The world is experiencing a revolution with respect to the usage of mobile phones, with increasing number of smart phones and improving technology that guarantees high-speed data services to complement high-end hardware.
From e-commerce to banking, mobile services have come up in different spheres. Slowly, education has also hopped on to the mobile bandwagon — albeit a bit late — with tablet devices serving as a great platform. With these developments, Education 3.0 or m-education is touted as the next big thing in mobile technology. India with more than 800 million mobile subscribers, and a young population, is in a good position to tap into the benefits of this revolution.
Rajan Gupta, Hub Head, Mobility Business Unit, Tamil Nadu and Kerala Circles for Tata DOCOMO, says, “What we are seeing is that learning is moving to the next level with the integration of information and communications technology (ICT) and the mobile stratosphere. While health has adopted ICT already, education is waking up to its benefits now. ”
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One of the biggest advantages of mobile education is the accessibility aspect. It helps in making, merging or playing one function of education available to anyone from anywhere.
Mobile education also allows for more interactive platforms to learn and understand concepts better with audio/visual aids. Gupta says, “One of the unique benefits of mobile education is the promotion of interactive education of highest standards globally without any restrictions. The use of the existing mobile technology can support informal learning, including everything from simple voice-based language lessons to more sophisticated mobile Internet-based educational applications.”
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With the advent of social networking, another advantage that mobile education offers is that students can share their work and ideas with their peers and interest groups more easily.
Phablets for easy delivery
Gupta points to an interesting fact, “A recent GSMA research reveals that there are lean periods where youth do little, either due to boredom or lack of community services, and this delivers an enormous opportunity for m-Education providers to facilitate a valuable educational supplement to classroom-based learning.”
Going forward, Gupta feels Education 3.0 will play a crucial part in how education is delivered to students especially with the government support in distributing low-cost phablets to students which helps in propelling the market.
The need of the hour is to enable the Education 3.0 ecosystem which will require a broad range of technical support such as IT, network, content, and hosting and data management services.