Image Source

For nearly a century, we have been channeling a significant portion of our resources -time, money and materials into education. More so after the two World Wars. The real impetus for this comes from the understanding that knowledge enhances the creative energies of our younger generation. And when the creativity finds expression in the form of discoveries, solutions to problems, innovations, art, etc., people are less likely to go to war and destroy each other.

However, our misfortune has been that scarcity of resources and hasty political decisions led to faulty educational policies and the drive for education went amiss. But, a new opportunity has come up. The rapid strides in the field of mobile application development have opened a new dimension to learning, in the form of E-learning Apps. Nearly, 70% of the global population will be coming online through the mobile platform by 2020. Thus, the future of education is in E-Learning mobile applications.

E-Learning apps have been capturing the minds of parents and student communities for some time now. It was only natural after the shift from the traditional classroom education to smart-classes in the past decade. There are already many applications like Skill Pill, Moodle Mobile, LinkedIn Learning, etc., that offer quality content and learning modules to students. But  when it comes to learning strategy, many of them are still running on the old- school principle that “the fact is power.” And if we do not reinvent this past approach, then we may miss another golden opportunity to harness human capability for the well being of all.

The novel idea is to include the treasure of meditative techniques into these applications. Some individual applications do exist, but parents and students are less aware of their role in the child’s holistic development. Integrating them with E-Learning apps will give it recognition among not only parents but also the intangible benefits of these techniques to students. It will also bring down the prejudice and myths that surround the digital methods of learning.

Here are some innovative ways to incorporate these techniques into e-Learning applications :

• The Analogue Clock Tool – Everybody advises children to concentrate. Some E-Learning apps even give big words and quotes about concentration. But nobody tells them how to focus? An E-Learning app using this tool can emulate it with a screen in which an analogue clock with the second’s needle is ticking. The device will guide the student to focus themselves on the second’s needle and say “I am here.” The exercise will be carried out for one minute. The centering of awareness will be registered through a feedback questionnaire and then based on it another round may or may not be suggested. It will help students focus on the activity they do.

• The Assisted Breath Watching – Observing the breath is an ancient Indian technique to increase memory and mindfulness. The tool in the E-Learning app can guide the student with voice support. The audio assistant should first, ask the student to relax and cease all activity. Then ask about an event that is ever-continuing from birth till death. After giving time to the student, answer the question – it is breath. Then ask the student to close their eyes and move with the breath. The voice assistant should give ample pause and should give out the suggestions like – “be with your breathe completely”, “are you with your breathe or have you wandered into thoughts?” etc. A time span of 5 minutes will show instant results.

• Stress Bursting Gibberish – It is a very compelling game to relieve stress in children. The E-Learning app incorporating this tool can design it with the Google API speech recognizer tool. The game involves the mechanism of speaking out some random gibberish, then the student is asked to reply un gibberish and then the game continuous, and gibberish becomes longer and longer. Finally, the game ends with student dancing, jumping or doing physical activity while speaking gibberish. It frees up the welled up emotional and mental stress and makes students more calm and energetic.
  
  The above three are only a few from a precious treasure of techniques. While integrating them into the E-Learning application, an additional tool with a questionnaire that identifies that student is stressed, or is finding it difficult to concentrate is needed. The poor performance in the examination or the absence of students from apps can be used as criteria to initiate the questionnaire to check distress. The dashboard of the app can emulate that in performance management software in organizations. Such a screen will encourage students to participate and use apps. A parental panel will also help track the student’s comprehensive development with parameters of intelligence and emotions given equal weight.

The E-Learning apps can bring education to every home, even in the remotest parts of the world. The meditative tools integrated into the app can contribute to the all-round development of the students. It will make learning more exciting and productive.