Building Teacher Skills in Emerging Economies-1

There is a worrisome perception among parents and other stakeholders about the declining quality of school education in emerging economies.  This is attributable to numerous factors but the more serious among faculty is a lack of adequate and contemporary post-entry training or continuous professional updating  for teachers.

Poor quality of  teachers means children are provided with weak inputs. Student learning is sub-optimal. Teachers may have the basic skills, but not much more. The cost of this failure to meet student needs on monetary and development and psychological angles could be substantial.  Thus investing in teachers'human resource development is the single most important challenge. 

There is a learning crisis at hand unless the teachers are adequately trained. There is need for focused attention on updating professional competences through technological intervention among teachers so that quality delivery of education is possible. 

Steps may include:

• Establish an IT based information system  to inventory skills of teachers. 
• Estimate demand and supply of skilled workforce in relation to education needs at a macro level and at the granular level.    
• Match supply with demand at granular level. Identify deficits and work towards rebuilding teacher competences. 
• Leverage modern technology to ensure  reaching out to teachers, particularly those needing scaling up in course content. 
• Technology to be leveraged for designing  and developing tech driven pedagogical techniques.
• An open platform for e-content on skill development of teachers to be aimed at. 
• Crowd source content for this platform from among the practitioners and experienced to keep costs low. Affordability has to be ensured. 
• High quality content aggregation by an expert team essential prior to release of content. 
• Teachers must utilize the contents of this platform through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) and virtual classrooms . 
• Have teacher innovation hubs at  regional and administrative unit levels. Learning has to be simultaneously decentralized. 
• The Internet of Things (IoT)—the networked connection of people, process, data, and things—must be exploited to become the Internet of Learning Things. 
• The target should be improvements in infrastructure / device availability which make  24/7 connectivity possible  for teachers to benefit and for the teachers to use techniques ranging from Cloud Computing to Big Data integration with the IoT 
• Ease of delivering content to be ensured. 

Note: This is the first of a series on Teacher Skill Building in Emerging Economies by the author. 

Education in India's Smart Cities : Learning from Barcelona

Source http://smartcity.bcn.cat/en/mschools.html

Smart City

India's Concept Paper on Smart Cities points out that Social Infrastructure would include Education . It lays down that a smart city should have quality educational facilities, both for schools and higher education in every neighbourhood. This can be achieved with e-education and digital content.

Barcelona's mSchools' programme is worth emulation.

This is an educational programme aimed at getting secondary-school students to undertake classroom study using mobile technology.

This programme has been used in both state and private schools in Barcelona since 2013 to promote the development of curricula linked to technology in the area of education and its applications in social and economic environments. The aim behind the programme is to improve academic performance and to reduce school drop-out rates.

This programme consists of four initiatives:

1 "Let's mobilise computing":

This is the title of an optional 4th year course in the compulsory secondary school education system. The aim is for students to work in small groups and develop creative concepts in the form of an app that helps to contribute solutions and improve everyday activities. Besides having their teachers’ support students are provided with input by some 200 professionals from leading businesses involved in the development of apps or videogames, business incubators, Internet portals and entrepreneur associations.

2: Mobile Learning Awards

These are accolades to the most innovative initiatives in the field of education, for students and teachers alike.  

3: Mobile History Map

A project that will enable students to create and develop collective maps by using mobile technology. Students will become active developers by creating itineraries and points of interest (historical, leisure, film etc., routes) in their schools’ vicinity, and then creating and editing, using geolocation, descriptive content about their most immediate environment.

4: An impetus for entrepreneurs in the ICT-Education sector

Towards Quality: Role and Responsibility of Lecturers

Towards Quality: Role and Responsibility of Lecturers

  

The purpose of this rudimentary Paper is merely to facilitate discussions on the subject matter and to attempt to understand and appreciate the expectations in regard to the role and the constraints testing a lecturer at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Some issues are raised here with the objective of provoking discussions and seeking solutions through collective wisdom.

The paper tries to set out the following:

a)      To identify the role and responsibility of a lecturer;

b)      For internalization of the context in which the lecturers are working ;

c)      To place the subject in its proper perspective with a view to initiating a discussion on the subject.

