Mubina Gillani, CEO, Empowered Training Centre
If you can imagine it, you can create it.
The world as we know it is changing rapidly as technology, tools and human behavior in cyberspace integrates with that of the physical world. The boundary between these two worlds has blurred and will quickly disappear.
Since Netscape brought the Internet to the masses in 1995, various sources state that there are now over 1.5 billion Internet users globally. This has resulted in a fundamental change in human behavior as it has enabled a frontierless global community. Distrust of technology by expert educators is being replaced by great interest resulting in a greater use of highly interactive tools over the web.
Technologies and tools are becoming much more cost effective as greater use and demand by the masses is driving down the cost. Enterprise level technologies are now available to small schools, to parents for home schooling, and to individual learners. Technical interfaces are becoming more sophisticated and ‘intelligent’ in their applications allowing subject matter experts to trust these applications and focus their expertise on achieving higher impact.
For example, within the education industry, a fundamental change is taking place in the role of the educator. The educator is evolving from being a primary conveyor of concepts to that of a coach and mentor, one whose focus is on using diagnostic tools to identify and fill gaps in an individual’s level of knowledge while concepts are deployed in an interactive manner through technology. The educator’s role is to ensure a solid roadmap for individual learners while facilitating the deployment of concepts to a much larger group of dispersed learners in a self-paced manner through technologies over the Internet.
The future is here with the reach of the educator widening; no longer does a learner have to come to a common physical place at a specific time. They can now participate via devices (desktops, laptops, or cell phones) at a time that is convenient to them. This has empowered learners to use their time in the best way possible. An example is a potential high school dropout who due to economic circumstances has to work during normal school hours. This is a reality for many families that face poverty or are recent immigrants. Now, there is no need for these students to drop out. They can study and learn at a different pace from other students, using a different time during the day that is available to them. There are many other situations that used to prevent access to excellent education, including geographic distances and health situations. This no longer has to be the case.
This rapid change in the role of educators as a result of the adoption of the ‘right’ technology will speed up over the next few years and will become the norm. This growth will be further facilitated by the effective application of the $39 billion in President Obama’s stimulus plan targeted for Education Technology.
We anticipate our MILES® technology to be one such technology that will enable this change, a technology that is sophisticated, powerful, and affordable. MILES® is a bridge to knowledge that fulfills a natural need for an educational institution. The curriculum deployed through MILES® can be individualized and deployed based on the profile of the student. Algorithms within the deployment methodology measure students’ participation and progress allowing instructors to use their time more effectively to coach to the gaps of individual students ensuring a deeper understanding of the subject being taught.
There is great opportunity at this time for school districts and universities to demonstrate the power of collaboration and reduce their costs exponentially by using education technologies such as MILES® that are developed using Software as a Service architecture and business model. This is the time when educational institutions can move from independently licensing technology to sharing a multi-tenant platform along with common curriculum while still retaining the ability to have secure independent connections as well as differentiate on niche education.
