Educating Educators : June 2007 Issue

The monthly publication on ICT and Education

digitalLEARNING Volume III Issue 6

June 2007

ISSN 0973-4139

Rs 75

www.digitalLEARNING.in

Educating Educators

Making a Reflective Teacher with ICT PAGE 7

Teacher Professional Development in China PAGE 14

Subscriber’s copy not for sale

‘Mizo Higher Education to be Tech-Driven’ Dr Lalzama, Minister of Higher and Technical Education, Mizoram, India PAGE 17

Learning to teach Teaching to learn Can ICTs make any difference?

Leaders’ Speak Shantanu Prakash Managing Director Educomp Solutions PAGE 27 FORTHCOMING EVENT 31 July - 03 August 2007 Hotel Taj Palace, New Delhi

UGC-INFLIBNET : The Knowledge Link From Book Racks to PCs PAGE 32

Contents

Verbatim

Volume III Issue VI, June 2007

“I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.”

– Edith Ann “A learning company is an organisation that facilitates the learning of all its members and continually transforms itself” – M Pedler, J Burgoyne and Tom Boydell “Learning is the only sustainable competitive advantage” – Arie de Geus, Shell “Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.”

– Karl Menninger

Cover Story

7

Making a Reflective Teacher with ICT

Policy Matters

17

Dr Santosh Panda

Mizo Institutions of Higher Education to be Technology-Driven Dr Lalzama, the Minister of State, Higher and Technical Education, Mizoram

Commentary

6

Teacher Participation for Technology in Education Utpal Mallik

Country Focus

Higher Education

32

38

Tryst with ICT Vishwa Bharati Public School, Noida Rashmi Kakroo

The Foyer

42

e-Education Approach 14 An to Teacher Professional

Manoj Kumar K

School Track

Case Study Teacher Online 20 Green Shivani Jain and Meghna Gaonkar

UGC-INFLIBNET

Curtain Raiser Digital Learning India 2007

Development in China Zhu Zhiting and Gu Xiaoqing

Regulars

46 Corporate Diary

27 Leaders’ Speak Shantanu Prakash, Managing Director, Educomp Solutions

Mark Your Calendar

News

12 30 37 44

India Corporate Asia World

All the articles are available online at www.digitalLearning.in

digital LEARNING President M P Narayanan

Editorial

Editor-in-Chief Ravi Gupta

Preparing student teachers and teacher students!

Volume III, issue 6 | June 2007

Programme Co-ordinator Jayalakshmi Chittoor Sr. Assistant Editor Rumi Mallick Sub Editor Manjushree Reddy Marketing Siddharth Verma +91-9811561645 (India) email: siddharth@csdms.in Debabrata Ray +91-9899650692 email: debabrata@elets.in Circulation Lipika Dutta (+91-9871481708) Manoj Kumar (+91-9210816901)

What is so special about teachers? Why are we focusing on them? There is no apprehension in my mind while saying that teachers have a forceful influence on learning, and good teachers ideally produce good learners with the right values, attitudes and behaviour, equip learners with life skills.

Investing on teachers and their professional development has proven crucial with the country experiences that have attained high learning outcomes.

China and India are home to over one third of the world’s population and home to over 15 million teachers. The geographical spread of these two countries alone poses a tremendous challenge. The need to focus on quality is evident as teachers are the future builders of the citizenship of any country. The dismal amount of training that the in-service teachers receive currently or even total lack of it is evident by the growing number of untrained teachers being recruited in rural schools to fill the gap of teachers in schools.

Web Zia Salahuddin

Educational systems around the world are under increasing pressure to use the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) to teach students the knowledge and skills. For education to reap the full benefits of ICTs in learning, it is essential that pre- and in-service teachers are able to effectively use these new tools for learning.

Editorial and Marketing Correspondence digital Learning G-4 Sector 39 NOIDA 201301, India

Since long, the education researchers point out the problem of teaching quality, that perpetuates the barriers to empowerment and equity. Pre-service and in-service training are often not integrated into reform efforts. In many developing countries, teachers have no formal pre-service education at all.

Phone +91 120 2502181-85 Fax +91 120 2500060 Email info@digitalLearning.in

To maintain the quality, it is indispensable for governments, donors, and all stakeholders to form partnerships with teachers to improve their status and promote social dialogue. With the emerging new technologies, Teacher education institutions may either assume a leadership role in the transformation of education or be left behind in the swirl of rapid technological change.

