Smart Education Curriculum: Bringing the Extra-educational Means through which technology trends into the Classroom.

Smart Education in South Korea. Image credit to Advance Technology Korea

I can't remember who I was discussing with some time ago but one thing I got from the conversation was this in my own paraphrase: people born in this technology age cannot do without or (get to the very highest level in harnessing their full potentials) without technology, be it in their jobs, startup companies and, which is the focus if this piece, education.

Many developed and developing countries' governments and private corporations are making efforts in bringing technology into the school setting-by providing tablet computers stuffed with books and 3-D interactive materials for the primary and secondary school students; the higher institutions are not left out of this. And this has greatly helped the students to develop their potentials in their school works and projects.

While these successes are being recorded, I still believe there are much more rooms for great improvements. Yes tablet computers with all the materials have been provided (they are helping because we use our PCs and ipads to play games, watch movies and listen to music; and hence there is a very high tendency we'll always study and work on our school projects using them). However, having incorporated the tools of technology into our education (though here in Nigeria we still have a long way to go), we're neglecting the means through which technology is permeating its way into the favorites and choices of the everyday life of young people (the main segment of the society fully immersed in the educational institution).

But before I hit my target, I give an illustration. Here in Nigeria last year the universities' lecturers embarked on a 6-month long strike demanding as the major priority improved funding of the nation's universities which are owned by the government. After so many negotiations, the lecturers' body and the federal government of Nigeria signed an agreement in which the government endorsed to pump in #220 billion ($1.3 billion) annually for the next 5 years into the universities for massive infrastructural development and other upgradings. While I hailed this achievement, I discovered another problem (wahala in the Nigerian pidgin English): the hardware (the infrastructure of our universities) of the problem is being addressed, but nobody is talking about the software (the lecturers-I mean the way these lectures deliver their lectures to students).

In most Nigerian tertiary institutions, some lecturers, I'm sorry to say, are luddites (ludite from Ned Lud one of the workers who led a protest against the industrial revolution in factories in the early 19th century when machines were taking over the works done manually by workers) and old fashioned in even the knowledge base of their specialty: imagine a lecturer detesting the use of electronic boards and projectors in teaching students; students using their phones and tablet computers to read, reminding them that in their own days they carried their big books to the libraries and read them from cover to cover. Another set of lecturers would teach students with notes they made in the 1980s and 90s and expect them to give them back in exam exactly what they taught them: if any student dared including new stuffs and updates as regards the particular course such a student might fail the course. And so this is the wahala I saw after the strike issue. 

Smart Education: personalizing teaching to student needs. Image credit to Smarttech

The world is changing and the knowledge database of each discipline is expanding at an incredibly exponential rate because of the rapid advances in science and technology. And for the disciples of each of these areas of knowledge to keep up, the tools of technology and the various means through which these tools are used (especially in the extra-school setting) are indispensable and must be incorporated into the academic learning setting.

Efforts are already being made in this direction (educational games and so on). Another strong extra-school means through which tech tools are voraciously being used is the social media-Facebook, Twitter and so on. This can be incorporated into the educational curriculum (but how many teachers and lecturers will agree to this at least in my country, Nigeria?.....That's the problem). However, some teachers, not in Nigeria unfortunately, are already experimenting this idea. According to a report on the New York Times, some high school teachers in Iowa, US are already experimenting with incorporating social media into classroom teaching and discussion in which students use Twitter to contribute to discussions on various topics in class, and some of them have recorded increased participation of their students in such discussions because social media (in this case Twitter) which appeals to them has been infused into what otherwise was a boring topic to them. The report also highlights some universities which have developed their own on-campus social media forums for academic discussions.

Though there are many critics of this approach, and it is understandable as there are tendencies of distraction, but it is still being experimented on and can be improved on. One such way is to configure such forums to monitor and indicate when a student has strayed off the subject of discussion ONLY DURING THE CLASSROOM DISCUSSION; it will possibly get better with time. And other social media like Facebook can be incorporated by schools and universities; and universities can develop their own online discussion forums linked to Facebook, Twitter and other popular social networks to be used as part of some classroom teaching and discussion.

I hope universities here in Nigeria can embrace this modality as one of its teaching methods. There are signs they will with time; one sign, though it is still at the student level, is the social education network Acada360 co-founded by Mr. Godswill Oyor, a Law graduate of my school, the University of Ibadan. Acada360, I will say is still evolving, is where students in Nigerian universities can upload their notes taken by them in class and get rewards when other students download them. I got to know about this site today on Instagram. Social media technology has come to stay and rapidly advance and our school curriculum must capitalize on its positive prospects.