Publishing, edtech and the future…

Covid-19 has changed the way we live. One of the major impacts has been on the education of our children. With schools and colleges shut, e-learning became the new norm. Though it was not easy for all schools to embrace the digital technologies, they have fairly done a commendable job of bringing learning at the click of the mouse.

Edtech companies have come up with new solutions to meet the changing needs of the students and teachers. Teacher training has been an important part of their offerings as not all teachers were competent enough to brace the new challenges. It is still an ongoing task of training teachers to the new normal in education.

Publishers have also been hit badly due to Covid. Since classes were held online, they were not able to meet their sales targets. But, they have been proactive in their approach and have come up with digital offerings to meet the current situation. Publishers have the best of the content and it is just the content delivery that has changed.

Moreover, once the situation gets normal, children will be back in school and the offline and online mode of learning will be blended together to give children the best possible educational content.

In this special issue of All About Book Publishing, we bring forward the views of an educationist, well-established publishers and edtech companies to know how they feel about the future of education.

Sanjay Kumar Mallick, an educationist says, “The pandemic has given the opportunities for the teaching fraternity to learn the new technologies which can be used effectively in imparting knowledge and skills to the students. Now the blended mode of teaching and learning is going to stay in our society. This is going to help to reduce the cost of education, time-saving and continuation of education even during political bandhs, and other disturbance which forces school to close. Teachers are now more competent for the future’s tech lead teaching and learning.”

Similar views were echoed by Atiya Zaidi, Publisher, Ratna Sagar, “Content is the king and books are here to stay. Only the medium will change, depending on whatever is easier and convenient to spend on; it could be online or offline or combination of both.”

Edtech companies are now taking another step forward by offering value-based education online. As Pritesh Chothani, Co-founder of HiVoco Education and Learning, shares, “Like in main-stream education, technology can play a big part in value based-learning curriculum.”

Life skills are important and Manish Aggarwal, Publisher, Pitambar Publishing Company and Rising Sun Publishing Company says that, “The need in the world is to make the citizens good human beings having necessary life skills. For this, not only content based knowledge is essential, but also competency based learning with a motive to infuse problem solving, creative and communication skills.”

The future of education seems to be even brighter, with immense opportunities for our publishers and edtech companies. Blended learning will change the face of the education and ensure that our future citizens are not just educated, but are also skilled and have high values.

-Varsha Verma