Nelson Mandela, who became South Africa’s first post-apartheid president, once said: “Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”
Education is a social institution through which people are taught basic academic knowledge, learning skills, and cultural norms. Every nation has some form of an education system, but they are not the same everywhere. The major factors affecting education systems are the resources and money used to support those systems. Based on this, a country’s wealth directly links with the amount of money spent on education. Another factor is the value placed on education, the amount of time devoted to it, and education distribution within a country.
The global concern within education is universal access, meaning equal ability to participate in an education system. To this day, access to education is difficult for specific groups based on class or gender. But what does ‘educational equality’ mean anyway? Everyone should have the same opportunities in life without being discriminated against because of social background, gender, religion, or age. But the real world rarely lives up to those ideals. The idea of equality has brought immense change across the globe within a few centuries, but educational equality remains an issue. Raise people’s expectations lies at the beginning of solving the education problem. The more people demand the right to an education, the more governments will take notice and include it in their laws. As it’s undeniable that education benefits the economy, governments have ample reasons to invest in it. Humanitarian motivations are not the main factor for a government to invest in; economic interests usually play a significant role. When supporting talented students, business and politics think about it in the long term. Upon graduation, the most successful would later fill top positions.
What happens when everyone is educated the same way? It is also necessary to look critically at such an issue as who benefits when children are educated the same way. Will children in rural Bolivia be able to do the same things with their western education as children in a wealthy neighborhood in Morocco? The concept of factory schooling is easy to implement, but the outcome is not always what is being expected. Less than 10% of people succeed in having perspective professions. But how many engineers, doctors, and bankers does a community need? Today’s education of the masses does not provide an option for the 90% that are now forgotten. With decisions about education being made on an international level, understanding those in need and helping them is impossible. Globalization — this term was first used to explain growing intertwined economies and now is applied to everything in our daily lives and has affected how we educate every person in this world. And this topic is perhaps a remarkably subtle and important one that requires serious reflection.
In the 21st century, technology knows no limits. We are in the phase of radical development where technology is taking over every niche and corner. Smartphones, laptops, and tablets are no more unknown words. The education system is evolving and improving, as it cannot stay the same as designed many years ago. We cannot teach our children the way we were taught without depriving them of their tomorrow. Using digitization in the current educational system is the way to go. Unfortunately, many people still see digitalization as a threat rather than an opportunity. That’s why it is necessary to provide comprehensive information about ed-tech.
The digital revolution has touched almost every aspect of our lives. More than 3.5 billion people have access to the Internet, and more than 5 billion are estimated to have some mobile device, with half of them being smartphones. Therefore, it is no wonder that these digital transformation trends have also heavily impacted the education industry. Now we are just beginning to understand how digital tools can facilitate personalized learning and individualized support. Once we’ll do, it will benefit everyone. Digitalization provides a valuable opportunity to combat inequality in education. Today half of the planet’s population is unconnected. The rise in digital literacy, together with the imminent period of rapid digitalization of the economy, means that ensuring fair and equal access to both education and future job markets will rest on the extent of digital inclusion within our societies.
One of the most inspiring digital transformation trends visible in education is the improved accessibility to school, lessons, and even degree programs for people of all ages. Technology can help to remove barriers for those having trouble accessing certain types of information. Students with visual or audio challenges and reading disabilities can benefit from text-to-speech programs and programs that transcribe dictated content that allow them to learn and earn degrees. Accessibility and access also continue to improve from a geographic perspective thanks to technology. Online learning opportunities enable students to access schools and degree programs that might not be local to them. Their immediate geographical area no longer limits students to secure the best possible education for their given situation. Personalized learning approaches have also been an essential component of the digital education revolution. The cloud offers us the chance to connect from virtually anywhere, so basically, anyone can follow a course while sitting in a lecture hall, being home, or anywhere else. Students from a wide range of backgrounds have more access to classes and educational opportunities thanks to these types of programs.
Today, the following important point is that technology plays a much more significant role in the quality and scope of how we learn and what we learn, with a growing emphasis on programming and robotics. The changes which are happening today show the disparity between the developed and undeveloped world. If you are not connected, that shows you the leap you have to make between the connectivity aspect, access to education, and benefits derived from that. Closing this digital divide, with those not connected or not considered digitally literate, is imperative to ensuring a fair distribution of digital opportunities across countries, locations, gender, socioeconomic status, and age. Giving people access to the right type of content is one aspect of education digitalization. Another equally critical aspect is the human element. People will constantly require engagement and inspiration from mentors who know about the topic. Technology will never be able to replace this interaction, even in the digital age. But it can serve as an increasingly innovative medium for interactions, where one can transfer knowledge, expertise, and skills in real-time, without the restriction of physical boundaries named Internet of Skills. We must change not only what we learn but also how we learn. Whether this involves digital platforms, virtual or augmented reality, online libraries, or webinars – digital media make possible a host of new and innovative forms of education.
It is essential to collect information about students, including their demographics, grades, and classes. Big data provides the opportunity to take this information much further and use it to better understand student trends and successes. Big data refers to the growing technological capabilities to track large amounts of data and interpret it with algorithms’ assistance to find patterns and helpful information. This includes the convergence of a variety of different sources of data. Schools may have previously gathered a wide range of useful information about students. Still, it was accessible only to the particular person or department who collected the data. This fact made it harder to put the information in context and understand everything it could tell the school about the educational experiences they provide. By using these data, schools might find that they have a better chance of building a thorough understanding of their students and degree programs.
Using the data compiled and analyzed through big data capabilities can tell schools helpful information, such as where students struggle and thrive in their programs. Further, they can then uncover any particular patterns about the students that excel in specific areas and improve the learning experience. They can track more significant trends in student populations, including student performance and professional outcomes. The better they understand how their degrees impact their students, the easier it will be for them to improve the education and resources they offer. And in its turn, this might help students thrive after graduation. The information collected will empower schools to serve their students better. It can impact the types of personalized learning opportunities offered, the structure of classes, and the students’ resources and support. The shift towards a digital, modern world has had a measurable impact on education’s inner workings. Schools of all levels have begun to realize that this technology can offer them many benefits and new strategies for educating their students.
Digital learning involves more than just digitizing traditional education materials. Using digital media in education will result in entirely new areas of communication, cooperation, and networking. Digital instruction is more flexible, mobile, and individualized than traditional learning methods as it is not bound by time and place. The digital era allows to create, share with others, and develop course materials together in the cloud. With digital instruction, people accept greater personal responsibility while also improving communication and teamwork. Even if complete education digitization does change the education system, it is not diminishing the old-time education value. The digitization of education combines the aspects of both educations. Digitization in education has also proved to be the proper method for saving resources with lesser paper usage. We might say that nowadays, education digitization is overall beneficial to our society.