The Context:

A student remains with a school for long years. All the time, in school, he or she is receiving knowledge and ideas. Education at this pre-College stage has a special importance because in these years when the human mind is most impressionable, and also because most of the students will leave off formal education after completing class XII. The students are under the care and influence of the pre-primary, primary, and secondary school teachers during the most formative years of their lives. The learning there is of considerable significance to lecturers but is an exogenous and uncontrollable variable.

While education in the school level is primarily national and value-oriented, the education at the Professional College like ours is internationally biased and attempts to make the student a global citizen adding value to the business community who are our direct sponsors. The transition from the school to a professional mould is quite a challenge. The international targeting makes education quite different from what the students have been used to in the past.

Lecturers endeavour to train and mould the minds of the young people so as to make them worthy financial and / or information technology keen citizens. The training that we impart is supposed to accelerate the pace of growth of the nation. That change must make for a better and healthier nation. That means that a tremendous responsibility rests upon the lecturer to mould young minds into valuable assets in economic building.

 The Lecturer Perspective: The Limits to the Discharge of the Responsibilities:

The Need For An Attitudinal Change

There is an emergent need to be a catalyst for change: the transformation from a lighter syllabus to a heavy, voluminous, technical vocabulary driven context is a tremendous challenge before the lecturer. The difficulties of expressiveness and communication in the student tend to be impediments. They even appear to give the student a certain restraining complex even as he sets out for this great journey of learning.

The Lecturer is aware that he is a change agent here. Instilling an attitudinal change requires a conviction in the catalyst.   There has to be an attitudinal change manifest in the individual lecturer concerned; he (or she) needs to be galvanized with certain dynamism and a spirit of dedication that transcends the ordinary. There has to be a powerful motivation.  

The Need to Inspire as much as to Instruct

Educators are often called instructors, but the student seeks inspiration more than instruction perhaps in greater measure. The task is daunting when weighed against the background of the fact that at least some of the students tend to be working long hours before attending classes.  By the time they reach the lecturer, they are tired if not fatigued. This is an exogenous, uncontrollable variable. The lecturer has a motivational element to facilitate the absorption of complex tasks.

Need to Arouse a Scientific Temper

The need to balance between an exam driven student and the need to instill deep abiding knowledge in him (which his sponsor and our Management expects) is a challenge. To make the student mind dedicated to an evidence adducing learning is a cumbersome task. Given that reading habits are weak in the formative years, and that the influence of the visual media is pronounced, this is a daunting task. Despite attempts, sometimes, students still expect lecturers to coach rather than facilitate. The lecturer’s efforts to challenge the student to higher responsibilities of independent reading are fraught with mental obstacles in the recipient himself.

The need to post him for examination

This is what the student expects most in the lecturer. The student’s singular worry is how to pass the examination. The benchmark for the performance has also gradually turned to be the performance of the student as a group in the examination. This requires a certain re-orientation on the part of the lecturer by consciously driving towards exam focus rather than knowledge imparting. Are lecturers fully examination technique driven? Most lecturers would think so; but then are there reflections of such a belief in the ground reality?

The need to cover vast portions in given time frames.

In a given Semester (trimester) time frame, the balance between the occasional weak comprehensive abilities of at least a segment of the students and the short time frame is a matter of time pressure[1]. Given that students do complain about non- availability of time after class and office hours, over the last few years there has been a stretching of contact hours in all specializations: from MBA to Diplomas. This has to be viewed against the backdrop of profit motivation that is being suggested in the business development context.

The need for effective Faculty time

Sometimes faculty are burdened with correspondence and administrative duties at least indirectly. Faculty has to think, read and write to improve.

The need for Unanimity of Approach

The lecturers need to present a coherent approach with regard to the approach to the student community, particularly in regard to discipline. The Team View strengthens the students to respond positively.

The need for Coordinated Approach to Learning

Often, lecturers are seen to be working in departmentalized islands with a willingness but no-opportunity to share with colleagues. This is manifest sometimes even to the student. Lecturers may be observed not to move in tandem, but as departmentalized bureaucracies. Experience sharing is a regular event or a semi-annual event, which needs to be institutionalized. There has to be organizational memory and collective wisdom.

  

Need for Long Termism rather than Ad-Hocism

Gradually, there appears to be a short ‘termism’ in our approach to solutions and people. This has a brought about incertitude in the minds of the affected. As organizations are permanent, even if individuals are transient, there appears to be conscious need for institutionalizing long ‘termism’ particularly with the younger stakeholders. There is a need for identification with the institution in totality in case there has to be longer-term research orientation.

