In India, for development to happen, it is very important to impart education to each and every child possible. But with increasing economic burdens, education is proving to be a farfetched reality for the poor and a dilemma for households that barely can manage the expenses. The biggest problem in front of us is the equitability of education and how it reaches the masses. As for other contents, with the advent of the internet, it has become much easier to distribute digitized content and services to much wider audiences with very minimal expenses. But in previous decades this was still not affordable enough because the PCs were not that cheap. But the era has changed and we have seen a dramatic rise of smartphones as opposed to feature phones. These devices have seen a sharp fall in prices and an equally sharp increase in capabilities. This leads the current education to take a new face of digital learning. And this when combined with the greater availability of fast networks is a boon. This helps educators to reach out to much wider audiences, enabling students to learn at very minimal expenses compared to traditional forms of learning.
Smart Learning or to say ‘Smartphone Learning’ is the new way of education. The educators can upload the video recordings of the lectures and students can learn at their own pace at whatever time suits them. This is commonly seen that many students from poor households work in the morning to earn and study at night to manage their studies. Mobile learning is something that naturally suits their needs. This also takes much load off the educators, as they don’t need to repeat the same lectures tons of time but can instead focus more on interacting with students and addressing personal queries, because otherwise what happens is many queries remain unanswered troubling students later. This also subsidizes the cost because then for a fixed salary for educators, it can reach 10–100 times more students at a time, bringing down fees proportionally. In India, it solves another problem of accessibility, because in rural areas, typically not every village has a school. This forces students to travel many kilometers each day just to reach the school, wasting their time and also money. But now they can sit in the comfort of their home, saving their traveling cost and time. This makes much more time available for study and improves their performance.
All in all, we can say that with such great progress made by technology and the willingness of our education system to change and adaptation of technology-facilitated by private players, the Indian education landscape is changing for good, becoming much more democratic and accessible. This would go a long way to build the nation and take India to new heights.
