“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin
it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
- Goethe
I like to start with quotes. Not sure if this practice stems
from stylistic dependence or from a predisposition towards certain beliefs, but
I've been meaning to start a blog for a while now. However, a certain Mr.
Newton played a significant role in ensuring the delay in my efforts. According to his first law of motion, I needed an unbalanced force to act on me
in order to overcome my inertia of starting a blog. Well Mr. Newton, I’d like
to first thank you for succeeding with the inertia bit, but also tell you that the
principle underlying your first law suggests that I shall continue to blog
unless an unbalanced force acts on me.
Alright, so that’s enough said from an engineering mind, moving
on to the reason for starting this blog. A couple of months back, I received a call from my dad at 5 am. A bit surprised, I picked up the phone. Without
exchanging any pleasantries, he got down to the issue plaguing his mind. ‘Son,
I need to send a report to the officials, and I am struggling with the computer
you gave me. Can you help?’ Still a little groggy, I mumbled, ‘what report dad?
It’s 5 am. How on earth do you expect me to tell you something at this hour?’
He then explained that this was a mission critical report and that I needed to
find a way now. I quickly deciphered that he needed help in preparing a report
on MS Excel, as he had never used that application before. At this point, I was
sure of two things. First, I couldn’t teach him online or through the phone, as
I didn’t have the time nor some of the learning tools, and explaining him how
to download those tools would be another pain point. Second, I needed to
quickly find an effective way. With the promise of replying in a couple of
hours, I set out to discover what is to become the basis of this blog – The Impact of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) on Education. In the coming few weeks, I invite
you to join me on this journey where I hope to uncover some of the best
practices in technology (disruptive and non-disruptive) that are shaping the
future of learning. The aim is to find smarter ways of learning, so that people
like my dad, or for that matter even us, can use technology to practically
learn anything in a fast and effective manner with minimal risks and costs. If
my dad can have the desire to learn at the ripe age of 67, so can all of us.
After all, we’re all lifelong learners. Aren’t we?