The Perspective Shift:

Lecturers need to move over to be a place of ‘excellence in knowledge’, to ensure personal development of both the students and the staff and bring in more confidence in themselves.  How exactly do we do that?

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[1] Selectivism in subjects / modules/ chapters may often misfire. So there is need for comprehensive coverage.

Comments on this paper may be sent to Dr. Jayaram Nayar at  jaynayar@gmail.com

More on the Internet of Education

Internet of Things (IoT)  is supposed to carry a $ 19 trillion value-at-stake tag over the next decade, says Cisco[1]. That volume of a bill suggests opening up of  opportunities to individuals, households, groups, firms and companies into an economy that is struggling to be born. The frontiers of economics are expanding into  'more of techniques and less of men'  scenario. (Y= f(k,l, t) where Y = output, k = capital, l= labour  and t = technology )

Education's new challenge is that it  must  thrive within this rapidly evolving IoE economy which is machine and connectivity oriented.

Internet of Education (IoEd) should be envisaged as a networked connection of students and teachers, learning and teaching processes, of relevant data and of devices, which are charged and linked by cloud, mobile, social analytics and which is protected by security. The medium of IT would trigger off great changes in the operational technology  of delivery of education. 

IoEd is about using sensors and wireless connectivity to  support educational activities. This connectivity calls for reliability of data and systems, adherence to high standards of professional etiquette, data integrity and to continuous evaluation of performance. IoEd would connect the academic and physical worlds through information technology.  There has to be an established data bank based on the registration, progression, internal processes and the contributory and contextual environment in academic institutions. This will increase the outreach of education, dynamically augment efficiencies, stress on mechanization of academic activities and minimize delivery risk in teaching.

Education has now to move into this internet world to coexist with and exist in the cloud.  Education support professionals (read technical staff) have to evolve a portfolio and an ecosystem of cloud infrastructure and application services that allow teaching  and learning to uniquely and securely coalesce with cloud applications and services which can be used by both faculty and students. Educators have to deliver, using online and offline, on site and off site modes utilizing multiple cloud models. 

Networked connections have to make education accessible, relevant and valuable. There has to be a transformation process from mere information into knowledge. Knowledge has to collectively grow into wisdom and thus constitute the core competence of the educational institutions.

IoEd has to create new capabilities out of the many experiences and learning curves it has earned.   IoEd has to pick up the appropriate middleware platform. There has to be an IoEd Strategy which supports the identification and development of solutions.  Successful business application ensures costing and monetization of each activity.

Miniaturization technology and use of smart wearables add to the effectiveness of IoEd. In M2M (machine to machine) and M2m (Machine to men) connectivity paths, design, applications, measured performance, efficiency parameters, interoperability of devices, drawing up of scenarios, (what - if)   interactive methods are all significant.   Both, hardware and software become collaborative in their effort to deliver academic value.

Educational institutions have to use enterprise planning for new IoEd architectures, standards and protocols which are to build the working ecosystem.   Developers have to harmonize thoughts with educators to develop platforms.  The time to market for application development is short.  New technologies – hardware, software, bandwidth, sensor –have to integrate to make new solutions feasible for the first time.  Education has to   interact and change to fast lanes with computing technology . The economies will come in with the concept of leveraging academic data at micro and macro levels. Educational institutions have to reckon with hardware commoditization, software solution development, connectivity, big data and data analytics. 

   

  

 Note : These strands of thought are a part of the research work being undertaken by the author on the Internet of Education. Copyright of this material vests with the author, Jayaram Nayar. He can be contacted at jaynayar@gmail.com

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[1] The Internet of Everything—A $19 Trillion Opportunity; http://www.cisco.com/web/services/portfolio/consulting-services/documents/consulting-services-capturing-ioe-value-aag.pdf

Digitalizing Educational Throughput in Emerging Economies in the Days of The Internet of Things

The convergence of the digital and the physical realms induced by the Internet of Education (IoEd) in the educational  world is the new big trend in education.

