5. Personalized & Ubiquitous Learning: Personalized Learning technology allows us to amp up instruction for those who find school most difficult, effectively supports “ the middle”, & challenge & enrich the “RHS of the Bell Curve”. This is believed to be achieved via use of better technology to understand a student’s prior base. Further Ubiquitous Learning basically emphasizes the use of cheap wireless services to provide information anywhere-anytime with the help of Virtual Classrooms & virtual mentors.
Critics believe that shift to more individualised learning will result in instability to adapt socially. Further, many teachers from conservative/traditional sciences, may find it hard to adapt even when technology & other tools are available.
6. Game-Based Learning: Game-Based-Learning has found consideration in the recent years owing to the realization by the researchers that it is helpful in Cognitive Development. With focus on active player participation, built-in incentives & interaction suggest that educational games attract the interest & attention of learners. Developers and researchers are working in every area of game-based learning, including games that are goal-oriented; social game environments; non-digital games that are easy to construct and play; games developed expressly for education; and commercial games that lend themselves to refining team and group skills.
Gaming is useful but much of achievement would depend on types of games used. Further, concept of game-education is new to developing countries like India & will take its own time to evolve as a full-fledged learning technology.
7. Gesture-Based Computing: Gesture Based Devices are a commonplace nowadays. Millions of Mobile users use gestures like Tapping & Swiping to interact with the mobile screen. Some devices react to shaking, rotating, tilting, or moving the device in space. Over the past few years, gaming systems have increasingly incorporated new gesture-based technology. Xbox Kinect and Nintendo Wii, for example, continue to explore the potential of human movement in gaming. Gesture-based computing is changing the ways that we interact with computers, both physically and mechanically. The technology has greater potential borders apart from gaming. Software that relies not on specific languages, but on natural human movements common to all cultures has a compelling utility in countries such as India, which has 30 native languages with more than a million speakers.
It definitely assists the differently abled or those with special needs, yet its full potential is yet to be realized.
8. Teacher Generated Open Content: This technology focuses on empowering teachers and networks of teachers to both identify and create the learning resources that they find most effective in the classroom. Teachers can edit, add to, or otherwise customize material for their own purposes, using various online tools so that their students receive a tailored copy that exactly suits the style and pace of the course. These resources in many cases complement the official textbook and may, in the years to come, supplant the textbook as the primary learning source for students. Such activities often challenge traditional notions of intellectual property and copyright.
The drawback to this technology is that not all teachers may adopt the methodology which would result in loss of a standardized curriculum.
