Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. - Anonymous
“Knowledge is power”, having said that it is indeed a well known fact that a person’s personality is estimated and build based on the knowledge that he/she possesses. A person is nothing without knowledge. Being educated is often related in terms of being ‘literate’, this is where we go wrong. Being literate is just gaining a narrow perspective or knowledge about a particular thing but, being ‘Educated’ is on a broader sense. An Educated person utilizes his literacy level in the real world in terms of showcasing his personality and acting wisely. A literate person may not be necessarily an educated one but, an educated person always possess the sense of literacy.
Education sector in every country is the most crucial among any other sectors. India being a developing country needs to pay a major focus on its education sector. As is evident from the Indian history, it has undergone various social reforms. These reforms have affected the Indian education system at wide scale. Whether it is giving education to girls or to a particular group or society of people, our nation has faced it all. Many were successful to fight for attaining education and avail it while others were withheld.
Over the years, India has come a long way in terms of providing education to a greater mass But still the challenges persists. Today’s education sector has several challenges in terms of infrastructure, approach, inclusiveness and the right technological advancement required. We can take a leap if we can implement through the right in education sector especially in a country where majority of population comes under youth category. Apart from other components, technological advancement will be one of the most important factor to experience a real transformation of the sector.
Considering the other sector’s growth, technology advancement will bring a reform in education sector. However, we must not adopt the same approach like other sectors since knowledge is not the same commodity as other. And on top of this, we must also review and take necessary measures to ensure right impact of current technological advancement.
Just to name a few challenges, transportation, security, classroom challenges, syllabus and management are major ones which keep coming in newspaper from across the nation. Needless to mention here, there are several instances which are not even getting place in media due to many reasons.
Bus transportation is one of the major challenges from security point of view. It is evident that Buses are the most common mode of transportation in India. Whether it is public transportation or private transportation agencies, buses are the most commonly used for travelling. Also, to cover a certain distance, whether a very small distance or longer distances again buses serve the purpose at really cheaper and affordable prices. Since its invention, it is a common mode for transportation as it serves the purpose at affordable prices and can be availed by all the sections of our society.
Being availed on such a large scale in a populated country like India, it also arises many conflicts as well as crimes. Having known that it is used by a large number of people, it is a common point of target to meet criminal incidents. There are instances been shown on news channels and social media platforms from around the corners of our nation where buses especially the public buses have been a point of target. Also, buses are utilized by educational institutions and organizations for transportation. In several instances kids become a direct and easy target for meeting crimes.
Automation is the automatic control or use of multiple control systems for operating various equipments to generalize and speed up the process. In an overpopulated and a developing country like India, Automation plays and would play a vital role in simplifying the processes and easing the everyday tasks.
Without even having the knowledge, we use automation in our everyday life to ease our tasks. Education being a crucial and an ever growing sector, it would be highly beneficial to implement automation at several level as well as domain of education. This would not only help the the teachers and authorities to fasten up the various activities, but also would be highly beneficial for the students at primary, secondary, graduation level, etc. to learn better and more things in an efficient way making the whole learning process interesting.
Education field is already experiencing and will continue to feel the impacts of automation. Many educational institutions have automated most of their teaching-learning process already. It can be used and should be used in administrative and management council of educational institutes. However, much of the future role of automation in education isn’t known yet.
There are lot of electronic gadgets in place as automation in education sector. And we can implement technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning and Data science to improve the result of an automation even better. Just to consider a case studies of classroom automation- how about automating the attendance system? In an average, a school spends more than 20 hrs/day just on attendance and in one academic year calculation goes upto 6000 hrs. How odd it sounds when a school spends around 6000 hrs/year just to make an attendance! How about solving this problem statement by implementing image recognition?
Criminal activities have been ever increasing at an alarming rate in India since ages. You sit with a newspaper or switch on to a television news channel, around 50% of the news coverage reflects criminal activities going around the nation. Having said that, kidnapping innocent kids and asking for huge ransoms in return is the most outstretched crime in our country. There have been cases where kids leave their home for school and parents have no idea where did they go if not home or school.
It is of national interest to find out tricks and ways in which these mishaps can be avoided. Image recognition and pattern matching are some of the newer technologies which are in trend. These technologies can be utilized to avoid such missing cases of people especially the kids.
The idea behind lies in carrying out a full-proof attendance process that can map the picture captured from the CCTV installed inside the school buses with the details and picture of students boarding the bus from the database. These details will then generate an attendance report and will be sent to the parents of the respective wards. This way parents can ensure their wards are going to school and coming back on time safely.
Face recognition can implement two things, authentication and facial expression. Using facial expression, the engagement level of the learner can be measured. It will help in making the course content more interesting so that the learner can give maximum level of engagement. It will also identify whether the curriculum or teaching style of the teacher needs to be changed or not.
Using face recognition technique, content can be shared with the authenticated person without using traditional login system. In traditional login system, if username, password is known to anyone, they can easily access other’s content but in facial recognition system, it is not possible.
In that way, there will be no possibility of content going to some other person. We can see that face recognition systems have been already implemented in several devices. In the trending smartphones, face recognition features have been inhibited where only the authenticated user or, the owner of the phone can unlock it after facial recognition.
The facial recognition can eliminate the manual attendance record system. Instead the face of the student can be used to match the pre-saved record in the database and some sort of notification can also be sent to their parents. It will also help in detecting whether the student is facing some health issues and in that case medical team can be notified about this.
In the current era, Schools, Colleges and Universities have come up with various patterns of teaching and conducting examinations. This has led to a state of dilemma among students as well as the teachers to analyze the patterns and syllabus of the courses. The need lies in restructuring the way of teaching and conducting examination by utilizing latest technologies like AI and face recognition. This would allow both students and teachers to follow the patterns in order to acquire the latest technical knowledge.
Most of the developed countries have come up and implemented ways and means to restructure and strengthen their education system. India being one of the oldest emerged countries, and having very early source of knowledge resources and institutes, has witnessed students from around the world coming up in order to acquire knowledge. India has been a hub of quality education since historical period but, with the growing world and the advancement in technology, our nation must move forward finding modern approach to be utilized in the education sector which would make the youth hold up their head and compete on a global platform.
Considering the unfair means in exam and certificate generalization in India, how about implementing blockchain in Colleges and Universities especially in examination, certificate verifications and document verification through point-to-point authentication protocol? Some of the well known Universities in India are already experimenting with this but does one implementation solve the whole country problem?
It is hereby evident that Indian education sector has been facing several challenges since decades. Regulations are amended time and again in order to bring the best of our education sector. The future of our nation lies in building up our youth and raising them in a safe and secure environment. It is not only the duty of government and the concerned authorities but also a prime responsibility of every Indian citizen to help our nation safeguard its future. Technology involvement should always be in building up a secure ecosystem thereby, leading our nation towards ultimate development.