Under the scheme of IoEd, a connected series of devices assist learning and teaching. A smart phone with a student, when interconnected on the internet, performs beyond its original, primary  function of receipt and transmission of calls. This connectivity although a secondary function, assumes import in the Age of IoT. The smart phone is equipped with technology that helps the students to source from several channels of information and knowledge which have networked knowledge sharing function such as  (access to video- films (You Tube, Khan Academy, Ted Talks), social networks, (forum of Edunext, MOOCS)  e-library (EBSCO); teaching/ learning education delivery platforms (Blackboard, Moodle) and general news  (from Reuters to Bloomberg alerts). 

This forward and backward linkages machine 2 machine (M2M) and Machines to Men (M2m) are transforming the education field in gargantuan proportions. Online learning is acquiring space and reducing the distance to education. In emerging economies, IoEd is more equitable and avoids elitism. The Internet of Education induced advanced digital learning transforms student lives by linking machines and systems to teaching and learning processes. As these machines and systems are interconnected, there are huge resultant learning economies and economies of scale at a macro-level for huge sized emerging countries like China and India. Inaccessibility ceases to be an issue, given the pervasiveness of digital  devices like smart phones. The technological transformation in the education landscape will  result in a 'big skill push' to the economy (compare the Make in India campaign of India Government) with emphasis on 'across the board' skill development.

The thinning of lines between online learning - click and mouse- and teaching services in brick and mortar schools will open up hitherto untapped dimensions in studies. Digital and physical learning would work in tandem. The inter-connectivity will help reduce the time to learning for the students. The less performing student will have a technical aid round the clock. Doubts are cleared in real time and the learning cycle is shortened. Human interventions (which are rather boring in actuality) are minimized thus augmenting productivity and value creation in education. Teacher talk time is reduced. In MacAulay's language 'the agony is abated' for the student!

Machine induced responsiveness leads to higher student satisfaction. The need for emerging economies is to blend educational expertise with technological expertise. A plethora of  digital-educational  companies must spring up (Let a thousand flowers bloom as Mao said) so that so that emerging economies run the race to be ahead of the learning and experience curve.

  

Innovation, design and learning need to be closely intertwined to learn from each other and adapt to each other,   Software development must be guided by the futuristic needs of education. They must juxtapose with the objectives and horizons of the educational hardware. Emerging economies may have to invest  in software centres exclusively for education. Software ought to be compatible with hardware availability as also be adaptable to a diverse and huge country (say as in China or India).  Connectivity is the contemporaneous confluence of communication (machine 2 machine; machine to human), collaboration (between hardware and software; between various education providers) and compatibility (of systems and with jurisdictions).

Platforms are essential to enable new learning.  A powerful platform would have the following features:

·         receipt of data

·         analytical abilities;

·         predictive abilities;

·         culling out insights from information;

·         interpreting data patterns on an ongoing basis;

·         simulative capabilities

·         optimal solution suggestions

·         it must be cyber - secure.  

How will the platform help the teacher?

·         It will equip him/ her with analytics, simulation, and optimization solutions.

·         It will help by sending across real time feedback;

·         It will assist in optimizing and real timing decisions.

·         It will help him strategize his approach;

·         It will help exception management such as top performer expectations and least performing student anxieties.

What should be the deliverables the education  sector should be looking for?

·         Prediction revealing education solutions

·         collecting real time education data

·         providing education intelligence

·         providing actionable insights  to teachers, administrators  and regulators

·         Smart software tools

·         analytics' abilities

·         algorithms to help achieve higher levels of efficiency  

·         A secure and reliable cloud-based platform  

·         monitoring and control management systems with real-time visibility  

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References for this Article:-

Annunziata, Marco ' The Value of Interconnectedness: Toward a new kind of industrial company '  General Electric

G´omeza Jorge, Hueteb Juan F., Hoyosa Oscar, Perezc Luis, Grigorid , Daniela 'Interaction System Based on Internet of Things as Support for Education' Procedia Computer Science 21 ( 2013 ) 132 – 139

Hannon, Valerie , Patton, Alec and Temperley, Julie : 'Developing an Innovation Ecosystem for Education' Cisco

Selinger , Michelle, Sepulveda, Ana and Buchan, Jim 'Education and the Internet of Everything How Ubiquitous Connectedness Can Help Transform Pedagogy' Cisco

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Note : These strands of thought are a part of the research work being undertaken by the author on the Internet of Education. Copyright of this material vests with the author, Jayaram Nayar. He can be contacted at jaynayar@gmail.com

