Why should Emerging Economies encourage Internet of Education?(IoEd)

Why should Emerging Economies encourage Internet of Education?(IoEd)

·         Accessibility to education is an issue among emerging economies. Remote area students do not obtain the same level of delivery proficiency as the students in the urbanized areas do get. Urban students have an elitist advantage by virtue of knowledge and technical accessibility. For a level playing field, developing an IoEd Platform at a macro level (perhaps in association with technology providers of an international stature ) will bring about economies of scale and economies of access. Emerging economies might have to plan for a centralized IoEd Platform to avoid the operational  risk enhancement and lack of compatibility s involved in divergent platforms.  Device management would vary and regulators might have inadequate access to functionality.

·         Quality of teaching is abysmally low in emerging economies. Teachers are reluctant to be innovative or do not seize technical advantages of the internet so as to help delivery better. Given that teaching is not a first choice for the graduate, emerging economies have to avoid slipping to a cycle of mediocrity where low level academic inputs bring about low level skill outputs. Quality assimilation among teachers leaves considerable scope for improvement. Given the vastness of numbers, teacher training is a difficult option as outreach is difficult. Given that time to delivery is short, there is a need for a mass level teacher training programme. That can only be facilitated by technology. One has to reckon with the reluctance of managements to take on the responsibility of training as they view it as a cost rather than an investment matter.

·         The Governmental / supranational intervention in collaborative effort with international technology and device providers (Intel, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Samsung, Dell, HP) in creating an IoEd Platform should ensure an ongoing teacher training. This should be 'training anytime- training anywhere' and intensely personalized.  The costs of digital training are lower and comes down with every successive inductee. In the long run it is not just an economic investment but a social capital building. The IoEd should  bring teachers on to a network for peers where there will be collaborative learning and also anonymous querying.

·         For the student and the teacher, the usage of internet learning reduces the costs of learning.  While the initial investment is high (fixed costs) the average costs tend to come down with the induction of incremental numbers. As education acquires mass dimensions, the marginal costs turn negligible.

·         As resources are digitalized, and in a cloud driven environment inventorying knowledge is less expensive.

·         As international agencies (like UNESCO) and well reputed Universities like Harvard and Notre Dame are involved , this will lift the quality of teacher inputs to high levels.

·         Special needs' students can be approached with a tailored programme.

·         In the emerging economies, the social media has been intensely popular. This popularity can be leveraged on effectively and social media can blend with learning-  social networking services, (SNS), Wikipedia, web dictionaries, blogs, user created content (UCC) can be creatively put to use.

References:

UNESCO: Technologies in Higher Education: Mapping the Terrain

ISACA: Internet Of Things: Risk And Value Considerations

Note: This is a part of the author's research on the Internet of Education. Copyrights vest with the author. He can be contacted by email at jaynayar@gmail.com