CIO OPINION
I have seen wide usage of the concept
‘BYOD’ in the education sector in the year
2017, where the schools encourage children
to bring their own device or procure their
own device, as per the standards specified
by the school, to enhance interactive digital
learning. Also, even schools are procuring
devices for the students directly from the
principal vendor in large volume to get
educational/academic pricing benefits.
Apart from digitising the traditional
curriculum, the schools in the region
started including the latest technology
trends as optional/additional subjects for
the students to get a flavour of them in
the early stages. A few of the schools have
already started training on robotics, 3D
modelling and printing etc from the early
grades. To equip the ICT lab for meeting
these requirements and to train the staff on
the technological trends are key challenges
for us as an IT team.
MDM (Mobile Device Management)
solutions were also marketed well in the
education sector in the year 2017 as most of
the schools adopted digital learning as the
key method for interactive learning. Most of
the MDM solutions in the education sector
are focused to enhance the safe and secure
usage and control over the devices, content
filtering and publishing the learning contents
in a centralised fashion.
Another area I have seen in 2017 is the wide
usage of mirroring/casting devices like smart
interactive TVs, smart interactive boards
and short throw and laser based interactive
projectors in the class room. Most of these
devices are about having the option to
share the content with the students’ devices
and thereby they can directly interact with
teachers during classroom sessions from
their devices themselves.
All these trends point towards the
eradication of carrying heavy school bags
and shrinking a number of books to just one
iPad/tablet.
Traditional Radio Frequency Identification
Devices (RFID) trackers are moving towards
a completely different version with more
software controlled IoT based functions
where one RFID device is sufficient to track
the student, the assets, transport and can
even be used as an e-wallet where students
50
INTELLIGENTCIO
“
DIGITAL
TECHNOLOGY IS
NOT CHANGING
THE CONTENT
OF LEARNING-
IT IS CHANGING
THE METHOD OF
THE LEARNING
‘PROCESS’.
can use it for purchases from school stores
and canteens.
Even Bluetooth technology has also grown
to a stage where it can replace the functions
of RFIDs with small beacon kind of devices
and tags with much less cost. A few of the
schools have started using the technology
already in the region.
Most of the above points are the examples
of the outer view/student-front model of
digitisation in the academic sector. Whereas
digitisation is happening in backend
activities it is also occurring in terms of the
utilisation of cloud infrastructure for storage,
content hosting, security etc.
Compared to previous years large numbers
of schools and educational institutions have
already migrated their datacentres on to the
cloud and some have opted to keep disaster
recovery sites on cloud too. Most of the
school management system vendors also
started to insist on cloud and SAAS models in
the region.
And last a point I should not miss in terms
of digital transformation is the money
the educational groups are spending on
digital marketing and online reputation
management. SEO/SMO and other
digital marketing and online reputation
management techniques are heavily
used to retain and enhance ranking on all
internet platforms. n
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