The Internet of Education as a Curator

The Office of the Office of Educational Technology (United States Department of Education)  has come out with a remarkable work: 'Ed Tech Developer’s Guide'[1] The Report identifies 10 opportunities  and suggests in pragmatic wisdom as to  what can be done: Meaningful excerpts  which have universal  applicability including to emerging economies are attempted below:  

No	Opportunity	What can be done  by technology
1	Improving Mastery of Academic Skills	Apps to teach- To practice in realistic settings - interactive simulations- Think beyond delivering content—Tools that enable students to build and create-Projects that encourage deeper exploration of a particular topic - Merging teaching and assessing to pinpoint knowledge gaps - Probes of understanding - identifying competencies through formative assessments. - Educational games -Immersive learning experiences - Creating apps that put research-based methods into practice.
2	Developing Skills to Promote Lifelong Learning	Identify non-cognitive skills and behaviors - Believe that intelligence is malleable rather than fixed -Frame mistakes as opportunities to learn - Reward students who persist through solving difficult problems.   (Non-cognitive skills such as perseverance, self-regulation, and effective strategies -Enhance student motivation and engagement )
3	Increasing Family Engagement	Engage families through technology- Provide information to caregivers about student progress and homework in near real time and in languages spoken at home- Tool on a smart phone or in an offline mode for homes without an Internet connection- Help parents stay involved in their children’s school activities while balancing work or other responsibilities- Cultural orientation for new comers
4	Planning for Future Education Opportunities	Financial aid navigators- Course planners, Remote college counseling- College-to-career maps -Students plan for future - Future education plans- Helping school counselors increase both the reach and amount of support counselors- (Imagine  a “jobs available at graduation” tool that uses labor statistics about job growth-  Tools that interface with college course catalogs- Interactively plan various paths to college completion. Communicate with alumni so they can gain perspective and advice.
5	Designing Effective Assessments	Tools to help  teachers create and share formative assessments-Automate grading- streamline feedback -Expanding assessment item types (beyond multiple choice questions, etc.) - Detailed understanding of what students know and can do- Simulations- Heat maps- Ranking - Digital assessments--Measuring  non-cognitive skills (such as persistence, creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking).
6	Improving Educator Professional Development	Connect educators with each other and to educational experts-Help teachers reflect on their own practice- Provide educators support to master new strategies, techniques and tools - Available on-demand-  Differentiate for a range of levels of readiness and expertise - Curate content so teachers can find appropriate support and ideas -Showcase content-Specific best practices- Aligning tools and resources to relevant professional standards-Designed according to principles of adult learning and foster a growth mindset
7	Improving Educator Productivity	Streamline workflow- personalize instruction- Needs of diverse students- Create and share Lessons-Effectively adjust instruction, teachers need to track student progress and identify areas of struggle- Student performance data   in real time-identify important trends- Design tools that organize data visually for easier interpretation. -Share learning resources aligned with curricular standards.
8	Making Learning Accessible to All Students	The human-machine interface- Multiple ways for users to interact with and respond-  Interoperate with a screen reader- Advantage of accessibility settings in device operating systems-   Solving fundamental access problems in communication, organization, and social interaction is better- Delivery of learning must not clutter or confuse the delivery itself-  settings or controls within a separate functional area of the tool.
9	Closing Opportunity Gaps	Training for open education resources (OER),  - Curate content verified for quality and standards alignment -Curricular content to improved teaching practices -Leverage the usefulness of Internet connectivity- Equity of technical accessibility in  designing products- Slower systems should be able to access and experience application or service with the same ease as those using more cutting-edge technology.
10	Closing Achievement Gaps	Make a difference- Helping teachers- Involving Parents- Strengthening non-cognitive skills- Targeting academic subjects-Improving accessibility - Promote equal education opportunities for all.

  

This reading is a part of the literature survey  on the 'Internet of Education in Emerging Economies' Research by the author, Jayaram Nayar. He can be contacted at jaynayar@gmail.com

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[1] U.S. Department of Education (2015) 'Ed Tech Developer’s Guide' http://tech.ed.gov

The School of Things in Emerging Economies

 Schools are repositories of stakeholder trust as to the future of students and must retain this status. Schools of the future will  transform to a system of student relationship management and use these their relationships to ensure macro objectives of a highly connected learning ecosystem.  The future  schools will have to work towards, personalized service that meets the student’s educational  and non-educational  needs. The traditional delivery mode would have to be supplemented by a host of dis-intermediating channels.

