by Dr E Ramanathan
Online and distance learning will become more dominant. It will allow all people in remote for greater access to education. Virtual and augmented reality technologies will be increasingly used in the classroom to enhance the learning experience to the students. Personalized learning will become more common, with educational content tailored to individual students’ needs and abilities. There will be more focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education to prepare students for the jobs of the future. Collaborative and project-based learning will become more prevalent. This will emphasize teamwork and problem-solving skills.
The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in education will grow fast, from automated grading to personalized lesson plans. The integration of emotional and social learning will become an integral part of education, to develop well-rounded individuals with strong emotional intelligence. The use of mobile devices and apps will become more widespread, allowing for anytime, anywhere learning. Parents may agitate and find fault with the mobile and internet learning. But they will miserably fail. Because, students will more become more adaptive with and without such electronic gadgets. A new clan of high-tech teachers will develop. They will be effectively utilized in the development of machine learning AI tutors. Many teaching experts will use AI Tutor more effectively as a tool for teaching. There will be no teaching, but these teachers incarnate as content developers, reviewers, scripters, mentors, and facilitators. There will be more emphasis on lifelong learning and upskilling, as the pace of technological change continues to accelerate. You cannot stop learning for a particular period. There will be learning and training till the end of one’s life cycle. Education will become more accessible for all. The gap between the education opportunities for wealthy and poor students will decrease. Everyone will be interested in talent-based skill training to perform a particular task in their chosen career.
School curriculums will be determined by a variety of factors, such as government policies, funding, and societal needs. Some traditional teaching methods may vanish. They include cursive writing, short-hand writing, typing, memorization of historical dates since technology and digital communication become more prevalent. Some non-core subjects such as arts and crafts, music, or physical education may be cut from the curriculum due to budget constraints of many educational institutes. Some subjects that are not considered as “practical” or “job-related” may disappear. There may be an increased focus on skills-based learning, rather than just acquiring knowledge, to better prepare students for the workforce.
Students and parents should explore their inner talents with the help of some educated family mentors. There is a need for every family to have a mentor. The triangular team of father, mother and mentor should meet on regular basis and explore the inner talents of the student, because, talents are Divine gifts to every individual. Let is compare the rabbit and tortoise. The rabbit has a soft body; that is its main weakness and any animal can easily attack it, but it has running talent; that was its Divine gift to run and escape from its enemies. However, the tortoise has a very good defensive mechanism. It has a strong shell to protect itself from the attack of its enemies. Moreover, it knows how to pull its legs and head inside in case of any dangerous encounters. That is the boon given to the tortoise. However, we cannot expect a tortoise to beat rabbit in the cunning running race. But, why don’t we conduct the self-defence competition between the tortoise and the rabbit? The objective of the competition is that who has the endurance to protecting oneself against 10 stone hits. We know surely, the rabbit will miserably fail in the stone hit competition.
The student should undergo a specific training in a particular skill, based on one’s own talent and select the appropriate career instead of selecting the career first and exploring the skill set which may or may not be talent driven. The students and parents should accept their weakness and approve their strengths. Like tortoise and rabbit each one has some individual talents. They should identify such talents and convert them into appropriate skill sets to meet the job or business requirements. Students with some natural talents and who select their appropriate career are more successful in their life. No two electrons can have all the quantum numbers same, says, Pauli’s exclusion principle in atomic science. Similarly, no two individuals can have all skill sets same at equal levels.
We cannot expect what Google says is always is correct. Its translations may go wrong; its navigation may lead to blunt end of a street! The chatGPT may not be so creative and may give behave like a parrot like repetitive outputs with the limited scope; after all, someone would have to feed the machine learning or artificial intelligence.
We cannot be too much dependent on the Google faction. But, at the same time we cannot have all in one Gurukkal (teacher) also. Instead of trying to swallow the entire Ocean, we can quench our thirst with a single glass of potable water from a mud pot available in our proximity. We need to train our students to select a particular skill set. The mentor should guide the pupils how to manage the data, to interpret it, process it, and filter out the fake data. The teachers should not simply show and shove the data, after all the pupils are not dustbins to accommodate the redundant stuff. The students should be trained how to process, interpret, validate such data. They should be trained to filter the fake data from the genuine and relevant data. They should know how to rectify a process based on the data and how to synthesise a new entity from a suitable set data. The future is data education!
Personalizing education involves customizing the learning experience to the individual student’s needs, interests, and abilities. There are several means to personalize education such as differential instruction, adaptive learning using technology, self-paced learning, flexible grouping according to their abilities, project-based learning, personalized feedback system, collaborative learning as a team, students’ voice and choice i.e. student centric. Teachers become facilitators rather than information dispensers.
But the big question is that whether the personalized education will work out in the regular school education system. Certainly it is impossible in a bulk process of education in schools. Students and parents will surely prefer to have private tutorials and will depend on subject matter experts and dedicated private tutors. There will be lot of scope for tutoring sector in future. Many professionals will opt for such online or onsite tuitions. Such tutors will never mind about taking the educare opportunities of elementary school students too. One to One and One to a few coaching will work out tremendously. Schools will struggle to retain good teachers.