Technology has influenced every part of our society, including education. Today’s learners grow up with network devices both at home and in school, which significantly impacts how they learn. Many Asian emerging countries are suffering from a learning crisis. Even though thousands of young individuals go to school, they do not know enough. The scale of the problem is astounding: more than half of children in low- and middle-income countries do not learn to read by the age of ten. Furthermore, digital technologies are fostering a learning revolution. Educational technology, or EdTech, is the umbrella term for all of this. When an issue in education and a new approach to learning appear simultaneously, it’s reasonable to wonder how one can help the other. Edtech is a vital part of the solution, but it should be considered a means rather than an aim.
Our guiding concept should be to assess what’s wrong with a system before determining which solutions are most suited to address those issues. Several of the reasons for the educational crisis are well-known. A significant factor is the low quality of teaching. There are ways that technology may help with this, and EdTech could be just as helpful in training teachers as it is in training students. EdTech can directly support learners through digital learning. It can be considered a partial answer to two core learning crisis issues: addressing students at various levels of education and completing the syllabus. Teachers are often encouraged to teach to the top tier, leaving many learners behind in a classroom with a range of baseline learning levels.
Edtech software, when used in combination with other innovations, has the potential to be very beneficial. Low-tech interventions for “teaching at the proper level” have also significantly impacted education. Given that low tech is less expensive and funding restricts emerging countries, careful investigation is required to decide if high-tech or low-tech solutions are better. The spread of COVID-19 has boosted EdTech significantly. To address the need for alienation, EdTech is being utilized. More open online courses are being provided and enrolled in, but most are not for primary education and do not address the learning issue.
Source:
Paul Vandenberg, K. N. (n.d.). Education is in Crisis: How Can Technology be Part of the Solution? Retrieved March 12, 2022, from blogs.adb.org website: https://blogs.adb.org/blog/education-is-in-crisis-how-can-technology-be-part-of-the-solution
