Introduction

Technology has changed every sector of the life, likewise during last decades technology has transformed education sector whether in a way of delivering knowledge or technological devices used in delivering the education. India has taken many steps towards technological revolution in education sector like E-learning, Massive open online learning, smart classrooms etc. The initiative of technological use in an education sector was also seen in New National Education Policy 2020¹. Covid-19 has also shown the importance of Technology in education and lack of facilities in the countries education system. Smart classroom in some state of India has achieved greater milestone, while the central government has taken some big steps to transform the education system².

Madhya Pradesh is the 5^th populated state and 2^nd largest state by area in India. The literacy rate of Madhya Pradesh is approx. 70% according to census 2011³. As per ASER 2018, the difference between the government and private school performance of children % of class VIII who can division is 32.1% and 52% in Madhya Pradesh. Also % children of class VIII who can read the class II text is 57.9% in government schools and 86.3% private schools⁴. There is a significant gap in the private and government school. Quality of education was always a major concern in government school education. Although in few government and private schools they have adopted smart classrooms.

Cognitive Problem

The growing population of India has affected all the sectors and Education sector is one of them. It is very hard to provide good quality of education to huge amount of people. Madhya Pradesh has many problems in education sector which was resulted in bad quality of education. As indicated by Annual status of Education report 2018 in Madhya Pradesh rustic 2.4% Children of VIII class can't read a letter, 10.5% Children of VIII class just read a letter, 8.3% Children of VIII class can read a word, children of VIII class who can read the I class text is only 14.5% and 30.8%children can't perceive the number 10-99, 20.8% kids can't do deduction and 36.6 can't do essential division⁵. Primarily infrastructure was always shown as the hurdles in education sector but there are some other issues as well because of which the quality of education provided in government school is low. The shortage of motivated and well trained is one of the important reasons for the low quality of Education⁶. Technology may help to improve the quality of education in the schools.

Review of Literature:

By setting up smart classroom on campus in government schools will help to increase accessibility to quality education in government schools. Many studies have found that smart classroom is more effective than the traditional classrooms. It is statistically proved that the student studying in smart classrooms scores more than the one in conventional classrooms. The study was conducted for the student of class VIII in mathematics subject⁷. The study was also conducted in chemistry subject in schools and it was found that the student of smart classroom has achieved higher achievement than the students who were taught in traditional way⁸&⁹ The smart classroom learning environment was also found to be better to teach rural low achiever and high achiever in science.¹⁰

A technology play an important role in our daily lives and it is now has become a way of life. Technology has helped humankind in every aspect of life from communication to education. Technology has progressed to improve the quality of instruction as it is changed and improved over the year. Because of technology we can change our education system of rote learning and provide students with innovative learning solutions with the use of the projector and computer. With the help of smart classrooms the students will learn in different ways even if it is non-interactive like displaying the photos, illustrations, maps, graphs and videos.¹¹

Using technology in the education was adopted my many countries in 1990s. Like Malaysia’s smart school initiative is started in 1996 aiming to make a smart classrooms and making learning creative with the help of information and communication technologies (ICT) framework. It is statistically proved that student’s performance is improved and the success, interest, training and curriculum assessment variables are high. ¹² Smart classroom apart from improving performance of student it can also pull up the interest, helps in training and improve curriculum assessment skills of the students.

Discussion and Implications

Smart classroom usually comes in two type one is interactive and the other is non-interactive. The interactive version of smart classroom which has more equipped with technological device through through AI technology, there is no need of even black and white board to conduct the class. Interactive smart classroom will be expensive to setup in all the schools. The second type of smart classrooms is non-interactive one in which there will be less device needed to teach the class. The white board might be needed for giving classes but the countries one of the best classes will be given to any children in any part of country.¹³ If I have to give suggestion to state government then I would suggest providing a laptop and projector in school classes. The suggestion is might be similar to non-interactive smart classrooms but it is even less expensive than the non-interactive smart classrooms. The logic behind this kind of setup is that the countries best teacher’s course will be presented to any school as there are many ways of learning the same thing. The laptop and projector will make the class more interesting by showing videos, audios, pictures, graph etc as this will pull up the interest of the students.

Results

From the above research we have found that the smart classroom are more effective in improving the students’ performance as well as it will pull up the interest, skills etc. of student. In many states of India, there are many smart classrooms which are going on and many states have given priority to setup the smart classroom.¹⁴

Pandemic has shown to so many countries the mirrors of their weaknesses and the strengths of the various areas. In India’s case there is major gap in the internet access in urban and rural areas. In urban areas there is a 93% person who has a broadband penetration on the other way in rural areas it is just 29.2%. Whilst in Madhya Pradesh comes in the category of one of the least number of internet subscribers per 100 persons in rural areas which is 23.88%. ¹⁵ There must be lot of improvement in the overall infrastructure facilities in rural areas like internet, proper toilets etc. Some of the steps which Madhya Pradesh government has taken in regard to internet facilities provided to rural areas and are planning setup Wifi services in the 13000 villages.¹⁶

Conclusions

The use of information communication technology in education will not only provide an education in different ways by displaying the photos, illustrations, maps, graphs and videos but also to prepare the current generation students for a workplace where Information Communication and Technologies devices like computer and internet are becoming the most important tool for work in industries. The smart classrooms will not only improve the performance of the students but also the teachers. ¹⁷ The current study is the attempt to show the effectiveness of smart classroom and how it is useful in improving the performance of student in schools through the previous research. This study also tries to explain the problems in the education system of Madhya Pradesh and how smart classroom can solve these problems. The study also suggested that there is urgent need of smart classrooms in Madhya Pradesh schools in order to improve the quality of education.

References

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Notes