Digitization of Schools & Colleges- A Problem or Solution?

Educational Institutes are adopting digitization almost for each task from teaching till management of the institute. Use of the computer has not only reduced the manual effort, but also minimised the paperwork. Digitization of educational institutes is helping both the teachers as well students. Apart from studies, digitization has helped educational institutes in management also such as collecting fees ,admission, maintaining records etc. It is also helping our country in achieving success over Digital India Project launched by Mr. Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India.

Now Students are able to invest more time into relevant studies because of the modern technologies used for education, such as video presentations, power point presentations, e-learning etc. Digitization of educational institutes has so many advantages and disadvantages. Based on those we can get conclusion whether it is a problem or solution. Some of the advantages and disadvantages are discussed below.

Advantages

The main advantage of digitization over education is that it makes the explanation of educational concepts, interactive and easily understandable because of technologies used for teaching . Students understand the concepts carefully. Also the presentations over interactive screens are more attractive and clearly visible as compared to that of old fashioned board and chalk. The lecture can be completed quickly using Powerpoint presentations, video presentations etc. Digitization also helps those students who are slow in understanding the concepts and hesitate to ask during a lecture in the class itself by replaying the recorded session and exactly same as before. The best thing with this is that it can be accessed anywhere. Even if someone has missed a class or two they can recover it by downloading the video lecture and notes from the institute’s website. Using the internet, students can learn on his own using online study material. They don’t even require a teacher. They can also be guided by distant faculties using online study courses. Students can avail the facility of e-learning which can help those also who are not able to come to schools or colleges. They can get access of a lot of books at the same venue and that too without searching here and there just by selecting the proper books over the internet. With this they can compare the concepts and will learn the most valuable concepts. In laboratory also digital equipment give reading accurately which in turn gives the result with no error or less error. Digitization of educational institutes also reduces manual support of the school management team by doing a lot of work at its own. Digitization also makes communication easier between students, teachers and parents. With these technologies, students will no longer stand in queues for hours they can easily pay fees online or can complete their admission too.

Disadvantages

Digitization of educational institutes has so many disadvantages too. The initial cost of traditional to digital transition could be a concern because it uses costly items such as computers, projectors etc. Internet connection needed for online studies is imperative which is still not available everywhere in our country. It also needs proper infrastructure for the implementation of these items in schools or colleges which demands some cost allocation in the beginning itself.

It reduces the creativity of students as they get all their answers over the internet so they don’t use their mind at all. Going online doesn’t mean that student will come across only the study materials. They might see that is not good for them. Proper monitoring of students is required while they use the internet which needs extra manual support that also becomes a problem for the educational institutes. It has thrown lots of people out of work as these technologies can do so many works alone without taking help from many people. It requires only a few for the operation of these technologies smoothly. It becomes a problem for students to get the desired solution easily because over the internet we can get a thousand of solutions for any problem ,but we have to select which will be better for us. Also, Selection of proper solution out of the available ones becomes a problem without proper guidelines. Digitization to some extent creates problems for student’s as well teacher’s health also. For example, continuous use of computers or laptops has a bad impact on the eyes and brain too said by many a doctors. Sometimes it may happen that the computers where we have stored all the data get damaged and sweeps away all the important data.

Hence seeing all these advantages and disadvantages we can conclude that digitization of educational institutes is somewhat a solution not a problem (See fig) as we can be benefitted more as compared to losses caused by digitization.

For the losses to reduce we can make proper arrangements so that they occur less such as we should not totally depend upon the technologies all the time. We should use the technologies so less that they don’t be a problem rather than a solution. It is making student’s as well as teacher’s life easier, even if it creates some problems. Thus we can say that our educational institutes should adopt these technologies and should go digital.