Chennai: With already 70 per cent of schools in Chennai adapting themselves to digital classrooms, city schools are ahead of schools in the rest of the country.
Principals of city schools feel that digital classrooms are reducing the efforts in teaching and at the same time engaging students more than traditional classrooms.
“In a normal classroom, attention span of children is only about 20 minutes. But in digital classrooms, it can be expanded up to 40 minutes,” said S. Namasivayam, senior principal, Maharishi Vidyamandir Senior Secondary School, Chennai.
“A teacher need not draw diagrams or bring maps to these classrooms. It also minimizes the effort in teaching. Even geometry boxes are not needed now,” he said.
Uma Chandrasekar, principal, Army Public School, Chennai, said, “The digital solution like TeachNext makes the classroom more interesting. Especially when you are not able to provide hands-on exposure, it comes in handy. But it all depends on how teachers are using it.” She feels that digital classrooms will definitely not replace traditional classrooms.
It can be a source of knowledge. But still classrooms need the human touch. “Whatever you can explain in a paragraph, you can explain in one visual. Whatever learnt by seeing will always register better in the student’s mind,” she said.
“After introduction of digital classroom, classes have become livelier and students are more interested,” says Thomas of K.K.. Montfort Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Chennai.
He said students are able to grasp the subjects with animation pictures and dialogues better. It is a great advantage for students. He also foresees that in modern classrooms, books and notebooks will slowly diminish.
Will future classrooms have a teacher? “Definitely yes,” says Beas Dev Ralhan, CEO and co-founder Next Education India Private Limited.
“Teachers in future classrooms will act like orchestra composer, where they will orchestrate the learning process between the learning material, technology and students.” he said.
“In a year or two, most progressive schools will have 70 per cent digital-based learning and 30 per cent traditional learning. In a fully digitized education system, which will take a decade to materialise, schools will have this 70%:30% ratio,” he said.
Namasivayam feels that in future 50 per cent teaching role will be played by teacher and the rest will be taken care of by digital technology.
