With Rise of Technology, A Need to Rethink Education in Pakistan

Our children are the latest model of human being. Looking at the world of children is not looking backward at our own past, it’s looking ahead. They are our evolutionary future.- Rushkoff

21^st century teaching carries with it a complicated mix of challenges and opportunities. The growing power of technology-based tools and resources has created an intense demand for building a student’s 21^st century skills. Given this scenario, the education community is focusing its capability to address these challenges successfully.

Educational institutions can provide a supportive productive environment for students to learn about information technology. Information technology holds great potential for transforming our thinking and learning. It allows students to create and test knowledge claims, extend the communications network, provide immediate access to information and expedite new forms of creative expressions.

The Classroom and the World Wide Web

Learning has taken a different evolutionary course in and out of colleges and universities. Now schools tend to support technologies for learning as the modes of learning have changed dramatically. Worldwide schools have changed mostly around the edges but unfortunately in Pakistan, the institutions of learning have changed far more slowly. Technological innovation is now changing the very way that universities and colleges teach and students learn.

They equip graduates to compete in today’s knowledge economy. Now the universities are embracing the transformational benefits such as distance education, sophisticated learning-management systems, the opportunity to collaborate with researchers from around the world and empowering the young generation by arming them with technical knowledge.

Global Competition and the workforce

Universities are facing a new challenge in today’s technology-enabled knowledge economy. It’s not enough to equip students with just the basic education that is required in their field. The challenge is to provide the students with skills and knowledge that is required to leverage technology effectively in the workplace, to enable them to compete successfully in the today’s global market and also to become independent.

These fresh graduates are full of strength, they are bombarded with information from multiple sources and they seem adept at processing multiple information streams. Many researchers have proved that by acquiring latest technological skills, graduates can find new ways of doing business. The introduction of technological skills at an early age can make the students more open to collaboration and have enormous facility of multi-tasking.

On the other hand, organizations now demand that their employers are well equipped with latest technological equipment and tools before joining. Students, who acquire this knowledge during their college and university span, are more likely to be preferred by such organizations.

Students should be equipped with skills for work and life that are relevant in a globalized and highly technology focused 21st century society

The world in which our children live is significantly different from that of yesterday. Internet has almost become available to every person and now our youngsters have at their fingertips a virtual world. It is necessary that we acknowledge that yesterday’s education is not sufficient for today’s learner. In order to fully prepare students to thrive in the digital age, we must equip them with knowledge and skills that work within the context of today’s technological environment.

The current and future health of our economy depends directly on how broadly and deeply our nation reaches a new level of literacy. The explosive technological growth in every aspect of society offers us a unique opportunity to engage our youngsters in economic and civic life. To take advantage of the technological developments, we must continually equip our college and university students with the latest technologies and skills.

Integrating technology into educational institutions has proven to be slow and complex but it can be successfully incorporated if the policy makers and planners focus on these few steps:

1. Organizational support: Support of college and university structure to specific use of technology
2. Teacher attitudes and expectations: they must be confident in technology and their technology skills

Currently there is a need for a change in our children’s education due to technological necessities therefore policy makers must focus on 21^st century skills and highlight the relationship of those skills with conventional educational standards.