Education Technology | Innovations and Insights - Edinbox

Malawi primary schools are ahead of Indian primary schools! Just like how exciting it felt to learn from new, colourful books back in the 90s, this generation feels the same for tablets. This is, in fact, happening in the primary schools of Malawi right now. Since many students lack the opportunity to learn enough reading and maths in schools, tablets are now making classrooms more lively learning environments. We’ll look into this simple device and its importance for Malawi students—and also for everyone else.

What Is Going on in Malawi’s Primary Schools?

Together with Imagine Worldwide and onebillion, Malawi’s government launched the groundbreaking program BEFIT (Building Education Foundations through Innovation & Technology). The goal? Making sure that primary school students in all grades, particularly early grades, get educational tablets. Interactive lessons about reading and arithmetic are included on these tablets and they adjust to the speed and abilities of each child.

What Makes Tablets Important for Education Now?

A large percentage of Malawian kids, as per some sources which is 90%, were not able to read well only a few years past. Because there were not enough books for everyone, many students had to share. The program does this by sending personalized learning lessons daily through tablets, without needing new classrooms or hiring more teachers. The tablets can power themselves with solar energy which is handy when electricity is unreliable in schools.

What Are the Effects?

The findings have been very compelling. Science proves that using tablets for 30 minutes every day for eight weeks helped children in grades 1-3 improve much more in reading and basic maths than children in regular classrooms. The teachers indicate that tablets are convenient and this helps kids stay interested and focused. Fewer students are absent and they feel stronger and happier to learn more. Being new, in the first year BEFIT connected with 277,000 students using quick testing in 500 schools and is now expanding to reach all districts and up to 3.8 million children each year.

What can India Learn?

The experience of Malawi can teach and motivate us Indians. Children living in Malawi deal with similar issues as those in rural India such as fewer resources, less access to teachers and gaps in learning. Thus, it is evident from Malawi that introducing technology to education in the right way can reduce these gaps and allow every child to succeed. By following a similar approach India can tackle the education gap in rural areas. However, the most important factor is strong collaboration between government, educators and technology providers supported by good research and dedication to help every student.

Technology Is Creating a Brighter Tomorrow

Children in Malawi who use technology in learning are not only gaining skills in reading and math but also gaining confidence for their futures. This story demonstrates how well-equipped and well-supported marginalised children can excel both in school and elsewhere.

If Malawi was able to do this, we surely can too. Now is the time to envision new possibilities for every child, wherever they live.  

When hackers target a school district, they can reveal Social Security numbers, home addresses, and even disability and disciplinary records. Cybersecurity experts now warn that the Trump administration's budget cuts and personnel reductions, along with rule changes, are removing key defenses schools rely on.

"School cyberattacks are on the rise and when we most need federal assistance, it's being taken away," said Keith Krueger, chief executive officer of the Consortium for School Networking, a group of K-12 technology officials. 

The stakes are high. Schools are the number one target in ransomware attacks, and cyber thieves have even succeeded in taking entire school districts offline. The biggest such breach happened in December when cyberthieves stole personal data of students and teachers from PowerSchool, a firm that operates student information systems and houses report cards. The haul consisted of data on over 60 million students and nearly 10 million teachers. PowerSchool paid an unspecified ransom but the thieves didn't relent. Now, in a second wave of extortion, the same cyber attackers are extorting ransoms from school systems.  The federal government has been ramping up to assist schools, especially since a 2022 cyberattack on the Los Angeles Unified School District, the country's second-largest. Now this desperately needed help hangs in the balance.

Of greatest concern is a cybersecurity service called MS-ISAC, short for Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center.

It alerts over 5,700 schools across the nation who have enrolled in the service to malware and other dangers and suggests security patches. The technical service is available at no charge to schools but is funded by a yearly congressional appropriation of $27 million through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a department under the Department of Homeland Security. On March 6, the Trump administration provided notice of a $10 million reduction in funding as part of deeper budget and personnel reductions across CISA.

That was eventually bargained down to $8.3 million, but the service still spent well over half of its remaining $15.7 budget for the year. The non-profit organization that operates it, the Center for Internet Services, is draining its reserves to maintain it. But money for those services will be depleted in coming weeks, and it is not certain how the service will go on without charging user fees to schools. "Most districts lack the funds and resources to accomplish this themselves, so not being able to access our no cost services is a concern," said Kelly Lynch Wyland, a representative for the Center for Internet Services. Another issue is the successful dismantling of the Government Coordinating Council, which assists schools in responding to ransomware attacks and other attacks via policy guidance, such as responding to ransom demands, to whom to notify when an attack occurs and best practices for avoiding attacks.

This coordinating council was established just a year ago by the Department of Education and CISA.

