By Mr. Muneer Ahmad
Vacations are a great time for students to explore new interests and hobbies. However, it is also a great opportunity to continue learning and building skills. From admission to summer breaks, this season demands huge interest among learners to explore innovative sessions or enrol on engaging activities. Furthermore, as the traditional classroom is being modified with a smart classroom, the summer vacations or breaks allow the students to increase their general knowledge and aptitude and get time for school project work.
Giving students a new realm of learning methodology, the advanced edtech tools are becoming a first-hand friend for learners to enhance their learning experience and make it more immersive. With the adoption of technology, the industry can perform better in the current modern education system. It has led to increasing acceptance of alternative learning modes such as online, experiential, and hybrid. There are a plethora of options available, ranging from news-age technology to smart devices making learning seamless and immersive. There’s a huge opportunity for India’s Ed-tech industry to grow to around US$ 10 billion economy by the year 2025.
Edtech tools enhancing immersive learning:
Integrated edtech hardware – Interactive Whiteboards
Enhancing the smart classroom setup and boosting the learning experience, Interactive Whiteboards are best suitable for keeping the learners and educators engaged. Several industry players design user-friendly, tech-enabled and industry-compatible products that are highly recommended and used by various institutions, schools, or educators.
Interactive whiteboards are a powerful tool for promoting student engagement and collaboration in the classroom, summer camps, or educational trips. They facilitate interactive presentations of material and enable students to collaborate on tasks and assignments. Additionally, interactive whiteboards make it simple to share various forms of multimedia content with students, including documents and videos.
In the context of virtual learning platforms, using interactive whiteboards can also help enhance student engagement and participation in remote classrooms. By leveraging the capabilities of virtual whiteboards, educators can create dynamic and interactive learning experiences that enable students to collaborate and learn effectively in virtual environments.
Monitors
With smart classrooms becoming highly prevalent in the education ecosystem, monitors are becoming an integral part. For educators, monitors play an essential tool. Using digital touchscreens offers greater flexibility for teachers while driving student engagement. Touch monitors have become a hybrid product, allowing educators to precisely handwrite on the screen while having a comfortable and ergonomic device for their desk, smart podium, or online class. With the help of these products, engagement with the learners increases proportionately.
Projectors
Projectors are a remarkably convenient tool for teachers to present content. Lamp and laser-based projectors accounted for most models found in schools. But with the technological shift, LEDs became more useful, safe and becoming a very interesting alternative. An LED classroom projector is arguably one of the most convenient ways for a teacher to display visual content. Although this new type of projector has only been around for a few years, it’s steadily winning over the familiar lamp projectors. This new iteration brings a lot to the table thanks to operational ease, low maintenance, and technological advancements.
Virtual Reality
VR allows students to explore and interact with virtual environments, which can provide a more engaging and realistic learning experience. It has the potential to revolutionize immersive learning by creating simulated environments which give students the experience of places and situations that are otherwise difficult or impossible to experience in real life. This level of immersion allows students to engage with the material on a deeper level, as they can explore, interact with, and experience the content viscerally. Summer breaks are a suitable time for students to engage in immersive platforms.
Additionally, VR can provide students with immediate feedback on their actions, allowing them to learn from their mistakes and make adjustments in real-time. This feedback loop can accelerate the learning process and help students better understand the material.
Gamification
A gamification is an innovative learning approach that has been gaining popularity recently. By incorporating game elements into the learning experience, such as points, badges, and leaderboards, gamification can transform traditional learning into an immersive and engaging environment for students. In addition, by setting goals and challenges for students to complete, gamification motivates students to actively participate in the learning process and work towards mastery of the material.
The new tech gamification provides students with immediate feedback on their progress, allowing them to monitor their performance and adjust their strategies accordingly. This real-time feedback can benefit immersive learning environments, where students must often make quick decisions and adapt to changing situations.
EdTech tools can be a powerful tool for enhancing immersive learning during summer. Students can personalize their learning experience, collaborate with their peers, and explore virtual environments by identifying the right tools. However, it is important to use these tools in moderation and strike a balance between technology-based learning methods and traditional learning methods. With the right approach, students can continue to build their skills and learn in a fun and engaging way during the summer months.
(The author is Mr. Muneer Ahmad, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, ViewSonic India, and the views expressed in this article are his own)