Designed by Bishwajeet Kumar Singh

Group Directors Maneesh Prasad, Sanjay Kumar Printed by Yashi Media Works Pvt Ltd New Delhi, India digital Learning does not neccesarily subscribe to the views expressed in this publication. All views expressed in the magazine are those of the contributors. digital Learning is not responsible or accountable for any loss incurred, directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided. digital Learning is published in technical collaboration with Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd. (www.elets.in)

Š Centre for Science, Development and

Studies 2007 (www.csdms.in) Media

In this issue, we have looked at some national level initiatives and cases of programmes designed to empower the teacher with skills and capacities to become teachers of tomorrow. The task is not easy. There is need for private sector commitment and partnership to address the huge investments needed to face the challenge of a brighter future for teachers and quality education, as we all move towards a knowledge driven economy.

We are also pleased to invite our readers to partner and join the face-to-face conference being planned by us from July 31 to August 3, 2007, at Taj Palace, New Delhi at the eINDIA2007 conference. Check out the details in this issue, and mark your calendars!

Ravi Gupta Editor-in-Chief Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

COMMENTARY

Teacher Preparation for Technology in Education Utpal Mallik, [utpal.mallik@gmail.com], National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), India The question of teacher preparation for integrating technology into the paper-pencil classroom opens up a Pandora’s Box containing much more than the teacher and the technology: What is fundamental to the content, process and outcome of education?

What schools are for in this changing world? Is there a genuine need, or only a set of justifications, for taking ICT to the classroom? Is the computer a slot machine and a delivery device for dispensing information? Is it a problem-solving tool and an agent for pedagogical reforms? Rather than drawing their legitimacy from the mystique of the technology, the training programmes for teachers should address these questions.

During the phase of introduction of the computer technology in Indian schools, the technology was little more than a black box which was bestowed on schools and classrooms from above. This was a misguided move. The dominant use of computers in the classroom was for instruction in computer literacy. No one denies the importance of obtaining facility with computers, but technology skills are acquired only as a means to an end. ‘Literacy’ uses of technology are not ‘bad practices’, but they are not likely to promote cognitive skills of children or transform a classroom, which are avowed goals of introducing ICT in schools.

On the other hand, if viewed as a mechanism for enrichment and remediation of the curriculum with a handful of multimedia programmes, or a lot of them, the use of technology will not move forward the agenda of systemic reform. These programs do the

same things that schools have always done, albeit with a touch of technical brashness. This is little more than using technology to entrench existing teaching practices.

The relevant uses of ICT are as tools and communication channels. To be effective, technology and teachers must work together to provide challenging learning opportunities to children. The central concern is the use of technology as a catalyst for changing schools in ways that support the acquisition of higher-order skills by students whose educational experiences frequently have been rote drill on lower-order skills with relatively little attention to skills that are relevant to effective functioning in the real world. This is providing students with a different kind of education, structured around the provision of challenging tasks that can prepare them for a technology-laden world.

Teacher preparation is to be aimed at reaching this goal. This is going beyond computer literacy skills. Training courses for teachers are indeed strategies to discover the relation between technology resources, curriculum, pedagogy and learning. The efforts required to implement such courses are enormous, while training opportunities are limited. But teachers have started demanding these opportunities.

Meanwhile, some in-service programmes designed and implemented with the corporate lead are based on the premise that thinking with technology is the immediate goal of technology use in the classroom. Give it a chance.

State bodies like SCERTs and SIEs do provide occasional training to in-service

teachers, but it is often unutilised in the school. A regular school-centred or on-line training which maintains the improvement process through the regular school and classroom life is needed. Teachers of some 1.8 lakh secondary schools will expect ICT training during the 11th Plan period. Is anybody prepared?

Pre-service programmes in teacher training colleges need more attention than they presently get. The low quality of ICT integration in schools is the result of low quality of teachers’ professional preparation. Most preservice ICT programmes are heavy on ‘teaching the tools’ and light on using ‘the tools to teach’. That’s training versus education. To make matters worse, would-be-teachers do not get any amount of ICT built into their non-ICT courses or in classrooms where they get their field training. Today’s students live in a global, knowledge-based age.

They deserve teachers whose practice embraces the best that technology can bring to learning.