It unites 13 nonprofit school groups serving superintendents, state education officials, technology officers and others. The council attended regularly following the PowerSchool data breach to exchange information. Now, during the second round of extortions, school officials have been unable to convene due to a modification of rules on open meetings. The group was initially exempt from meeting in public because it was deliberating threats to critical infrastructure. But the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security revived open meeting rules on certain advisory committees, such as this one. That makes it hard to talk openly about stopping criminal activity. Non-governmental organizations are attempting to revive the council, but it would be in a weakened state absent government involvement. "The FBI really comes in when there's been an incident to find out who did it, and they have advice on whether you should pay or not pay your ransom," said Krueger of the school network consortium.

A third issue is the removal in March of the education Department's Office of Educational Technology. This seven-member office addressed education technology policy — including cybersecurity. It published cybersecurity guidance to schools and conducted webinars and meetings to describe how schools could close the gaps and harden their defenses. It also hosted a biweekly meeting to discuss K-12 cybersecurity throughout the Education Department, including offices that work with students with disabilities and English learners.

Removing this office has hindered efforts to determine which security controls, including encryption or multi-factor authentication, should be included in educational software and student information systems.

Many teachers fear that without this federal coordination, student privacy is in jeopardy. "My greatest fear is all the information that's floating out in the cloud," said Steve Smith, a founder of the Student Data Privacy Consortium and the previous chief information officer of Cambridge Public Schools in Massachusetts. "Most likely 80 to 90 percent of student data is not on school-district managed services. It's being transmitted to ed tech providers and being stored on their data systems."

Three students of Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development (RGNIYD) operating under the Union Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports at Sriperumbudur claimed that the institution had indiscriminately rusticated them on the grounds of vandalizing hostel property with "content of an anti-national" character.

Aslam S, Sayeedh M A, and Nahal Ibnu Abullaise were in second and final year of Master of Social Work (MSW) at the institute and were to appear for their final exam on Monday.

But they were issued rustication letters on Sunday, debarred them from the institute and expelled them from hostel.

Institute officials could not be contacted for comment until late Monday evening. Calls and messages to institute Director Subrata Hazra and Disciplinary Committee Chairperson S Suresh remained unanswered.

Students accused the institute of having "planned" the incident.

Students targeted for stir against staff: Rusticated students

The students further added that this was done to prevent them from writing the exam. "We have been targeted by the administration for leading a recent protest demanding the resignation of a senior administrative staff against whom sexual harassment charges have been leveled," Nahal informed TNIE.

As per Nahal, on 22 May, some hostel administrators saw the words "Free Palestine" and "Jai Bhim" scrawled on the hostel wall, after which they inspected the hostel. Nahal argued, however, that the inspection was of only a few rooms on one floor.

While admitting that they have seen some beer bottles and colours of fabrics in their room, Nahal accused the authorities of immediately concluding and acting against the three and another four students in the room.

While the three were rusticated immediately, the remaining four were hostelished out but permitted to take the exam. The three letters issued to them stated that the institute authority viewed very seriously their participation in "gross misconduct on the hostel campus — namely, defacement of hostel property with material of an anti-national character".

Pointing out that the opportunity to put forth their case was provided to the students on Friday, the letters nevertheless stated taking into account the material evidence and overall situation "the Disciplinary Committee is of the considered view that there is sufficient ground to conclude his involvement in the defacement of hostel property with objectionable content".

The three, who absolutely refuted any role in the writing or placing of slogans on the hostel premises, stated in a joint statement that they are considering to approach the HC against the order. "Using words like "anti-national" is defamatory, and hugely harmful to our futures", the students stated.

"Throughout the inquiry, the disciplinary committee's members never asked me anything regarding the slogans. I don't know how 'Jai Bhim' and 'Free Palestine' are anti-national," said Nahal.

The students, in the statement, asserted that there was no evidence of violence, disruption, or any illegal behavior on their part that would warrant such extreme charges and maintained that the disciplinary process was "biased and unjust". The students insisted that re-examination be done for them.

India's engineering education system is producing millions of graduates but with a glaring employability gap where only 43 percent of them find employment. Conventional teaching practices based on old curricula and theory do not provide students with employable skills. The solution to this lies in behavioural sciencesmoving focus from what students should "know" to what they should become habitual about.

Promoting everyday coding practice, experiential learning, and redefining evaluations can fuel effective skill development. With technology transforming at lightning speed, colleges need to evolve, rethink policy, and design an environment where students are actively creating, experimenting, and inventing.

