Daily Times

Is the tablet of technology an ephemeral cure for the infected education system of Pakistan, tainted with decades of corrosion and subjugated with the obsolescent curriculum or is it a quintessential panacea?

The conversation around the proliferation of technology in classrooms and its potential perils has not changed in nearly a decade. Digital technology is constantly evolving and is leaving its digital footprints on our social, personal and academic activities. When I was in school technology for me was a calculator but my teacher always discouraged me from using it in the classroom. Since then technology has advanced and undergone a generational shift, so much so that nowadays a calculator seems archaic. Today, especially in the developed world tech giants are wagering on replacing teachers, at the Global Learning Competition in 2017, the ‘XPrize Foundation’ offered to pay $10 million to the team that will develop an application to replace a teacher from the classroom using a tablet as their replacement.

In 2015, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted the 2030 Agenda, for sustainable development a plan for eliminating poverty. It is to ensure that everyone in the world has equal access to a quality education. Also, specific targets include a completely free primary and secondary education, access to updated education facilities, and instruction from qualified teachers. However, to meet UNESCO’s target of equal access to quality education, the world needs a lot more qualified teachers. According to the organization, we must add 20 million primary and secondary school teachers to the workforce, while also finding replacements for the 48 million expected to leave in the next 13 years due to retirement, the desire to pursue a different profession with a better pay or better working conditions or due to the end of a contract. These numbers are very high and some experts in the field of education suggest filling these positions with robots or digital teachers, although it is going to cost a lot to automate, the research and develop the program, however, it’s going to be a one-time investment since robots won’t ask for salaries or days off. Later, this amount saved can be used to provide free facilities and education to the students.

Technology can produce good results for a short period of time but in the long run, it is pertinent to measure its impact. It is just like a medicine which can provide transient relief but after some time, it becomes less effective and the pain, disease or infection reemerges

Moreover, in Pakistan so little has changed around the idea of integration of technology in schools. Many claim that technology is a mediation tool that helps in augmenting both learning and teaching in schools yet there remains an iota of ineptness among teachers who say that technology in schools is nothing but a scam. I believe their exposure to technology must have been catastrophic. Similarly, in today’s modern world due to the advent of technology, we now have online courses where students can join online communities and learn digitally without even stepping inside a classroom, by just listening or watching pre-recorded lectures, however, the data suggests that only a fraction of students complete those online courses. The question is why such tech-oriented virtual teaching is unable to retain students from around the world?

Asia today has become a very attractive market for tech corporations, in other words, it is a laboratory for the technocentrics. In Pakistan, many nonprofit organizations and government bodies such as NextGen, Danish Schools and many others are equipping schools with technological supplies and tools, in order to fill the gap and provide quality education to underprivileged students. Also, the provincial government of Punjab between the last decade took many steps to digitize textbooks, provide the students with laptops and IT labs. Moreover, Rs 345 billion was allocated for education and provisions of technology.

Punjab has one of the largest school systems in the world, with over 53,000 schools, 325,000 teachers and 11.3 million students as per Punjab Information and Technology Board. However, a decade ago technology integration in schools was abysmal, however, more recently digitization of content, providing internet access and tracking of school’s performance using technology has led to a more advanced approach towards improving the quality of education. Although, new pedagogies and technologies are evolving at a rapid pace, yet, in Pakistan introducing technology-driven methods and practices is still challenging due to the digital divide.

Despite these initiatives, the western school of thought is moving towards a higher understanding of technology and its integration in classrooms. Many scholars insinuate the need to re-conceptualize the technology integration framework in classrooms, simply putting hardware and software in schools will not improve learning outcomes. Evidently, some longitudinal studies have recently perplexed the educational communities. Instead of improving students learning, technology in classrooms rendered the opposite results and the students’ performances declined.

Technology can produce good results for a short period of time but in the long run, it is pertinent to measure its impact. It is just like a medicine which can provide transient relief but after some time, it becomes less effective and the pain, disease or infection reemerge.

It is high time for the new government to focus on the active learning of students. We also need to focus on the idea of dependency, is it appropriate to introduce technology to young students? Will it inhibit their ability to think critically without depending on a computer or taking help from a mobile phone and tablet? In retrospect, I profess the use of any medicine for a longer period of time causes either side effects or creates an addiction. In my opinion, technology should be taken as a supplement just now and then while teaching and learning because ‘excess of anything is bad’, excessive use of such tablets (technology) can also result in lack of individuality and adaptability. Instead of being oblivious to the changing trends in the world regarding technology and it’s positive and negative effects; we need to conduct more research on how as a developing country we can use technology to uplift the deprived and underprivileged segment of the society.

The writer is an Educational Researcher and is currently working is on his PhD which focuses on ICT initiatives and its use in schools

Published in Daily Times, October 5^th 2018.