Technology to make sure children do what they are good at, not just what’s good for them

When it comes to deciding the future of their children, what most Indian parents think about is that the career should be good for their kids, in spite of thinking what their kids are good at. More often than not, this results in children being forced to do something they are not good at, leaving behind the chances of the bright future that they could have had, had they known their talent and skills and chosen a career accordingly. What they are in turn left with is a mediocre professional life, leading to a depressed personal life.

However, chances of your kid being stuck in a mediocre life that they chose for themselves (or you chose for them) could be less. The results and performance of your children while they are in school say a lot about their skills, and you can use technology to judge and analyse what works best for your children.

There exist a number of technology platforms which help improve outcomes for students, institutions and administrators, done by tracking their performance and interests over the years.

Rohini Ahluwalia, chairperson of Delhi-based Ahlcon International School told ET that her school uses an education e-governance platform called M-Star to capture the performances of students and teachers on a daily basis, taking into account several parameters like attendance, participation in activities, report cards and results.

The data thus obtained is crunched and analysed so that it can present actual outcomes, which can be accordingly acted upon. For example, they can identify students who don’t take part in extra-curricular activities and ask them the reason behind it, while also trying to motivate them. Teacher training programs can also be introduced depending on students’ evaluation for teachers.

This leads to the parents, counsellors and administrators having the resources to know how a child performed throughout school, using which they can decide what would be the best career option or stream for a 10^th or 12^th standard pupil.

M-Star, developed by MGRM, a New York-based technology service player, had 10,000 researchers working for around two decades to be developed; including studying about one lakh institutions worldwide to know their education systems.

Partha Mohanty, technology head, MGRM, told ET that data from M-Star can help policy makers and administrators, while also help in opening new colleges and finding out popular streams so that there is no dearth of seats for deserving candidates.

An increasing number of Indian schools are now using such systems, including government-backed Kendriya Vidyalayas.

There also exists a platform from the tech-giant Microsoft, called Edu-Cloud, which is a cloud-based computing solution that aims to have classrooms that don’t use printed books, but in place uses digitized content, paperless back office, a digital library and so on. This platform has attracted around 500 institutions over the last year, having been introduced in 50 institutions.

Using these platforms, institutions can assess individual performance of children, teachers and their own self using a few clicks, thereby improving making sure that along with proper education, other important parameters are also kept in mind while shaping the country’s future.

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