Automated classrooms: The future of learning environments.

                                 
           The word automation refers to the technique, method, or system of operating or controlling a process by highly automatic means, as by electronic devices, reducing human intervention to a minimum. Automation is taking place in almost all sectors. One of the main reason behind this is for reducing the cost and increasing productivity and efficiency. Not to mention the amount of time and human energy saved, but will also help us to reduce errors. One such field which is undergoing or is going to undergo a giant leap in automation is the education sector.
                                                           Our concept of what constitutes a learning space is rapidly evolving. The concept of automated classrooms is no more a science fiction. The typical old classrooms which include a person called the teacher who teaches his/her students mostly through verbal means explaining the textbook concepts and taking assumptions and giving examples in order to make the students understand and grasp the concepts are soon going to be a history.  The automation has found its way into the classrooms where there would be no teachers and textbooks but a big projector or monitor screen which will explain all the concepts in more colourful and graphical manner. This way of teaching has proven to be a success and has a bit of an edge over its typical predecessor. Children are found to be more attracted to the new colourful graphical screens than the old textbook pages which are more often just black and white letters with no graphical representations. And no wonder why because most of the children like to play video games and so why not present their syllabus in the manner of video games so that they no more find them boring and irritating, While this may not be true for all the children but let's hold on to the majority for the time being.
                                            Well, the features of automated classrooms are not just limited to learning. With automation there comes the term “positive attendance”. Not to mention the rise in a number of students attending the lecture due to popular teaching method, automation will also help to record and monitor the activities of a student throughout the day. For example making the ID card as the authentication key to access all the facilities of the campus including lecture hall and canteen. And by this the institution can monitor wherever a student goes and how much time was he/she present over there or how many lectures did he/she attend and the list goes on. It will also help the institutions to figure off campus persons within the campus for security enhancement. Positive Attendance is a new concept with plenty of untapped potentials. Positive Attendance supports the emerging trend of mobile learning environments by significantly reducing manual attendance processes.
                 Automation of the common classroom hardware will also help the institution to curb the expenses and thus provide a clean studying environment to the students.  For understanding this the first step to an effective tech implementation is knowing that you are getting the most out of your investment. By automating your classroom’s hardware via an intuitive interface, you can all but guarantee that your teachers will use their high-tech tools more often and with greater efficiency.
                             Well, every coin has two sides and like that automating a classroom also have its own disadvantages. The pure and preservative teacher-student bond which won’t exist anymore. Also, the personal experience that is shared by a teacher is not procured by the students. The sense of discipline and respect for elders among students may also decrease as machines won’t teach them real life values and morals. Also, a large amount of electricity consumption can lead to a much heavier electricity bills. Also causing a major hurdle to the energy conservation taking into consideration the number of schools present in a city.
                       The phrase “automated classroom” can be intimidating and even offensive when taken out of context. It is important to point out that the purpose of automation is not to replace teachers with robots or creative expression with artificial intelligence. Its sole purpose is to support teachers and students in pursuit of a safer and more productive learning environment. So keeping its disadvantages aside you will find that, when automation technology is implemented correctly, upfront costs are dwarfed by the tangible returns in instructional time, administrative efficiency, and student outcomes.
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