All the world’s a stage and we are all actors but the year 2020 has been one unique drama- in a nutshell- a roller coaster ride! For academia across the world the transition from offline to online has felt a bit “out of the syllabus.” From the perspective of the student, Juggling Health and E-learning has been a hassle, although India did see a tremendous change in the education policy with the introduction of policy-cum-concept of NEP 2020.  

With the advent and growing comfort of both the teachers and students alike, online platforms are becoming a fond choice. The EdTech industry has become a promising career field as well as looked upon favorably as an alternative to brick and mortar schooling; but like a coin, EdTech too has its pros and cons. The most searched problem being How to Enhance Concentration  during online studies. Lack of concentration leads to students spending hours in front of the screen practically vegetating. As a result, the syllabus is left unfinished with the student having multiple doubts at the end of the academic session and very little time to solve and practise for the nearly approaching exam.

The most preferable way is to choose a learning platform where we not only get quality content but also other features of a classroom. Pause and think about what all we learn in a conventional classroom? Apart from curriculum teaching, students are timely assessed after a certain period of time in the form of class tests, assignments, term end exams to keep them at par with preparation of final year exam. We get to participate in extracurricular opportunities and interact with like-minded students, share our thoughts with the teachers for proper career guidance and most of all develop our social and emotional faculties as we are among friends since childhood. Infact, for almost 12 years of our life we spend most of our time in schools only.

This is the crucial role that schools play in one’s development. This is the main reason for students feeling unsupported or demotivated even though the curriculum remained the same. The solution lies in acknowledging that we do need alternate options or as the Buddha preached- to opt a middle path for enlightenment. EdTech and schools need to collaborate because the main aim of both is to provide education and enable India’s future generations to make their own decisions wisely. 

It cannot be denied that the inclination to EdTech poses a question mark on the future of “offline classes”. Issac Asimov’s The Fun They Had shows us a rather dull picture if education was fully “dehumanised” with robots and artificial intelligence as the tutors. 

It is human to feel the need to connect with living. We do not want a future of education as a dull affair. We do not want to be jammed in the same gear. We should together enable the education system in our schools to opt a few features of online education and vice versa. Several EdTech have already come up with an initiative to bridge this “digital divide”. They have invited teachers, experienced in school teaching to aid them in their content updation, teaching aptitude, etc along with various certified courses for young teachers who are looking for career-building through EdTech. 

We are progressing to an era where debating over the pros and cons and fusing two ideas together is a viable option for sustained development of all of us and this move is needed in the field of education.