What will the School of Things aim to  do in emerging economies?

• ·         To deliver the learning  experience students of the future seek
• ·         To optimize the opportunities the School of things era will provide,
• ·         To capitalize on  the enormous amount of student data that schools already possess
• ·         To integrate data with an ongoing feedback from social media for new academic insights.
• ·         To use data analytics  as enablers
• ·         To customize and tailor to meet individual needs to  making it a level playing field.
• ·         To absorb that student backgrounds and intellectual abilities vary.
• ·         To  innovate and transform to better anticipate and different student constituent needs.

 The Transformation to the School of Things

Schools will become a key part of their students’ ecosystem and social community. They will achieve this by developing special alliances and partnerships that enable them to ensure  mutual connectivity with all stakeholders.

The School of things will anticipate less performing students’ needs and respond to their circumstances, offering timely, relevant supportive solutions that help to achieve their learning goals. Schools then remain repositories of  trust, facilitators of learning and value aggregators to the community.

The School of things are data purveyors. The data captured by relevant smart devices will enable the School of things to provide students with an integrated approach to learning and give them a real time feedback on performance and solutions.   Schools of the future will use the data to gain insights and to anticipate student needs and be proactive. They would offer e- tutorial advice and e- solutions to assist students chart their passage. The successful Schools of the future will be those that help their students achieve superior results. The School of things will use connected devices to monitor students’ actual behavior and adjusting  their methods of teaching accordingly.

The School of Things will create a borderless, internet driven experience across both on site and off site  channels to deliver a superior student experience. The School of things would need to collaborate with ecosystem partners to extend this all pervasive reach and to unify learning with factors that impinge into areas of their students’ lives. These partners could include other educational services institutions, standard setting institutions which are regulatory or self regulated, mobile innovators,  telecom companies, retailers or technology firms.

The Internet of  Schools will be characterized by continually changing technology and infrastructure. Schools of the future will need to invest in developing their capabilities and capacity for change.  Schools of the future will continuously re-train themselves to be technologically shifting. Innovation is the key as schools cannot any more be responsive but must be perceived proactive - ahead in thinking and of times.  The transformation from School to School of things will be an ongoing process, one that will demand continual innovation to anticipate and the agility to react to the ever changing student needs of tomorrow’s students and perennial partnerships to help the transition and transformation.  

These strands of thought are a part of the research work being undertaken by the author on the Internet of Education in Emerging Economies.

Copyright of this article and its contents vests with the author of this blog: Jayaram Nayar. He can be contacted at email: jaynayar@gmail.com  

Technology as an Equalizer:The need for Internet of Education (IoEd) in the Emerging Economies.

The need for Internet of Education (IoEd) in the Emerging Economies.

Education providers in emerging economies have to overcome the  legacy of a lack of quality. Education in emerging economies seems to have been impaired by  lower student motive, less of environmental concern for skill building and more of a profit motive among the education providers. Emerging economies seem to accumulate a large chunk of Less performing Student  (LPS) category, which weighs  down at a macro level by depressing overall skill contributions to the society.

In emerging economies, education has been the preserve of high end educational institutions. Currently, the leading higher education institutions in the emerging countries listed in the   Times of U.K.[1]

1. Peking University, China

2. Tsinghua University, China

3. University of Cape Town, S. Africa

4. National Taiwan University, Taiwan

5. Bogazici University, Turkey

6. University of Science & Technology, China

7. Istanbul Technical University, Turkey

8.Fudan University, China

9. Middle East Technical University Turkey

10. Lomonsov Moscow State University, Russia

11. University of Sao Paolo, Brazil

12. Bilkent University, Turkey

13. Punjab University, India.

14. Renmin University, China

15.  University of Witwandersrand , South Africa

At the School level, it is the American and British International Schools  or similar standard Schools that are sought after by the upper income groups in the emerging economies.  Thus quality education remains the preserve of a few. The vast majority in the remote villages remain far from the quality effort even if policy prescriptions do provide for equity.  A classic example is India where urban agglomerations have the cream of schools while the interior schooling is rather subjective as to its inputs and outputs. Another example is in Africa's big shortage of teachers. It is not that the African youth  cannot qualify to be teachers but that the qualified desert remote areas after their compulsory stints. The success of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in Rwanda is an example of how education could be redistributed effectively through the medium of internet.

