Integration of technology and education is inevitable in today’s day and age. Our lives are entwined with the frequent usage of the various digital appliances that has definitely made life easier for us. Nowadays even education system has seen an enormous change globally. There was a time when students used to completely depend on pen and paper; and today education has drastically evolved and has become digitally active.
Higher education has seen technology becoming a part of their daily curriculum. Most of the campuses are going digital and the availability of the online world is free flowing.
Here are few ways to incorporate technology into your institute:
- Wi-Fi Campus: First and foremost, get Wi-Fi on campus. Make your institute completely Wi-Fi enabled. The capacity of your Wi-Fi should be reasonable, keeping in consideration of all the students and teachers who would use it. You could put a limit for usage per system and ask students to pay if they cross a certain limit.
The availability of Wi-Fi on campus, helps the students and teachers to be online and on the same network. Plus communication gap reduces and flows smoothly between individual on the same campus.
- Digital Badges: This basically indicates an individual’s proficiency level. Experts believe that in the future digital badges would either replace diplomas and certificates or use a combination of them. Digital Badges would be a virtual proof of your qualification and competencies.
For example if you have a Microsoft certification for some course, a JAVA certificate or say you have completed a course in animation or graphic design etc. On completion on your course you would be given a digital Badge for it.
When you share your profile with recruiters, you would not be required to give certificates and diplomas, your digital badge would work as a validator for your competencies.
- Devices: Today, in this virtual day and age most of the students are already carrying various devices like smart phones, tablets, laptops etc. Institutes need to make sure that they incorporate that in their day to day activities.
As an educator you cannot ignore the fact that, the mobiles etc. have become a part of our daily lives, so if students are sitting in your class 'whatsapping', why not include mobile phones as a medium to gain more information and knowledge. This way student would still be on phones, but they would also be ‘present’ in class.
- Digital Courseware: To make use of the digital devices, the institutes need to make some of their courseware digitally available. You do not need to make your entire course online, because even in-class sessions are required; may be choose courses or subjects that require more self-study and that can be followed by an interactive classroom.
- Analytics: Analytics are used to give information for various websites in terms of viewers, page traffic, what they view, which page is surfed more etc. This concept can be brought to the educational institutes, to keep a track of what students read, how long they spend on it etc. This knowledge would help the institute to know what they should do and what they should re-think.
- Virtual teaching: As an institute, you can make use of Skype and other online video conferencing software, through which you can get expert professionals and ask them to take a class from where ever they are. Virtual teaching helps students to interact with experienced people of the same field.
Plus this concept can be used to pre-record classes etc. and students who are pursuing distance learning or online courses – can view these videos anytime they want.
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