In today’s world hard work is not enough to meet your desires. You need to be smart while executing your work. Smartness is something which a human being develops on different stages of life, which we often call experience.
Smart class: a hype or a necessity?
Smart classes obviously cannot guarantee to make a kid smart, but it surely gives a better and dynamic ambiance to the student to learn in a smart way. Learning is fun when subjects are interesting, and smart classes are doing well in creating interest of a student in the particular subject, which the kid used to hate the most.
A kid’s observation power is much stronger than a grownup adult. They can grab things quickly. Smart classes provide the opportunity to learn through smart boards with 3D effects.
Not just kids, the elder ones and the professionals also gets benefited with smart learning and sharing. With the help of notebook, tablet and other advanced gadgets a lot can be shared. One teacher can teach at many places at the same time by live satellite classes and can give feedback to the individual if he/she demands so.
The top 10 beneficial facts about Smart Classes
Some of the following reasons will help you understand the importance of smart class clearly:
- Flexibility in learning:
A lot can happen over a smart board. Children can study in different forms of media. They get illustrations via photos, maps, graphs, regular and animated videos. Different minds have different preferences so they learn according to it.
- Advanced teaching and learning experience:
Advanced technology not only enhances the learning experience but also gives an interesting platform to the teachers. Information is easy to grab with visual effects and dynamic perspective.
- Connects well with more interaction:
Smart classes provide an interactive atmosphere which results in more transparency between teachers and students. This helps in establishing a connection, so that students can easily express through touching, writing and drawing.
- Easy Maintenance:
As all the tools of smart classes are electronic, they are easy and neat to use. Digitalized pen or tool is being used instead of marker and chalks. They just need good surveillance and have very low maintenance.
- Access to online resources:
The best part of smart classes is that, here everything is synchronized. Essential gadgets and projectors are synchronized among themselves and they all are again connected to internet. So, at every step, availability of solutions is high with the help of web.
- Environment friendly:
Emphasizing more on e-learning, we not only get dynamic information but also are stepping towards green learning. Here, everybody is compatible with notebooks and tablets. Hence, the use of paper is almost negligible. Phenomenon like writing with pen or pencil, photocopying and printouts are rarely seen.
- Upgraded integration:
Various technologies can be integrated for a better learning experience. For instance, microscopes, document cameras, video cameras can be integrated with the white boards. And mics and speakers are integrated with satellite for live classes.
- Pace of growth:
Every individual’s capacity to grow is different from the other, so the pace of growth is also different with regard to different students. E-learning gives separate profile to all the students so they can maintain their own speed of growth.
- Repetition:
Everyone has different grasping power. Some students take time to understand and comprehend studies. It might be the case that they apprehend things for the third and fourth time. So, encrypted data is essential as it can be repeated till it gets into the mind.
- Using different tools:
Through technology aided classroom learning, a child gets the opportunity to learn new things using various tools. Mind mapping, using 3D techniques becomes highly effective when used in a smart class.
Every good thing has something to be concerned about. Smart classes might be the best gift to the society as it deals with the base pillar. Education is undoubtedly said as the base pillar because it not only literate people but also gives a vision in life. Life without a vision is like a racing track without a map, where you are just driving fast to finish the race. There is no fun in that as it does not deal with the concerns of the race.
10 concerns about smart classes
Technology has become an integral part of our daily lives, especially in developing countries. It is selling like hot cakes these days. But it has its own shortcomings.
- Highly cost effective:
There are concerns among various schools about the pace of changing technology. After every few months new programming language, new software is being developed. For getting to know these and upgrade oneself, the schools need to hire an up-to-date person. In this modern world of cut-throat competition this is hard to find.
- Cumbersome up gradation:
Moreover, upgraded technology requires upgraded equipment. This task is highly pocket-pinching. It is not possible every time to upgrade according to the needs of the hour. Manpower is also needed to maintain the whole infrastructure. Moreover, the more there are students, the more a school needs internet bandwidth. All these processes become a bit hard to manage and expensive.
- Handling issues by parents:
Many a time parents face problem in handling the schoolwork because of technology. Familiarity becomes an issue. The last generations are comparatively slow in catching new technology and get upgraded with that.
- Diversions:
Guardians as well as teachers feel that taking smartphones and other gadgets in school becomes a major source of distraction for the students. Internet connectivity adds to its woes, with social messaging apps playing the part of the culprit. It even becomes impossible to understand that whether a child is using the gadget for educational purpose or otherwise. Filtered browsing is an option but it is difficult if the gadget is personally owned by the child.
- Interactions and social issues:
The social dynamics gets altered in a smart class. There is no face to face that is real time interaction among the peers in tech-driven classroom. Social interaction forms an integral part of human society. Without it, human morals and ethos become hard to develop. There is a need to inculcate these values among the students.
- Dependency on technology:
Technology makes a person highly dependent. And when it comes to students, it acts as a crutch. Everything comes in handy, a child need not to bother much about completing any task. Hence the problem solving capacity of the child decelerates.
- Actual learning process:
Research says that smart class lowers the test standardization scores. It is found that many pupils lack the basic knowledge of Math and English while competing for creativeness in a tech-driven class. A smart class also does not ensure that whether a child is improving in his or her smartness or creativity. It becomes quite mechanical while working on and with a gadget in a particular direction.
- Lessening human values:
Teaching a child using technology lowers the importance of a teacher. The child becomes used to the theory that it is the computer or the gadget that is teaching, the teacher is a mere medium.
- Efficient infrastructure:
To set up a smart class, it is highly crucial that the institution has enough facility to carry on with the project. Technology requires long term investment, both monetary and mental as well.
- Understanding :
There is no doubt that an understanding between two human being is much more than a machine and its user. After all manmade machines, machines did not made man.
The ultimate analyses
All these opinions and arguments point to a pertinent question that whether a smart class is actually beneficial for a child or not. Is it really making an educational growth in the lives of the students? Or is it making it easy for a child to go hand in hand in this fast moving world? There are many questions that pricks our conscience. We need to get out of the dilemma and work towards making education more accessible and feasible to all in whatever way we can.
View points
It is not justified, if we say smart classes are the only way of learning, similarly making comments like smart classes are fruitless and a total waste of time is also not acceptable. So what i will suggest is a blend should be kept between the two. Ethical and moral enrich values should be merged with modern techniques and the result should be delivered to the students. This experiment will result in a subjective solution to many problems.
If we consider social sciences, there the dates and facts are absolute most of the time but the cause behind the facts contradicts because of different perspective. Here e-learning suits well with facts and figures but a detailed discussion on the reasons behind the revolution or war or a referendum needs emotions. And we all know that machines have everything except emotion and feelings.
So, I will suggest that first of all mark the subject with difficulties, then arrange smart classes for it, and feel the different experience all by yourself.