The aim of smart campuses in India is to prepare today’s students to deal with the unique set of challenges in a society that changes with each technological invention. These campuses can succeed only when we learn to strike the right balance and retain a human touch in the age of machines, says UMANG AGGARWAL
Jamia Millia Islamia, which is one of the oldest universities in India, recently completed the digitisation of around 2,230 rare books and manuscripts. These include around 80 copies of handwritten Quran in different calligraphic styles, 18th century translated versions of the Mahabharata and Padmavat in Persian and Urdu. Last month, reports about the launch of a smart campus programme in the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, had started doing the rounds. The aim of the institute was to become a self-sustaining and zero emission green campus, it was reported.
Smart boards and smart laboratories have started to become a reality across CBSE-affiliated Indian schools. Global and international schools across India have even started working towards upgrading the whole campus and making it smart. The aim of this process is often seen as improving the learning process by maximising productive hours for each child and minimising any system-related hassles that they would have to go through in the traditional schooling system. An increased consciousness about the urgent need for us as a society to manage our activities in an eco-friendly way has led to educational institutions striving to make their campuses not just technologically smart but also environmentally responsible. Be it because of the relative novelty of the concept in India or simply because of a tendency to mistrust machines and technology, whether or not smart campuses are worth the money and effort is still a question to be answered satisfactorily. Since the Age of Enlightenment, this mistrust has definitely been diluted, but it is yet to completely disappear.
So, when GIIS (Global Indian International School) launched their state-of-the-art smart campus in their Singapore branch recently, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to take at least one step forward to try to settle this debate. In an age where everything from watches and phones to mirrors and wardrobes and now even school and college campuses come with the adjective ‘smart’ attached to them, where exactly do human beings stand? How exactly does this new level of ‘smartness’ benefit society? Does it inspire students of this ‘smart’ age to hone their skills or does it instead make them machine-reliant, lazy individuals?
When one takes a closer look at the situation, it looks like students today are dealing with their own bunch of challenges and using their own bags (or ‘smart lockers’ with the biometric system, if you will) full of unique tools to do that. At the same time, there are some fundamentals that never change. Let’s take a look at some of the factors that stand out in this comparison between today’s education and the traditional methods.
Training for new career options
Like every generation of students, today’s ‘smart’ campus students face their own unique set of pressures — the pressure of thinking ahead and always being better than the machines. On my recent visit to the supermarket in Europe, I witnessed the nightmare of a dedicated sales executive coming true — machines had officially taken over the checkout counter. And with that facility being both available and affordable, there was no need for an actual human being to be paid for standing behind the sales counter and performing the said service. For a large group of professionals in the late 30s and early 40s, the fear of a computer, or worse still a smartphone taking over their job, gets more real with each passing day. While the Planet of the Apes-like situation might seem scary to some, for today’s school-goers, that is hardly news. In fact, they have already moved to a point where they see themselves as individuals who hold the potential of developing means to relegate errands to technology. A self-watering plant is one of the many projects thought out by younger individuals who are in sync with technology and understand the need of putting their time to truly productive use.
In new-age campuses, students don’t have to wait for a free period to find the time to go to the library and pick/return a book. Instead, they grow up with ‘smart bins’ being an easily available system around them. They grow up with the knowledge that in the ‘smart’ world, their job is to be the brains behind latest apps and other technology-enabled services. In the mini world of the campus, they see their role as the ones who would develop superior versions of smart bins and smart boards.
In fact, the traditional vocational education system cannot afford to have neat classifications anymore. No matter which field you opt for, you are an engineer in one way or the other. Neither accountants nor writers can afford to not up their game and be, at the very least, smarter than the machines around them. Technical writing, web developer, and app developer can be seen as only some of the professions that would form the basis of the many new career options that these students would have at their disposal by the time they are ready to leave school.
With technology comes responsibility
When computers were first introduced in Indian schools, knowledge was still heavily reliant on traditional books, with textbooks for a subject called Computer Science prescribed to students. ‘Parts of the computer’ would be taught in the classroom through a hand-drawn chalk diagram of a computer on the blackboard. Handwritten homework on the topics would also be assigned to students. If the same system was to be followed without any modifications today, the teacher would be as aware as each student in the class that it was redundant.
Thanks to the overabundance of smartphones within the domestic space, kindergarteners today often have more practical knowledge than their teachers. It only makes sense then that schools equipped with smart campuses provide students with tablets that either replace or complement traditional learning tools. But the most important takeaway from the process is that a sense of using technology constructively and responsibly can be inculcated in students from the very beginning of their education. Computers are no longer a novel toy of sorts that can be enjoyed in multiple ways. Instead, the primary role of technology, in general, and computers, in particular, can be well established as tools for acquiring knowledge and creating solutions to modern-day problems.
A truly mutual learning process
One of the many things unique about today’s smart classrooms is the degree of familiarity of technology that teachers have compared to students. Students in these classrooms often learn to handle smartphones and iPads along with learning how to walk steady. Their teachers, however, belong to the age group of people who had first learnt to make friends with CRT monitors and then gradually moved to laptops, then tablets, and then smartphones. So, in terms of handling technology, teachers often end up learning quite a bit from their students. While students benefit from the expert subject knowledge that teachers possess, teachers too benefit from keeping up with the ease that students have with using the latest gadgets. The new-age classroom, then, becomes a space for mutual learning in the true sense. And that benefits society as neither traditional knowledge nor technology-related smartness is limited to a certain age group.
new approach making schooling mechanical?
Increasing the productive hours of students, being able to keep tabs on each second of what students do in school because everything is controlled by technology — the fear of these smart campuses becoming too utilitarian and mechanical is natural. According to recent reports, some smart universities in the UK even have ‘emotion recognition’ software downloaded to keep tabs on the students’ emotional status. The answer seems to be that only human beings can find the right balance and keep Frankenstein from becoming a monster. On many smart campuses, for instance, technology is used not just to make students productive but also to ensure they find time to relax and indulge in creative pursuits.
As long as the human touch in education is retained and upgraded with each round of innovation, these smart campuses are just what today’s students need. Technological advancement makes it easier for schools to provide students with lifelike experience of scientific phenomenon. Opening up windows to careers in radio, photography, or even the culinary sciences is less expensive and more rewarding for schools. But again, only we can find the right balance.
Some things never change
Some of the day-to-day challenges in traditional schooling systems included students reading comic books under the table as the mathematics teacher taught algebra. Or, the students collectively feigning that they forgot to get the required book to school because they are simply not in the mood to study that day and want a free period. There would also be times when some students would mess with the blackboard so as to hamper the speed of teaching. One would think that when blackboards are replaced by smart boards and books and notebooks are replaced by iPads, these challenges would start to disappear. But amusingly enough, these elements have been retained even in smart Indian classrooms. Unless the teacher ‘locks’ the tablets of all students, there is always the fear of them opening different apps and not paying attention to the lesson being taught. Also, students sometimes mess with the server for sport so that the smart board cannot take instructions swiftly.
While these antics often have teachers at the wit’s end, even this ‘cloud’ has a silver lining. In a somewhat annoying and funny way, it proves that smart campuses are not smarter than the students. These campuses have definitely done their bit to update the schooling process and make it fit for the contemporary society. But the kids using these tools are clearly developing at a pace that is good enough to maintain the status quo between human beings and machines.
