Use of Technology for Human Development

Use of Technology for Human Development

Dr. SantoshKoti

Asst. Professor

Dept of English

Walchand College of Arts and Science,

Seth WalchandHirachandMarg,

Ashok Chowk,

olapur – 413006

• In many areas like healthcare, communication, domestic appliances, transportation and food

– We have a lot of new understanding / development in the last few decades

– And what we did 20 yrs ago is no longer valid

• Do you think human psychology and learning has remained static?
• But when it comes to teaching we still do what our teachers did!

The old classroom model simply doesn’t fit the changing needs. It’s a fundamentally passive way of learning, while the world requires more and more active processing of information. The old model is based on pushing students together in age group batches with one-pace-fits-all curricula and hoping they pick up something along the way. It isn’t clear that this was the best model one hundred years ago; it certainly isn’t anymore. Meanwhile, new technologies offer hope for more effective ways of teaching and learning, but also engender confusion and even fear; too often the shiny new technology is used as little more than window dressing. The govt. has passed the RTE. But the question is does the govt. capable to accommodate all the children in the schools? Are there enough schools to accommodate these many children? The answer is unfortunately negative. Unfortunately we have to say that the RTE is a kind of failure system. At one side there is RTE and at other side privatization of school education. Parents have to pay thousands of Rupees as fees and donations for admissions in schools. Some of the schools, under the title “QUALITY EDUACTION” charge maximum fees. That can’t be quoted here. The question comes ‘where are we heading?’ Many children drop the education only because they don’t have enough money to pay the fees. The time has come to bring the change in the educational system itself. One method to do this is online learning.

Online learning is a global trend that uses the Internet to create learning communities among students and instructors/tutors who may be very distant physically from each other. Over the past few years, online learning has grown dramatically in the world. India being a fast developing country is also using this means to train the available human resource. India has world’s largest young population. Every third person in India is a youth. Despite having a smaller population than China, Indiahas the world's largest youth population with 356 million 10-24 year-olds. This is an advantage to use the technology. In order to maximize the dividend, India must ensure its young working-age populations be equipped to seize opportunities for jobs and other income-earning possibilities. To equip them with the modern technology and use the ICT means to train them is one of the best ways to develop the ingrained potential of the youth.

Now it has become easy to reach to those who are deprived of education. One of the best means to reach is a cell phone. YashwantraoChavan Maharashtra Open University, Nashik has decided to teach a programme entitled Preparatory Course through cell phones. Students need not to contact or come to the study centres. The university itself will reach up to them, besides no extra fees will be charged. This system will definitely bring them in to the flow of education. Higher education institutions must bring a change in their policy of discipline. Most of the institutes don’t allow the use of cell phones in the campus. Now it is a time to consider the fact that almost all the students possess cell phone and this asset could be utilized for developing their skills.

It is a time to reach to the students. In the age old Gurukul systems students used to go to the Guru Ashrama and get education. Now the students don’t have this much time. The world is changing fast. It is time when, we, the teachers need to reach to the students. Every student from every corner of the world must be in contact with the teacher. And the method to do this is use of cell phones.

Today out of 1,267,402,000 of the total population of India 970,955,980 people use mobile phones, that is 77.58%. The cell phone is personal technology. Most students have invested a great deal of time learning about the features of the cell phone, how to navigate and the limitations of the phone. The other reason to really rethink the cell phone debate is because learning on the cell phone can extend beyond the walls of the school or the confines of a class period.

Table I: Cell Phone Use in Asia

South Asia / Southeast Asia
Pakistan / India / Sri Lanka / Philippines / Thailand
Percentage of respondents who have used a phone in the past 3 months / 98 / 94 / 92 / 93 / 95

Source:Ayesha Zainudeen, NirmaliSivapragasam, Harsha de Silva, TahaniIqbal, and DimuthuRatnadiwakara, “Teleuse at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Findings from a Five-Country Study” (Sri Lanka: LIRNEasia, November 2007).

As mobile phones, tablets, and other connected devices become more prevalent and affordable, wireless technology can dramatically improve learning and bring digital content to students. Students love mobile technology and use it regularly in their personal lives. It therefore is no surprise that young people want to employ mobile devices to make education more engaging and personalize it for their particular needs.

