Bridging the Education Divide Using Social Technologies by Somprakash Bandyopadhyay & Arina Bardhan & Priyadarshini Dey & Sneha Bhattacharyya

Author:Somprakash Bandyopadhyay & Arina Bardhan & Priyadarshini Dey & Sneha Bhattacharyya
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789813367388
Publisher: Springer Singapore

5.4 Conclusion

The chapter highlights in detail the conceptual and operational dimensions of social technology. The collaborative spirit with which social technology is embedded has enabled digital technologies to transcend from providing instructional digital content to establishing purposive digital connections among diverse social agents. This attribute has made application of social technology a crucial step in the field of education. The collaborative spirit of social technology has the ability to transform education from teacher-centric, centralized and individualistic to learner-centric, decentralized, collaborative and connection driven. This marks the importance of social technologies in facilitating education through the creation of teaching-learning communities. However, it needs to be asked at this juncture, that while application of social technology in the field of education is crucial in making education process connection driven, is it sufficient in mitigating extant education divide with the help of established connections.

It is indeed true that application of social technology in the field of education leads to the creation of teaching-learning community, integrated with the virtue of purposive collaborations. The importance of such community formation rests in its ability to co-construct knowledge by establishing purposive collaborations between teachers, learners, and other agents involved in the process of educational dissemination. However, while application of social technology is mandatory in the process of effective community formation in the field of education, it is not sufficient in sustaining purposive interactions among diverse agents. Application of social technology although has the prospect of connecting physically scattered people, it cannot ascertain who will be part of the community, how the community will be cultivated and who will moderate the collaborations taking place in the community. Therefore, in order to cultivate an effective teaching-learning community, we need to create an integrated platform, which will be infused with the collaborative potential of social technology. Making platform organization as its premise, this integrated platform will create the path for a crowd-based socio-economic arrangement, where different active agents can facilitate transaction of knowledge and other resources anytime-anywhere, using digital platforms, to fulfill different goals. This integrated platform will deploy the potential of social technology in establishing purposive collaborations among different agents involved in the education process, moderate their knowledge exchange, thereby helping in cultivating an effective teaching-learning community.

It needs to be iterated at this juncture that while creation of an integrated platform can ensure effective community formation between different agents involved in the education process, such a creation does not automatically translate into being conducive in eradicating extant education divide. Creation of an integrated platform can lead to community formation based on common interest or shared knowledge acquisition quest, but it is not sufficient in democratic distribution of knowledge. For example, such a platform can lead to the formation of a subject-oriented community, like a physics forum, but it cannot ensure participation of the marginalized students in the said community. This highlights that while creation of an integrated platform is crucial for effective community formation, it can only make a desired impact in mitigating education divide if the platform is created by adequately negotiating with the external influencers of an education ecosystem.

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