- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - Hier 06:43

The evolution of education

The role of education should not be underestimated as it is more than just teaching and learning – it plays an essential part in national development. One, however, cannot deny the obvious – education has changed significantly. Education is the transmission of knowledge and values from a particular culture; its origins can be epitomised as informal because learning predominantly took place through storytelling, practical experiences, observations and environmental classrooms in primitive nations. As the years progressed and cultures developed, education became modernised with schools and universities and different types of educational topics. This absorption in a formal atmosphere allowed learners to become more socialised and cultured. As the organisation that took on the gigantic task of managing the services sector, the TTCSI is very much aware of these realities and is absolutely entrusted to the education sector. As an education service provider, Majic Touch Events & Communications Services, through its managing director, Wendy Campbell-Paul, realises that education has many benefits. The skills and knowledge acquired from education are crucial for TT’s economy because they enhance a culture’s workforce, contribute to a higher GDP, reduce poverty and inequality and foster innovation and entrepreneurship. Education helps learners become critical thinkers – adaptive and competitive. Another important asset is education’s reach into other sectors and its dependency on them. For instance, Majic Touch realises how the education and events sectors are intimately interlinked and can help each other. Campbell-Paul has directly seen how events benefit education by providing rational and enriching learning experiences to learners through seminars, workshops, conferences and community-related activities that are focused on educational topics. Furthermore, she believes the events industry can promote the tourism sector and encourage learners to pursue careers in event-related fields, thereby creating a more competent and expert workforce. [caption id="attachment_1174739" align="alignnone" width="840"] Wendy Campbell-Paul, managing director of Majic Touch Events & Communications Services. -[/caption] Campbell-Paul knows this too well as several of her former public relations students, who were exposed to an events component in their study programme, are holding key communications jobs in both the private and public sectors. Communication jobs require knowledge about events for planning press conferences and product launches, to name a few. On the flip side, from her experiences, Campbell-Paul is certain the education sector can assist the events sector by developing an events curriculum that touches on various important aspects of events – offering practical learning experiences and helping professionals stay abreast of the latest trends and technologies. Campbell-Paul remembers her primary and secondary school teachers as having very different teaching styles from present-day educators. She recalls her primary school teachers like Thora Best and George Martin, and secondary school teachers like Martin Bernard, as being very strict, sincere, professional and passionate – her education then was more of a scholarly nature, hard-nosed and durable. Also, she saw her teachers in the flesh. Today, however, with the dawn of technology, education has become very modernised and challenging for educators. A lecturer and corporate trainer for the last 17 years, Campbell-Paul sees the distinctions in education via the environment, teaching methods, technological integration, assessments and communication between educators and students. While she savours the digital learning, Campbell-Paul agrees that all stakeholders should adapt to the changes in education. She, however, urges all interested parties to ensure those changes do not hamper the quality of education and students’ well-being. She notes that while some educators reveal themselves in the digital classrooms, many learners are hiding behind letters and numbers in circles, and if there are actual faces in those circles, for the most part, those faces do not belong to the learners. Additionally, from a social standpoint, she reminisced on the days when children were seen playing in their yards and meeting new people. Today, however, in many instances, the younger generation has limited itself to different forms of digital devices. This, she opines, has led some children to become very introverted.' [caption id="attachment_1174740" align="alignnone" width="1024"] -[/caption] Notwithstanding the challenges with the modernisation of the education sector, Campbell-Paul firmly believes that educators must be in tune with their learners by developing teaching philosophies, modifying their teaching styles and strategies to meet the changing learner demographics and the now commonplace digital learning, which was boosted by the covid19 pandemic. To this end, she recommends that educators blend the traditional and online teaching, or high-tech and low-tech formats to produce creative instructional strategies which include expeditionary, personalised, game-based, inquiry-based, differentiated and direct learning. Moreover, with the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) in education, she is appealing to educators to carefully weigh the pros and cons of this field of computer science and technology. In essence, like events, Campbell-Paul is very enthusiastic about imparting knowledge. It is for this reason that she, together with Majic Touch Events & Communications Services, will continue to make the required variations to meet the drastic changes in education with a view to expanding her education services further. As an incredibly pleased member of the TTCSI, Campbell-Paul is encouraging other stakeholders to understand the key role education plays in varying cultures’ economies and the reach it has in other sectors. She is urging those stakeholders to partner with the TTCSI to improve the quality of the education services sector because education is the one sector that will open doors to so many sectors for those who are interested.   The post The evolution of education appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.