Changing Landscape of Education, Institutions,Technology and Branding

  Everybody deserves to get education. It is incumbent on societies to make sure everyone gets equal opportunities to education. Education will make the societies look better and shape better. The best thing about education is that it harps on the idea of inclusiveness and without inclusive and equitable education for one and all, it would be rather difficult to work on the noble ideas of gender parity and income and wealth parity. In lack of proper education, millions of young children are deprived of their rightful access to better prospects. Education may help in their upliftment, their lives may change from a poverty-stricken existence to a decent life.   It is pathetic to see that today 258 million children and youth still do not attend school; 617 million children and adolescents are unable to read and do basic math; more than 60% of girls in sub-Saharan Africa do not finish even secondary school and 4 million children and youth refugees drop out of schools. They h...

  I always felt that formal education seldom offers solutions to practical problems of life.  It is lifelong learning which improves a person's makings, bit by bit and day by day. Thus realising the importance and joy of continuous growth, I always seek for improvement. For this, I read on a daily basis, keep attending various courses and thereby keep challenging myself by grabbing opportunities to grow. My diverse passions in areas like branding, EdTech, training, leadership, HR, etc., also helps me remain a lifelong learner. My passion for learning helps me embrace changes as well as keep breaking my comfort zones. Udemy in its latest Skills Gap Report, underlines that lifelong or continuous learning is prerequisite for survival in the fast changing world In its Fourth edition of Skills Gap Report, India has been included for the first time. As per this, “There is an underlying current of anxiety, with as many as three-quarters of workers in India re...

  Coursera’s Global Skills Index 2020 (GSI), takes stock of state of skills around the world and gives some very interesting insights about the future skills landscape. The   report benchmarks skills proficiency for 60 countries, 10 industries, and 11 fields of study in business, data science, and technology. It also highlights impact of the pandemic on the skills landscape. The report underlines that higher skills proficiency is linked to economic progress across multiple dimensions, including GDP, labor force participation, and income equality. Going by the World Bank’s latest report, e very skill proficiency percent gained for a country is associated with a $600 increase in GDP per capita and Fidelity’s report that Industries with more highly skilled talent, especially in technology skills, see higher stock returns and less disruption from COVID-19 . We may infer that although India needs better reskilling in data science domain, its chances of post-pandemic reco...

  Traditional learnings emphasized more on 3R’s— reading, writing, and arithmetic, whereas future students, ready to enter the   industrial revolution 4.0 , are supposed to possess  4Cs— critical thinking , creativity , collaboration and   communication . Here it needs to be understood that future skills requirement does not take away the basics but simply uses the basics in a different way— to create, collaborate, communicate, and use critical thinking. Technology is a conduit for facilitating students acquiring the 4C's, thereby, paving way for edtech which broadly aims to improve the quality of education and enhance the learning process.   But this isn’t about learning how to use technology or even teaching with technology tools, it is more about students creating and constructing with technology. The best way to help students master these future skills is to change HOW we teach and learn. It is the process of learning, not the con...

        Edtech or “education technology," is the amalgamation of IT tools and educational practices aimed at facilitating and enhancing learning. It encompasses simple use of computers to online homework, informal mobile learning applications, gamification or virtual reality techniques.   Still in the nascent stage, it shows promise as a method of customizing a curriculum according to a student’s ability and his level of understanding by introducing and reinforcing new content at a pace the student is able to cope and manage. Although potential for scaleable individualized learning played an important role in edtech's ascendance, Covid-19 necessitated and fast-tracked its adoption as an urgency. It has the potential to create efficiencies, cost-cutting, standardization besides making learning accessible at any point of time and even to the far-flung areas that have never seen the light of development. In this way, it is destined to transfo...