Professional and popular literatures refer to ‘critical thinking, problem solving and decision-making’ as the 21st century cognitive skills that children should be adept at. Preparing teachers for this does not imply that better learning will come from finding better ways for the teacher to instruct, but from giving the learner better opportunities to create new knowledge. With and without technology!

The author is Joint Director, Central Institute of Educational Technology, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), India

June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

Cover Story

Making a Reflective Teacher with ICT Dr. Santosh Panda [spanda.ignou@gmail.com], Director, Staff Training and Research Institute of Distance Education, Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, India

In 1947, when India got independence, there were nearly 46% untrained secondary school teachers. In 1970-71, 24.64% of the 630,000 secondary and higher secondary teachers were untrained; and in 1990-91, in spite of massive distance teacher education initiative of dual mode universities, there were still nearly 9.05% of 1.27 million teachers untrained. During 1996-97, nearly 10% of the 1.5 million teachers were untrained. As a rough estimate, today above 500 thousand in-service teachers are untrained. Nearly 12% of the three million teachers at the primary and elementary level are untrained.

Can ICT take a reformative measure in improving teacher competency?

Digital Learning | Vol 3 Issue 6 June 2007

I

t will not be an exaggeration if one says that the present and the future of education and the society lies on the teachers, and especially the quality of teachers. Not surprisingly, considerable importance has been given to teacher education in all the Five Year Plans and in all the Commissions and Committees on Education in India. The Kothari Education Commission had noted that the fate of India was being shaped in the classrooms, and that the teachers were the most important determinant of this. However, with increasing use of technology and

professional development of teachers, and also the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) responsible for regulation, accreditation, and quality assurance.

In parallel with the development of educational technology itself, use of ICT in teacher education has evolved from the traditional audio-visual method to the present multimedia-based online learning/online professional development. NCERT had made significant efforts through SOPT and PMOST (and Classroom 2000+) to use

The three million primary and elementary teachers need recurrent orientation to innovations in teaching and learning at the school level. The District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs) have been charged with this responsibility. Of the 520 districts in the country, there are 424 DIETs, which are able to meet the training needs of 0.3 million teachers every year, out of a total of three million teachers. NCERT has made considerable efforts through the Special Orientation of Primary Teachers (SOPT) scheme in the past years to train primary school teachers as well as teacher educators housed in DIETs blended learning, the fate today is shaped more outside the classroom, and the definition of a teacher has changed considerably.

Today, teacher education is organised through: • University teaching departments of education • Colleges of education • District institutes of education and training • Shiksha Karmis and non-formal teacher training centres • Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and DRCs, BRCs and CRCs. There is National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) responsible for continuing

teleconferencing for teacher continuing professional development. When the fully dedicated educational satellite (EduSat) was launched in 2004, I, as head of Inter-University Consortium at IGNOU, was given the responsibility, on behalf of the NCTE, to orient/train the directors and faculty of SCERTs and DIETs on effective use of EduSat and other ICT interventions through a series of workshops organised in many parts of the country.

Distance Teacher Education In 1947, when the country got independence, there were nearly 46% untrained secondary school teachers, and therefore, pre-service training was carried out by one-year teacher training institutions located in many states

of the country. In 1970-71, 24.64% of the 630,000 secondary and higher secondary teachers were untrained; and in 1990-91, in spite of massive distance teacher education initiative of dual mode universities (DMUs), there were still nearly 9.05% of 1.27 million teachers untrained. The 1960s saw the initiation of correspondence teacher education. In 1966, the Central Institute of Education (later known as the Faculty of Education) of the University of Delhi initiated a B.Ed. programme through correspondence-cum-contact, followed by the Bangalore University and the Regional Colleges of Education of NCERT. This was in pursuance to the 1968 delegation to the erstwhile USSR for teacher training and its strong recommendation for teacher training through correspondence education.

By 1991-92, out of 46 university level correspondence course institutes and six open universities, 15 correspondence course institutes and two state open universities were offering B.Ed. programme through the correspondence/ distance mode. The highest enrolments were at the correspondence course institutes of Maharishi Dayanand University (33,000 students) and Annamalai University (21,417 students), and the Kota Open University had about 9,000 students in 1988-89. The lowest was 223 students enrolled in Kakatiya University. In absolute terms, the number of untrained teachers came down from 155,000 in 1970-71 to just 115,000 in 1990-91 due to these efforts.

