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Thursday, March 8, 2012

Revolutionize my School Bag

My daughter while hanging her heavy school bag on her shoulders before leaving for school in the morning looked at me as if she is saying, can't you do something for it? As she left I thought seriously about the options to make her life easier and smarter by using technology. And honestly speaking, having so many technology platforms available today, carrying heavy school bags is unfair to our children.

So what do we need to do? there are several solutions available in the technology world and one of those is an iPad with iBooks. But the problem is that iPad is an expensive device for school education and specially in countries like Pakistan where children carrying an iPad is a bounty for street criminals. So the challenge is to come up with a cheap device for the sake of both affordability and security as these devices would be of less advantage for criminal minded people.

In my opinion, in Pakistan the roadmap to smart education starts from a smart school bag and eventually to a smart classroom. The need is to find a suitable device with eBook reader to replace traditional textbooks and a writing tool to replace traditional copies. I know there are plenty of eBook readers with handwriting recognition tool are available but again the challenge is to be affordable and child friendly, a customized educational device.

The next step is to revolutionize the classroom by introducing engaging and interactive ways of teaching through the use of technology in order to replace traditional textbooks. Replace the blackboard by projector based presentations through smart devices to save the time spent in writing during the class and to make the content available inside and outside the classroom rather than wasting the content by rubbing the blackboard at the start of every class.

Last but not the least, introduction of new tools and technologies in education will reduce the use paper and printed material to keep the environment clean and green. Its time for all of us techies to jump in and do our part to revolutionize the area of education.

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