Arindam Mukherjee, Co-founder and CEO at NextLeap, points out that colleges need to reimagine education by prioritizing behavioural science and experiential skill-building

AICTE statistics for the years 2019-20 to 2022-23 suggest that there were 6.01 million students studying at the diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate levels of engineering courses but only 2.64 Million (~43 percent) were placed in employment.

SO, HOW DID WE

Ask any individual and you will be directed towards causes such as an outdated syllabus, a lack of an industry taxonomy of skills, no industry exposure for the instructors and so on.

However, if you delve deeper into the matter, the cause could also be an understanding of the science of behaviour.

Learning isn't the product of teaching, but rather the product of the learner's activity. That implies that for a learning experience to be effective, it must have the ability to lead to some desired behaviours among students. A recent paper by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, detailed which interventions do (and don't) work in changing behaviour.

What they discovered is that theoretical knowledge sharing in class, i.e., knowledge-based interventions, has a very small effect on changing behaviors. However, behavior skills training and habit formation, i.e., providing highly selected learning materials and the opportunity to practice them, have the greatest impact in terms of changing behaviors.

So, how do we change our mindset to go from "what should the student KNOW" to "what is the habit we want our students to develop"? The question we need to be asking ourselves isn't "How do we make sure our students know about arrays" - it is "How do we make sure our students code for an hour a day".

This will make the colleges rethink all the parameters of the educational system. Do the professors teach the material or serve as a guide or mentor? Do the tests come in the form of a quiz/test or a demo day when students share their work? How do we create an environment where the students "want" to learn? Solutions to these questions could remake how colleges are run nowadays.

HOW DO WE ARRIVE AT THIS NEEDED STATE?

The response once more lies in behavioural science. The research paper also cites the fact that interventions at the structural and policy levels are more effective in bringing about changes in behaviour. There must be a rethink on the education policy side regarding the efficacy of college education and the transformations needed.

This is all the more critical in the modern age, since the half-life of technology skills is diminishing day by day and unless there is a total rethink on collegiate education, academia can never keep pace with the changing events in the world of technology.

For India to accrue gains from its demographic dividend, it needs a skilled workforce and the colleges have a huge responsibility to create a skilled talent economy. The question is, is the Indian college system prepared?

It is an era of the internet, with cybercriminals growing increasingly bold by the day. Even top tech guns are not immune. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Paytm's founder and CEO, recently shared a bizarre and concerning scam attempt where a fraudster impersonated. well, him!.

Moving on to social media, Sharma explained that he had been approached on WhatsApp by someone claiming to be him. Yes, the cheat attempted to cheat Vijay Shekhar Sharma because Vijay Shekhar Sharma. The impersonator requested confidential company data, such as access to funds and the phone number of the finance head of the company. And as if all that was not bold enough, the SMS scammer also sent a suspicious .exe file pretending to be a GST document — an obvious attempt to slip malware into the system.

Fortunately, Sharma was not fooled. Sharing a screenshot of the message, he took the opportunity to use it as a lesson. "Now frauds are being conducted in my name, with my picture. Be careful," he warned his followers.

The timing of the post could not have been more opportune. It came at the heels of a government announcement on a new cyber-tool, the Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI), an initiative proactively aimed at detecting and deterring online financial frauds. The tool is poised to help institutions and individuals detect risk indicators and deter fraudulent activity.

The incident is a bitter reminder that none is too high-profile to be victimized and that cyber scams are not only growing in size but also in creativity. CEOs to common users, being on one's guard and verifying sources — especially when it comes to digital communication and foreign attachments — is more crucial than ever before. 

As Sharma states, "Digital India deserves digital safety."

AI can help you learn quickly but actual understanding comes out of thinking, making efforts, and personal experience. AI prompting is potent. It speeds up work, opens up ideas, and integrates information. But in the absence of context, curation, and personal control, it makes you achingly mundane. In order to move beyond AI, concentrate on what AI cannot do and engage in the unpromotable in learning.

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the education sector at a very fast pace, there are warnings against over-reliance on technology and calling for a more holistic model of learning development.

A recent survey states that while AI can be excellent for grading, feedback, and learning to students' individual needs, it is incomplete in incorporating the human factor and critical thinking skills necessary to achieve a well-rounded education.

"A.I can be harnessed positively in education, but teachers need to be mindful of creating skills which are distinctly human, like creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving," the education expert said.

To this, teachers are being encouraged to prioritize emotional intelligence, social skills, and character development alongside academic achievement.

Some of the most important strategies for transcending A.I in education are:

• Fostering innovation and creativity among students
• Developing problem-solving and critical thinking skills
• Emphasizing social skills and emotional intelligence
• Prioritizing the education of character and values
• By embracing a more balanced model of learning, teachers can equip students to succeed in an increasingly dynamic world and prepare them for the triumphs of an AI-powered future.