The situation got aggravated due to appointment of still untrained teachers; and, during 1996-97, nearly 10% of the 1.5 million teachers were untrained.

As a rough estimate, today above 500 thousand in-service teachers are untrained. Realising the importance of such a massive effort, NCTE  a statutory body of the Government of India to regulate and maintain quality of teacher education in the country, also expressed grave concern with regard to the quality of teacher education through distance mode. Strict guidelines were issued to state governments and teacher training institutions to discontinue the practice of pre-service distance teacher June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

education and concentrate on in-service distance teacher education. Each institution was to enroll no more than 500 teachers in a year.

Given the satisfactory quality of inservice teacher training by university level correspondence course institutes, the open universities took to the initiation of quality in-service distance teacher education. During 1990-96, three state open universities  Kota Open University, Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University, and Baba Saheb Ambedkar Open University began to launch in-service programmes.

IGNOU initiated a two-year distance education B.Ed programme, which, with English and Hindi as the media of instruction, can be completed by students admitted into the programme within a maximum of four years from the date of their admission, and which requires in-service teachers to have two years of full-time teaching experience and clearance in a national entrance test.

In case of primary and elementary teacher education, nearly 12% of the three million teachers at the primary and elementary level are untrained. Both NCERT and IGNOU in the past have made attempts to provide untrained inservice teachers with training through a combination of print, teleconferencing, and face-to-face interaction.

The three million primary and elementary teachers need recurrent orientation to innovations in teaching and learning at the school level. The District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs) have been charged with this responsibility. Of the 604 districts in the country, there are 424 DIETs, which are able to meet the training needs of 0.3 million teachers every year, out of a total of three million teachers. NCERT has made considerable efforts through the Special Orientation of Primary Teachers (SOPT) scheme in the past years to train primary school teachers as well as teacher educators housed in DIETs. The teaching end is located at the teleconferencing studio of NCERT and IGNOU, and the learning ends, where teachers gather for training, are the DIETs which have downlink, Digital Learning | Vol 3 Issue 6 June 2007

Given the satisfactory quality of in-service teacher training by university level correspondence course institutes, the open universities took to the initiation of quality in-service distance teacher education. During 1990-96, three state open universities Kota Open University, Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University, and Baba Saheb Ambedkar Open University began to launch in-service programmes interactive audio and video, and toll-free telephone facilities.

IGNOU is also offering a Certificate in Primary Education since 2001, designed initially for the teachers of Sikkim and the northeastern hilly states of India, where there are a large number of untrained school teachers and where there is inadequacy of communication facility. There has been considerable development initiative for the NorthEast by the Prime Minister’s Office, and IGNOU’s involvement for distance education and training covers many areas, including teacher training. There are about 175,000 untrained primary school teachers in these states, and IGNOU had been identified as the nodal agency to offer a six-month Certificate in Primary Education from 2003 to clear this backlog within the next five years. Instructional components include self-learning printed materials; audio and video programmes; face-toface counseling at DIETs, colleges of education, IGNOU regional centers, and the IT/community learning centers of IGNOU; assignments; practice at designated institutions; work-related field project; video-telecasting by Doordarshan (national television network); broadcasting by All India Radio; teleconferencing from IGNOU studio; phone-in radio counseling; and Gyan Darshan (television transmitted through cable networks) and Gyan Vani (radio cooperative). In all, there are 30 hours of face-to-face intensive counseling, 16 hours of teleconferencing, eight hours of phonein radio counseling, and some audio and some video programmes.

Sarva Shiksha Abiyan (SSA) The Government of India had launched in 2001 the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme for Universalisation of

Elementary Education (UEE) to achieve certain goals like universal retention by 2010, all children completing five years of primary schooling by 2007, and all children completing eight years of elementary schooling by 2010.

The task was enormous, and therefore distance learning was adopted to achieve the target goals within the stipulated time frame including professional development of all the functionaries involved in it for ICT capacity building through distance learning. Initially implemented in 18 states, the SSA extended implementation to cover all the 29 states and 6 union territories with Distance Education Programme (DEP) as an integral component.

