| Kippreport.com

GCC education bets on smart learning

January 27, 2015 4:29 by kippreport

The use of technology in the educational sector has increased in the past few years.

With the younger generation’s increasing interest in the latest gadgets and working online, educational organisations have introduced technology into teaching strategies.

According to a study commissioned by Intel and IDC, the adoption of technology by educational institutions across the GCC has almost become mandatory.

“We need to prepare kids for jobs that do not exist today,” explains Frederico Carvalho, regional business manager for Intel at a press event. “This is all about helping them develop the skills to be able to acquire knowledge, not memorising it.”

With the education sector accounting for 10.3 per cent of all tablet shipments to the Middle East in the first half of 2014, an increase from 2.2 per cent for the whole year of 2013, the research, titled ‘The Role of Technology in the Education Sector’, shows that the IT industry is truly being taken into consideration when planning the future of education in the region.

“The smart learning programme expects to give a tablet to every student of KG-12 institutions before the end of 2017,” states Adriana Rangel, research director for systems and infrastructure solutions in the Middle East and Africa at IDC.

According to the study, anything from interactive tables, content broadcasting, 3D projectors and even presence robots are being used in institutions today.

Although 90 per cent of the KG-12 educational institutes interviewed for the study utilise laptops, tablets and 2 in 1s, the utilisation of laptops to tablets is currently 60-40 in the region.

With the region hoping to become a ‘hub for knowledge and education’, the future aim for education is to enhance the experience for students.

“The teacher has now become the facilitator,” explains a representative from Al Ittihad Private School. “At the beginning, it was seen as a challenge by both the parents and the teachers – whether this use of technology was a waste of time, since tablets and laptops make parents think about games, but this has been overcome now.”

Although smartphones are not encouraged in the schools – in most places they are forbidden – the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) concept has been implemented in numerous institutions around the region, representing 60 per cent of the institutions interviewed for the study.

With numerous benefits arising from the use of technology in the education sector, such as the utilisation of wi-fi and intranet, access to apps/content utilising connected devices, IT enhancing both the teaching and learning experience, and increasing student satisfaction levels, the future of the educational sector seems to be moving digital.

Although there may be many benefits to the use of technology in institutions, we wonder what challenges may come up as a result of this. According to the study, challenges of using technology in the educational sector include: deployment and maintenance, wireless infrastructure load, the distribution and management of apps, resistance on the part of teachers to take on this new teaching style and budgetary constraints.

With all of the educational institutes that were interviewed aiming to increase their device utilisation within the next 12 to 24 months, the plan to stick to technology in the educational environment seems to be a popular choice in the region.