Smart classes are a norm now and there is nothing left to boast about them either. They came in the early years of the last decade and are still making inroads into the 1.5 million schools operating in India.
I am glad, I was out of school by then when they struck, as I am not in favor of them invading the blackboards. Reason being simple.
Why are they called smart classes in the first place- just because they are run on computer and have every content on digital media… So how does it make them smart.. Aren’t they the new version of idiot box , this time installed in classroom.
They completely kill the objective of teaching the kid… b’coz its one side interaction… earlier it as just the teacher yapping away all the information she had, now its the so called smart board that does the yapping of the content….
They are worse than the teachers b’coz here the content which is playing does your part of thinking too by placing the questions and then giving the answers…
- If the video which is playing for three to five mins explains the concept then why does the teacher need 40 mins for the class…
- Secondly, if video ends up asking all the questions which the teacher is supposed to ask during that 40 mins class then why is she needed in the class itself…
- Lastly, the answers which are to be given by the students to the questions that are asked by the teacher or in the video, have to be given by the video or the content in the smart class then,
I think then we can completely abolish schools and just keep the exams for the children to come and clear the various levels of learning…
I think then we can completely abolish schools and just keep the exams for the children to come and clear the various levels of learning…(well that too can happen.. and I suppose will eventually happen, with the augment of technology in every sphere of our lives, will write about this idea in another blog ) but until it happens, we need to find a way where we can use smart classes and teachers in a symbiotic role… smart classes should not make us dumb but help the student understand the concept with the visual aid available to them.
- A smart content should provoke questions in the mind of the student and not blurt out information directly.
- It should be an aid to the teacher and not make the teacher student classroom interaction redundant.
If we do not resolve the problem highlighted then I suppose our goal of developing Higher Order Thinking Skills or following any modern pedagogic method which talks about developing HOTS will fail miserably in achieving its goal.
Originally posted in http://explearningvianature.blogspot.in/2017/07/why-i-feel-smart-classes-are-not-that.html by Surekha Waldia
No one can be smarter than a teacher if she is smart . It’s always the man behind the machine ,be it the maker or the user . You make a smart class thinking it will make teaching easier , profecient , convenient and resourceful . But you forgot the user who is yet not smart enough to use the smart board in the smart class . In fact students are smarter than the teacher as they are more tech savvy . So you have to invest in making the teacher smart enough to use the smart board to its full potential else it will be reduced to a tool to keep the children engaged by the various features built in it . It may sound a bit rude but it’s the reality of the day in India . We are in a catch 22 situation .