Education content and technology
One of our customers recently asked us if we provide classroom content to enable learning models. Many of the other technology providers are doing so.
Impact of technology in the field of education is not very old. It’s still early days. Multiple models would get tried out. Some may work and some would fail. Current places of impact that technology can have for education institutions lies in three areas. Process, analysis and learning content.
- One can optimize internal processes to free up time to do more productive activities.
- One can get deeeper insights into how each learner is doing and provide directed help with ease through analysis tools.
- And one can provide easier visualization, AV assistance as a learning aid.
These three are seperate domains. In early days of technology impact, anything sells. But as times mature, one starts feeling a need for more depth. Keeping a choice of what kind of content one needs seperate from what technology platform for process and analytics is important. It is tempting to go for an all in one package, but soon one realizes that one is locked with an inferior service on one of the fronts and is loosing money in something not very useful.
I can provide an analogy here. Last few years are beginning to see a revolution in digital media. People who create content, how it reaches us, what equipment do we use to see or hear it are changing. Remember the old days of two in ones, and three in ones. Today going for such a choice is a mistake. Given that fundamentally all content has to be seen and heard, one can invest in a good television view and a strong sound amplifier which can take inputs from multiple sources. Once this is done. You can buy seperate things like a CD player, DVD player, Blue ray player, MPEG2 set top box, MPEG4 set top box, satellite radio box or whatever. This space has not seen a final verdict yet. But each of these lies in the range of 500 rs to 2000 rs range, and one can exercise choice of the medium, without compromising on a good sound and view capability if one invests in a good television and a good sound amplifier.
All in one packages may be make a good immediate choice. But with technology as dynamic as it is today, one is bound to feel stuck with a bulky package not leaving any money to try out other things.