Government is spending a lot of money to introduce technology into education. A lot of discussion is going on about this topic, but I don’t see anything changing as long as our mind set remains the same. Here are some of the facts.
How many engineering colleges allows assignments to the submitted via email ?. OK forget email, how many teachers accept printed assignments ?
There are colleges who still require students to do presentations on the old OHP projector, even if they have a normal LCD projector in the college. In my college I did my seminar using OHP and that was just 3 years back.
How many educational institutions have understood the real importance of the Internet ? How many give total unlimited access to students ? An unlimited BSNL broadband costs only 750 Rs a month and for normal browsing you can connect 20 computers to it.
Kids are always smarter than the teachers when it comes to technology. Think of our dads and moms who cant properly use the TV remote. Its the same with us also. The kids think, we don’t know how to properly use the Internet. Ive heard kids saying “dad only knows how to use outlook express”.
We need to let go off the feeling that kids will misuse technology. Ofcourse they will to an extent. Can any of us say that we have never misused the resources we had ? But we figured it out. Just like that the kids also will, but we have to trust in them.
great point, we usually ignore small but basic details like this … engineering colleges without internet access for students.. etc etc…
Comment by dinu — September 24, 2008 @ 12:01 pm
I have tried to do such things in the past. See this link. http://brainstorms.in/class/s3assignment.txt.
The response was pretty poor and I had to force them to submit via email. The teachers will have to do extra home work for making submissions via email or hard copy a success. What I tried was to give each student a different topic.
With the proliferation of colleges , only 10 percent of students who opt for engineering has the aptitude for tech studies. The rest feet that engineering degree is something that they can buy. Among the 10 percent some are smarter than their teachers in all respect like Kenny
. ( I wont make a comment on quality of teachers of technology and I am one among them)
Last summer I tried to do a project. http://brainstorms.in/?p=26. I got only 2 emails from a class of 60,
, and only one guy turned up for doing it.
Comment by vu2swx — September 24, 2008 @ 10:45 pm
Good Point Kenney. I think that fear is due to the fact that the older generation’s have not experienced any of this new technology – and they have no clue as to how it can be used – leave alone misuse…
Comment by JMJ — September 25, 2008 @ 12:12 pm
Agree with vu2swx, word by word! It’s hard to implement technology in draconian-minded professors’ classes. Besides, there are huge technological and logistical issues associated.
The change will come. Someday, if not today!
Comment by Hari — September 25, 2008 @ 9:23 pm
@ vu2swx
Absolutely true – The students themselves are not ready for this kind of change…
I wish I could submit my assignments and write my exams on-line. Saves a lot of money and time for me…
Comment by JMJ — September 26, 2008 @ 4:44 pm