As a country, we need to educate the next generation of scientists, inventors, engineers, and entrepreneurs. Educating a workforce that is effective in a global context and adaptive as new jobs and roles evolve will help to support our economic growth. Mobile learning makes it possible to extend education beyond the physical confines of the classroom and beyond the fixed time periods of the school day. It allows students to access content from home, communicate with teachers, and work with other people online. The value of mobile devices is that they allow students to connect, communicate, collaborate and create using rich digital resources.

Use of Cell phones for teaching: a defining feature of the youth culture. Educators have labeled them a classroom disturbance and they have been banned in most schools across the country. But, is it possible to think that there could be, in between the deafening ring tones and the obsessive text messaging, some redeeming educational qualities to these devices?

One teacher says yes.

Liz Kolb converted from being one of those teachers who “didn't see value of cell phones on campus” to devising ways to use cell phones as learning tools. Kolb, a former middle school and high social studies teacher and technology coordinator, said she was doing a blogging activity with a group of teachers when a message popped up on her screen telling her she could create an audio-blog with her cell phone. “It was the easiest podcast I ever made. I said, 'Wouldn't this be a great way to do podcasts as homework!' It was a real ah-ha moment,” she says.

But when she went out searching for resources on how to teach with cell phones, she found none so, she says, “I just started playing around.”

What she came up with was a host of ways educators and parents could use cell phones to enhance learning outside of the classroom, and perhaps just keep students engaged. Kolb, who is now completing her doctorate in learning technologies at the University of Michigan, says while she still thinks cell phones shouldn't be used inside the classroom, she believes there are ways to use a cell phone as “an anytime, anywhere, data-collection tool.”

Take, for example, this science lesson: your eighth grader is learning about ecosystems, and is tasked with taking photos of insects on his phone to be studied later in class. “There is a genuine excitement about the lesson because they can use their own cell phone,” she says. And, says Kolb, when student's can connect their own culture with what's happening in school they're education becomes immediately more meaningful to them.

And, says Kolb, this type of technology integration will better prepare students for the 21st century workforce, where jobs are performed on mobile devices, such as cell phones. “We see it in places where we compete, such as China,” she says. “The fact is that they already value the cell phone as a professional tool. Now we need to teach kids how to use a phone ethically in the work environment of the future.”

Kolb, who highlights her ideas in the new book,Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education, says students don't need the latest high-tech phones to conduct these mini lessons. In fact, she says she did all her research for the book with one of the cheapest phones on the market. About 95 percent of phones today have cameras, albeit poor ones. But, says Kolb, even a poor camera is a teaching moment waiting to happen.

How can you leverage these teaching moments at home? Here are some of the suggestions for using the phone as a learning device.

Cell Phone Learning Strategies

Recording Lectures: The “Flipped" Classroom

Many teachers are structuring their lessons in what is being coined “Flipped Classroom”. These teachers are recording their “lectures” using video or audio and students are listening to that outside of class as the homework and in class they are completing the practice and the teacher serves as a guide, re-teaching as needed. On most cell phones with a data plan students can watch a video of a previous lesson of an appropriate clip onYou Tube.

Use Cell Phones as Your Student Response System

Using your students’ cell phones, you can track instant answers from all your students. It’s free for classrooms of 30 people or less.

Gina Hartman an eMINTS Instructional Specialist at Francis Howell School District in Missouri shared a fantastic new Web 2.0 site named teacher creates a wiffiti screen and students can text in their opinions.

One teacher used this to summarize Act 1, Scene 1 from Romeo and Juliet. They texted in the short summary and it showed up on the screen. In another classroom the students had think about the time period that Andrew Johnson was in office and text something into the wiffiti screen that would have been something he would have tweeted back then. I love this example, talk about engaging students.

Delivering Materials

As more curriculum materials are delivered digitally creative teachers are delivering materials directly to students on their personal cell phones. One such platform isSchool Town.This learning platform makes it possible for teachers and students to collaborate in discussion areas and chat with each other making blended learning a real possibility.

Awesome Teacher Apps

Dropbox:One of my most beloved apps is dropbox. Dropbox allows all my computers and my phone to interact together. So the photo I take on my cell phone can be put in my Dropbox app and now it is available on all my devices, love it!