Computer Based Elementary Education (CBEE) CBEE is a reformative addition to the DEP-SSA, which aims at improving teacher competency to use IT and interactive multimedia CD-ROMs in teaching the hard spots in subjects of English, Maths, Science, Social Studies, and MIL. It was visualised that the CBEE implementation plan includes four components: Training and capacity building of trainers, teachers, students, other SSA functionaries and the community.; Development of contextspecific, self-learning, interactive multimedia CDs for hard spot areas and other subject areas at upper primary and elementary levels; Availability of low cost and user friendly IT infrastructure in the schools; Implementation and continuous evaluation of the implementation, including continuous dialogue through ICT and face-to-face modes.

The four components include: • Development of learner-friendly and contextual interactive

multimedia CD-ROMs on hardspots in school subject areas in regional languages as well as in English medium.

Installation of hardware and software, and their maintenance, in the elementary schools.

Training and capacity building of teachers, students and other functionaries involved in the SSA on IT-enabled education.

Implementation, constant monitoring, timely evaluation and follow-up revision of the programme.

The need today

Over the years, it has been realised that elementary education is the crucial stage, and the elementary school • teachers need training in three main areas: i) Curricular areas: These include • hard spots (difficult concepts which teachers find difficult to teach and the learners find difficult to understand) in teaching of • content in Mathematics, Science, Languages, and Social Sciences.

The CBEE attempts to address this area. ii) Pedagogical areas: Teachers capacity building is needed in areas of minimum levels of learning (MLLs), child-centred approach, classroom transaction, evaluation techniques, development of teaching-learning materials (TLMs), innovative teaching learning methods, and The interactive multimedia learning model developed by IGNOU others.

The implementation plan which many agencies iii) Contextual including IGNOU adopted included broadly the areas: Issues following: that requiring • Training of trainers for further training in the design and special attention development of interactive multimedia CD-ROMs, of the teachers • Actual development of IMM-CDs, to improve • Orientation of learners through ‘colour picture workbook’ educational on how to use the CDs for self learning individually and status girls’ most importantly in groups, education, • Teacher orientation through manuals, guides, workbooks, gender and f2f workshops and teleconferencing for developing sensitisation, ability to teach through ICT, IED, bridge • Orientation of various functionaries in the district project courses for offices (DPOs), cluster resource centres (CRCs), block out of school resource centres (BRCs) and village education committees children, quality (VECs) to facilitate collaboration, networking and actual management, implementation of the scheme of CBEE, education of • Orientation and training of evaluators and researchers to disadvantaged build continuous evaluation, research and improvement into groups of the programme, and society, • Continuous interaction of state level and central level community officers with grass-root functionaries. mobilisation, among others.

10

A New ICT Framework From many research studies and from experiences world over, two important aspects are coming to fore with regard to ICT integration with teacher education: i) teachers need to be reflective in what they do in the form of teaching and facilitating student learning, and ii) the offline community of practice and the networked community of professional community need to be intergrated into a omprehensive framework of continuing professional development (CPD). Some of the important skills associated with reflection included: Self-awareness: Ability to analyse feelings, especially examining how a situation has affected the individual and how the individual has affected the situation.

Description: Ability to recognise and recollect accurately the key features of an experience and/or situation.

Critical analysis: Ability to examine the knowledge components of a situation, identifying existing knowledge, challenging assumptions, and imagining and exploring alternatives.

Synthesis: Ability to integrate new knowledge with previous knowledge.

Evaluation: Ability to make judgment about the value of something.

It must be underlined that in any sort of ICT intervention in teacher education and/or any ICT-integrated teacher education, reflection needs to play a critical role in contextualising teacher education practices as also to critically reflect on teacher education as professional discipline and professional practice. The framework given above depicts an integrated and comprehensive online teacher professional development in which culture, professional community, curriculum design, online presence, and individual and collaborative reflection contribute to transformation in professional identify and professional practice.

The context in the framework for the professional development of the teachers involves: the online learning community (OLC), the community of practice (CoP), and one’s social community/ June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

development of teachers. Online environment also promotes and facilitates dialogue and discourse among participants, in which they openly contribute to the meaning created by each other, and in the process reconstruct their mental models or frames of reference.

Mentor-observers can facilitate this by encouraging diversity of views and advocacy, expansive questioning, making provision for constructive feedback on each other’s views and performance as well as engendering reflection.

Online reflective resources framework (Panda and Mishra, 2007)

culture. