks in schools?

Let us get into the need of tablet PC. The school bag is heavy and tablets can reduce that. Humans can carry upto 20% of their body weight. School bags have sometimes 33% of body weight because of two major reasons – underweight children and unnecessary things in the bag. Now if we don’t address the malnutrition problem of underweight children, tablet PC is not going to be the solution. Moreover if students still bring unnecessary things to school which needs to be solved.

Having a tablet PC for each child will help him show richer media to study. Actual photos, animation, audio, video can help grasp the concept faster. However along with the good things come a big problem, distraction. Unfortunately with so much content loaded on the tablet PC which the child can easily access the concentration is affected, affecting the studies.

Looking to the above it seems difficult in near future that tablets will enter the classroom.

IT in Education: Parent Relations

An average sized school has about 1500 students, and about 2500 parents. To maintain cordial relations with each individual over 15 years (Nursery to Std 12) is an important task for a school Regular communication with so many individuals is not be possible without the use of IT.

Use of IT is done in several ways by a school to get the information across to the parent. Modern schools have emails and computers for each teacher. The parents are free to write to teachers and teachers are free to reply back. Parents can even write to Principal and Management. Some schools ensure a 2 working day response time to all emails. Several schools send weekly updates of their child’s progress over email, sometimes with photos.

Facebook is becoming a boon for school managements worldwide. The school posts their activities and updates on their own Facebook page. Parents see their children’s photos on such pages almost instantaneously. At times these updates are so fast that before the child returns home from the school, parents would have seen the photo of the activity they have done at the school. More so the parents like and comment on the update. This gives a feedback to school on what activities were liked and what were disliked.

Maintaining an up to date website is one of the best investment for marketing which the school can do for providing information to new and prospective parents. Printing a prospectus and charging for it is an outdated concept. Today’s school gets parents inquiries from across the world and before shifting to a particular city parents search for schools online. Hence using IT schools can market themselves across the world.

An important development which has helped school reducing communication time and cost is the WhatsApp. Most parents who can afford quality education for the child have smart phones. These parents are added on a “Broadcast” list and school can send messages to parents faster and cheaper. This kind of system is usually used in case of emergencies like closure of school due to rains, riots or any unforeseen circumstances. Also many parents use this medium to get small information they need from the school. The best part is that its one way communication so parents if they respond to messages send by school, only the school gets them, other parents are not aware.

WhatsApp groups also help parents. They are usually created by mothers themselves of particular class are helping to share information especially in younger classes where the students are not talking to each other from home. They are two way communication so if one mother writes something, others can read it.

All these technologies increase parent’s involvement in child’s education and also assures to the parents that the school is taking right care of the child.

IT in education: Back office systems

Imagine your school and you would imagine the classroom. That’s where student spends most of his time at the school. But behind the scenes there is a lot more to a school than classrooms. Apart from SMART board not much Information Technology (IT) has entered the classroom. But there is also a staffroom and admin room. IT has crept into those rooms since long and has shown considerable improvement in manpower productivity and improvements.

Take for instance mark sheets. Earlier the “report cards” were handwritten. Now CBSE schools have complex mark sheet which has a formula to derive annual marks based on the child’s performance in exams held during the year. Made manually these mark sheets would have a high chance of errors. It would take more time for marksheet preparation than paper correction if done manually. So IT has come to the rescue and most mark sheets of CBSE schools are generated by software.

Certain schools have automated the routine process of attendance taking to such a level that if the child is not present in the school the parent gets an SMS in 30 minutes of school getting started. This prevents school bunking and timely steps in case of an untoward incidence. Some schools give automated weekly reports over email about their child’s attendance in comparison with the class, for parents to evaluate how much the child is attending school.

Data gathered by such software can be subject to varied analysis. Like correlation of attendance to academic performance, if we just put the above mentioned data together. Software can used to track child’s height and weight increase as compared to the class. So in case the child is falling behind, parents can be alerted timely.  

An important use of IT is in evaluating answer sheets. OMR – Optical Mark Reader – is one such innovation which has helped evaluation of million plus candidates in matter of weeks, with much less errors than manual paper checking. Of course the next evolution in assessment is Online Testing where candidates give tests on computers and get assessed immediately. SAT, GMAT, GRE are examples of such tests for getting admissions to colleges in US. It is well accepted practice in developed countries since more than 2 decades.

Several schools have adopted various mediums to keep in touch with parents for day to day syllabus covered in the class. This helps students who are absent to catch up immediately and also helps inattentive students to stay on track. Some schools have adopted App based communication while others have created their own portals. From these communication mediums, additional worksheets, circulars and marks are also distributed.

Thus we can see that technology has started playing a vital role in school education even though it has limited application in the classroom. 

IT in Education: Has it increased productivity?

We have experienced exponential growth of use of information technology (IT) in all sectors of economy. The concept of “core banking” software revolutionised banking sector. Earlier you could encash your cheque from only your branch in which you had the account. Software connected all the branches and then you can withdraw from any branch. Such software enabled the implementation of ATM.

Stock market were like fish markets. Now they are all sophisticated with use of computers, internet and complex software. We can deal with any stock from any part of the world, only barrier being the time zone.

Travel booking, be it airline, train, hotel, sight-seeing or restaurant searching, everything can be done online and at flick of a button. You can compare thousands of options from the comfort of your bedroom.

In all these sectors implementation of technology has brought the costs down. The reason is very simple, it has increase manpower productivity by leaps and bounds. Today a private bank has about 3 times the market capitalisation per employee than a public sector bank. This is due to the better implementation of technology (apart from better management skill). 

Education sector has still not been able to reap dividends of IT. 20 years ago CBSE has 40 children per class and 1 teacher to teach. Even today the productivity per teacher is same. Each class requires one teacher and 6 hours when the students are there in the school, some or the other teacher has to be present.

This is not a problem in India alone. It’s a worldwide problem. We have SMART boards for teachers, so they can be more effective at teaching. We have computer generated marksheets, question paper, worksheets, but teacher’s role in the classroom is not eliminated. At best the teacher can make PPT and reuse it whenever the same topic is taught in the future. This does not decrease the manpower cost, just improves the classroom attention span if at all.

Thus contrary to other sectors, cost of education has not decreased with the implementation of IT. What has improved is quality of education. Today we can show amoeba classroom in motion at a flick of a button. We can show an animation of photosynthesis or a human blood circulation system so students can understand it clearly and faster. History becomes more interesting with colour photos, audio speeches, old videos.

Today’s children have exposure to a richer mediums like TV, Radio and computers at home. While studying they get to use both side of brains for faster learning through use of IT. Hence students have benefitted a lot with the implementation of technology in education even when cost of education has not decreased.