Learning In a Flat World

You may be excused if you want to take this with a spoonful of salt, or think of this as sci-fi. But I would rather dream on and take a peek into the future. Some reports put the 5G launch to 2020, but most of us in India will be happy with a 4G by then. I don't intend to argue on when this will happen, but I would definitely want to foresee what will happen to education when it happens. Before that, let's get some 5G basics right: Source: CNET.com (http://www.cnet.com/news/how-5g-will-push-a-supercharged-network-to-your-phone-home-and-car/) For a full HD movie of 8 GB size, 3G speed should take a few hours (the above illustration shows much more!), 4G speed should take 6 minutes, but a 5G speed should take a mere 3-6 seconds!  Even more importantly, latency in 5G should come down to 1 millisecond from 50 milliseconds in 4G. What it implies is that the devices will be able to interact with each other much quicker. So, the response from a remote learner's iPad can r

You might have seen the Hindi movie, Drishyam , or its original Malayalam version  by the same name. Apart from the fact that the movie has a very terse narrative and direction, one dialogue struck me the most. The female lead in the Hindi version, played superbly by Tabu, wonders how the "fourth-grade fail" cable businessman (played by Ajay Devgn) could be so "smart"! And then she makes a very pertinent observation after a colleague remarks on Ajay Devgn's penchant for watching movies. She simply says that the cinema angle is important in this context. Theatrics and Tabu's attribution to her industry aside, can cinema actually educate an illiterate? It looks like an over-simplistic solution to India's education woes. But does it deserve any merit? I would hazard a "Yes" for that answer, though the kind of education that I am talking about is quite unlike what is taught in our schools and colleges. Would Ajay Devgn's character have