Evernote:Next in line of cool apps for the classroom is Evernote. This handy app lets you type a text note, or clip a web page. If your phone has a camera you can snap a photo, and now you can also grab a screenshot. Like dropbox it doesn’t matter what device you are on, they all sync together.

Solving Common Problems Using Cell Phones in Class

Students without Cell Phones / Smart Phones

Other issues arise because not every student has a cell phone. The easiest way to work around this is to have students working in groups, collaborating and solving problems together. Now we only need one cell phone to report out the group work. If we get creative, any problem can be solved.

Wireless Access

Wireless access might be another problem. Smart phone users will usually try and find a wireless network instead of going through the provider signal. With all these added devices your network may be burdened. Also cell phone reception is an issue in many schools. If this is the case, you may want to focus more of the group work or homework-related cell phone strategies.

Keeping Cell Phone Use Appropriate

Thinking about using cell phone in the classroom we need to make sure we involve our students in the conversation. Let them teach us about how to reduce the fear of theft or inappropriate use. Every student should be reminded every day about appropriate technology use, and what to do if the rules are broken. We need to help students understand the ramifications of things like cyber bullying,sexting and posting things to social networking sites.

OER

Another method to reach to the students is OER (Open Educational Resources). OER are reusable; are adaptable to many learning should be interoperable in different formats (including devices, operating systems and applications. OER are used in some sites, and can be useful; they are usually in the form of star ratings or numbers. Instructors can also conduct self-evaluations of resources to ensure that the quality meets their standards. Also, the brand or reputation of the course developers or their institutions can be an important indicator of quality.

Of course, the above quality indicators can and should also be used in evaluating restrictively licensed content. The ability to update content in a timely fashion without restriction gives OER a significant measurable quality advantage over closed content. Commercial vendors do not allow users to modify their content and so it cannot be updated by the users. Cost is another important variable in evaluating quality. If the content is too costly and essentially unaffordable, it is not useful. OER are free of charge and the costs of developing content as OER is shared among many institutions. An institution may develop one OER and receive thousands in return.

Open Educational Resources

Name/Details of the Site / Web Link
OER Commons /
NPTEL /

SAKSHAT /
National Repository of Open Education Resources /
Teacher Portal ( Class room resources) /
Open Resources for Schools ( Home baba Centre for Science and Education) /
National Institute of Open Learning /
Lecture fox /
MIT /


Berkeley University /
Yale University /
Princeton University /
John Hopkings University /
Rice University /
Carnegie Mellon University /
Tufts Open Courseware /
University of Notre Dame /
Utah State University /
Utah Open Courseware Alliance /
Paris Tech Graduate School /
Open University of Nederland /
University of Southern Queensland /
New Zealand OER Project /
United Nations University /
Vietnam /

Open Courseware Mexico /
Open Courseware Consortium /
Open learning object repository: (Merlot) /
Open textbooks: (Connexions) /
Aggregated video: Academic Earth /
Mixed Media: Wikimedia /
University of Minnesota:
(Open academics textbook catalog) /
Open access research: (DOAJ) /
Open textbooks for K12: (Siyavula) /
Khan Academy /
OER Africa /
Carnegie Mellon University ( Open Learning Initiative) /
The Open Video Project /
WiKiEducator Project /

Moodle

If you were a computer programmer the term “Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment” (Moodle) might make your heart skip a beat. If you were a teacher you might recognize the word as a verb that describes the process of lazily meandering through something, doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity. As such it applies both to the way Moodle was developed, and to the way a student or teacher might approach studying or teaching an online course. Anyone who uses Moodle is a Moodler.

The Australian developer of Moodle (Martin Dougiamas), is both an educator and computer scientist. This combination brings unique qualifications to the art and science of using technology to reach learners in the 21st century.

The main goal of moodle is to give teachers, students and the tools used to teach and learn. The functionality is different from pre-existing software systems like Student Information Systems and perfectly possible to use moodle as a Standalone system in which no need of integration with anything else.

Open Source e-Learning Software

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a software package designed to help educators create quality online courses and manage learner outcomes. Such e-learning systems are sometimes also called Learning Management Systems (LMS), Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) and Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS). Students need only a browser (e.g., IE, Firefox, Safari) to participate in a Moodle course.