There was a time when the students sat under the shade of a banyan tree and the Guru taught them the virtues of life, how to face the world, how to live in the word and how to lead the world. If the world produced great teachers of the callibre of Chanakya and Plato there were equally great students of the callibre of Chandragupta Maurya and Aristotle. Authoritative knowledge in their own streams made the likes of Aryabhatta, Brahmihir, Charaka in India and Copernicus, Galileo, Einstein abroad capable of achieving timeless discoveries and inventions. This is ample proof of the fact that the classical idea of class rooms was not in any way inferior to any modern day class room as far as the quality of students is concerned. There was also a time when the class rooms simply consisted of desks, benches, teacher's table and black board. And there is this moment when a class room is equipped with speakers, projectors, air conditioners, mechanically adjustable sitting arrangements, computers and internet access and many more gadgets. Simply put, the teaching methods have got a shot in the arm due to the rapid advancement in technology.
What are the modern teaching aids available to the students today?
Projectors: Projectors are one of the most useful modern teaching aids. State-of-the-art projecting devices have benefitted the students and teachers alike. Whereas the old time teacher drew an imperfect picture on the black board on his own, the modern teacher casts a perfect schematic or diagram with the help of a projector which is vertically and horizontally adjustable overhead. In the recent past there has been a lot of improvement in the field of projection. From those containing only a lamp, a reflector and transparent presentations we have come to super-resolution computer projectors which make all sorts of texts, charts, graphs etc. easily comprehensible.
Computers, Laptops, PDAs, Internet Access: Of all the modern devices being used for education computers, laptops and internet access are by far the most useful ones. Internet, as is well known, is the biggest encyclopedia. Any topic may be researched easily and in-depth with the help of an internet connection. It is equally beneficial for school and college students as well as those involved in dissertation and thesis writing. Power point presentations make one have the grasp of a topic in a lucid style. Various computers in an educational institution are networked to Local Area Network (LAN) or sometimes to external supports on Wide Area Network (WAN). Some schools and colleges have been converted into wi-fi zones so that students can get connected to internet at each and every point inside the campus. Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) are, where the need is, provided to students and attuned to a central computer, which is usually the instructor's PC, for direct voice recording or documents and important clips download.
Class rooms with Micro phones and speakers and ultra modern auditoria: Most educational institutions in educational hubs are equipped with microphones, speakers and auditoria with big projection screens for seminars and conferences. Even in a general class, teacher has the liberty to get the speakers and microphones switched on so that his voice effectively reaches the students. Professional colleges use these services to give the students an on-the-job like experience by showing them clips from corporate houses and other companies of international repute.
Virtual Classes: Distance is not a matter, nowadays, for quality education to reach a quality student even if he/she resides at a remote place. Education leaders in the form of business conglomerates are reaching far-off corners of the world with the help of ultramodern technological advancements. Virtual Class is one where a large audience watches a teacher delivering a lecture on their internet connected cyber devices from different parts of the world and everybody comprising this audience has the same kind of access to the teacher. You ask your questions and the lecturer clears your doubts by way of speaking, drawing pictures and illustrating on a blackboard as if he were taking a real class. The only difference is that you attend to an image of the teacher and the not the real person but that makes no difference to a learner.
There are many more facilities and gadgets which the latest engineering inventions have provided us like wireless mobile labs, digital schedulers and planners, long stand- by power back-ups, interactive whiteboards, control switchers etc. The effective utilization of these devices and facilities can make a student deeply involved in a subject.
Are the teachers and institutes ready to take modern methods in their stride?
This is a very important aspect of high-tech gadgets being used in teaching. Are the teachers ready to handle these gadgets? If they are not so tech savvy as to handle petty technical glitches and are unable to fully exploit these sophisticated teaching aids then either the students get distracted or the money is wasted. Funding for such arrangements itself is a burden for institutions and if the money involved is not utilized properly other academic activities are affected adversely. Many teachers are not at all competent to use such latest marvels of technology. Computers illiteracy and tech- phobia are at the root of it. Unless training for operation of the sophisticated teaching aids is not provided to conventional teachers any extent of equipping the labs with gadgets is only a farce in the name of upgrading.
Do these aids really benefit the students?
Yes and no.Yes in the sense that these facilities make a student more interested and involved. What they missed in a conventional class was clarity of expression and what they gain in a modern class is the depth of presentation. Any picture, for instance, can be presented in a 3-D format ready to be explained by the teacher. Say, a view of the earth's rotational motion can be beamed on the screen with a tutorial video which also shows the dark part where the sun light does not reach and the students easily understand how the night is caused. Of course, the same can be handled by a classical type teacher but the experience of the video clip which shows the earth rotating, with a light background music is entirely different. It creates an indelible impression on the mind of a curious student. A video clip shows the structure of atom and the tech-savvy teacher explains how and why the electrons revolve around the nucleus. The student gets absorbed into it so deeply that he need not force himself to recapitulate everything when a question is asked. He rather enjoys visualizing the scene in his or her mind's eye and answers quite easily.And now the 'No'.
Every good thing is naturally accompanied with its side effects too. Students sometimes tend to get distracted by the modern gadgets and set ups. If a student, for instance, starts concentrating on the resources themselves, it becomes an unpleasant scenario. Compare this to the old class where the teacher would plainly tell the facts and try to make the class interesting by inserting small events, tidbits and examples. That class also had a simplistic beauty of its own. It is easy for the students to get carried away by computer game and movies' and songs' websites on internet. Moreover the teachers also sometimes get so involved in the technical failures and erecting of such failures that they happen to forget their primary job of assimilating the basic concepts in a student's psyche.
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Modern mental aids:
Earlier teachers had never heard of terms like thought chain, incomplete objective, left-right coordination, dynamic ranking, body language reading etc. A plethora of mental techniques have dawned upon students to convert their minds into super powers of extraordinary thinking efficiency.For a moment consider what is a thought chain? In this process of teaching, a group of students is required to answer a question. Students of the group keep trying one by one unless the first correct part-thought is achieved by one of the students. The teacher observes that the answer is in formation and stops that student at that point. The next right sentence or part-thought is attempted by the students and thus the process goes on until the answer is formed in toto.Similarly dynamic ranking of the students of a class is given by their daily or 2-day or weekly performances. The relative ranking of the students is being observed by computerized records which keep on changing as the performance data goes on getting updated daily. The ranks are announced daily at the end of the classes and this keeps the competition level high.'Incomplete objective technique' emphasizes on leaving an interesting topic incomplete towards the end. This keeps a student excited about the subject in the next class. The fact looks weird but has been proved with examples to work fine. The crux of the matter is that along with physical teaching aids we are also engaging mental teaching aids to help our students reap the benefits of innovative teaching.
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