An individual who does not know education has been deprived of a blissful event in their life. Being educated denotes a changed mind capable of adopting positive and healthy habits and ways of life. To technology, we owe many salutes, and to it, we look forward to providing a pathway for a better education.
The Chief Information Officer (CIO)
Conventionally, the chief information officers in the education sector were the teachers and the books recommended by the administration. The onset of a pandemic in 2020 altered the educational landscape.
The picture now proposed and presented through recent reports and studies of CIOs is from the IT sector. The improved versions of studies and methods of education have highlighted a turning point.
Education is no longer the same. Knowledge once acquired through sit-in classrooms has now reached our bedrooms. The future that people wished for is here.
This might mean easy access to information regarding institutional education; it certainly made things hectic and difficult for the IT department.
The institutionalised IT
Traditionally, educational institutions neither provided direct access to external sources nor supported them. To them, education was to be procured through physical labor during extensive lecture sessions put forth by the teachers.
With multiple technologies coming in, the method of education has changed. From overhead projectors that used transparent sheets during lectures to modern projectors that connect through WiFi, we surely have come a long way.
But this is not all. We have institutions with their websites where students can access course guidelines and perform other official procedures.
Many educational institutions also have an online library for remote access. This is the work of the advanced IT industry in collaboration with institutions providing higher education.
The evolution of education
The world has progressed from ancient methods of education where religion and spirituality were preached to where famous universities have separate departments to address the growing research in such fields.
New research has unveiled a new face of education that was in the making before the pandemic. Accessible sources of information and easy lecture sessions have put IT in the front row.
Materializing educational information was initially a difficult task to perform. Teachers all over the world spend hours burning CDs or floppy disks to collect multiple data sources.
Today, advanced technology has made things easier for everyone. Teachers can easily provide links to their notes and sources of books and other necessary documents. The tussle is an obsolete task.
IT in education: glamour or necessity
The star of the century is a technology and everything supported by it. It has emerged as not only a direct associate in the business industry but as a healthy collaborator in the education sector as well.
For most parts of this century, we have witnessed IT as a necessity needed to propagate skills and meet clients’ demands. With fastidious AI and ML enhancing the growth of healthcare and the fashion industries, the education sector has claimed its share of it.
The glamour of IT now is the necessity of an institution. With the good and strong support of IT, the intel on educational sources and their authentication can make the distribution of knowledge much easier.
The availability of technology to propagate it is a necessity in higher education.
A recent study provides evidence as to the limitless use of technology by pupils in higher educational programs. This is due to a significant step forward in collaboration between IT and educational institutions.
IT collaboration: bane or boon for institutions
Technology has always been a part of education. For this sector, we accept the dilemma of bane and boon.
Due to technology, the flow of information did not stop during the pandemic era and continues to do so. Collaboration of IT with institutions is expected to provide many benefits, like:
- New learning spaces where IT meets the learners’ requirements
- Reducing the burden of information through easy and innovative methods
- Cloud-based system for storage and access of information within institutions’ domain
- Providing end-to-end security to data meant for learners’ institutions
Takeaway
Education is a basic human right and should be made accessible to everyone. Through policies formed by the government, we can expect such positive steps.
Not only primary education, but higher education should be a right irrespective of financial and societal standards.
Cost-effective and easy access to education has been proposed through IT and can be looked forward to. IT in the past two years has proven to be an accelerator in the path of education.
It is upon the government and its intervention on behalf of its citizens to extract the essence of beneficial technology and make it accessible to the people.
It is the “it” of the education sector now.