The Internet of Education (IoEd) is a time to rethink and restructure to bring forth equity and to reallocate quality education at a mass level. Educational institutions (EIs)  need to undergo deep structural changes in approach and delivery. Reform proposals on the horizon must ensure that a host interconnected technology mechanism is an equalizer.

As evolving student learning intersects and interacts with the new technology and with the multiplier growth of internet and mobile learning , barriers to entry into quality learning would crumble. The Internet of Things (IoT) will weaken the market power of elitism in education , and substitute that with mass based, blended learning. This transition to the IoEd represents a uniquely challenging environment for policy makers. Regulators have reposed a large burden on trust on extant EIs and this has probably come at a social cost. IoEd is an opportunity to make amends. IoEd should not be discarded as an unsustainable business model but it should be the aim of the regulatory agenda to make education more approachable, accessible and resilient.  It  should reduce the burden of quality failure on society's conscience.

The costs of technology for IoEd are high  with fixed investment high. The private sector may not come to the support of IoEd, as they will naturally be targeting for return on investment and profitability. In the context of low initial commercial returns  and depressed profit margins, Government and supranational organizations have a joint role in emerging economies. A Public -Private initiative would have for its theme that the marginal costs will come down and therefore the average costs in the medium to long term. IoEd would be infrastructure building and would have lower cost and higher accessibility in the long run. One way for educational institutions  and the community at large to raise profits without shirking on investment is through genuine efficiency gains.  

IoEd should see the emergence of new education providers  including technology firms offering learning services. There will be increasing competition in learning services with the winds taken out of well-established Universities or Schools with IoEd taking it directly to a retail micro- approach. Society has to look at the positive contributions a technologically proficient society will render. Innovation in education has to be encouraged in the public interest.   

There is every reason for EIs to capitalize on the opportunity provided by joining on to a Learning Union so that they could reap economies of scale.    

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These strands of thought are a part of the research work being undertaken by the author on the Internet of Education in Emerging Economies.

Copyright of this article and its contents vests with the author of this blog: Jayaram Nayar. He can be contacted at email: jaynayar@gmail.com  

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[1] http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2014/brics-and-emerging-economies accessed on 27 March, 2015

Education and the Internet of Things: Some Implications for Educational institutions

What will the new operating platform of Internet of Education (IoEd) imply for educational institutions ?

As the Internet of Things (IoT)  progresses, modernizing educational institutions have to become an integral part of this technological sophistication, if they have to stay in the forefront of education. In an  IoT world, homes and people and devices would all be connected.  Educational institutions  have to think early on how to move ahead on sensors, connectivity and machine to machine (m2m)- backward and forward linkages.  As technology moves on to tap wearable devices, smart rings, smart bangles, smart clothes and smart watches - all sensor sensitive devices would seize the market.

As much as students receive support from devices, students would also have to permit return transmission of info flows. On the back up of these connected devices, students would share data from these devices with educational institutions.   Internet-linked sensors worn by students should enable  educational institutions  to fill in data on their activities.  Each student would send megabytes of data annually. These volumes have to be efficiently absorbed and effectively utilized by the educational institution.

Student  devices will have some form of wireless connection. Educational institutions  would have to enter into partnership with technological firms to  capture store, retrieve, analyze massive macro and micro elements. Thus, the Internet of Education (IoEd)  is not only about helping the one - off student but also in plotting/  drawing inferences at a macro level  on the strength of several packets of information received from about several hundreds or thousands of students.

Educational Institutions have to be so significantly alert on assimilating technical information in regard to:

·         Digitized communications

·         Smart m2m connectvities

·         Automated logistics

·         Application of sensor sensitive devices

Having large quanta of data implores the educational institutions on the need to go beyond data. The investment requirements will be quite high in the first round, but over time the marginal cost will come down and as such the average cost of investment will come down.  

According to Cisco Systems, by 2020, the amount of Internet-connected things will reach 50 billion, with $19 trillion in profits and cost savings coming from Internet of Things (IoT) over the next decade[1].

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These strands of thought are a part of the research work being undertaken by the author on the Internet of Education in Emerging Economies.

Copyright of this article and its contents vests with the author of this blog: Jayaram Nayar. He can be contacted at email: jaynayar@gmail.com  

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[1] http://www.appsbee.com/internet.html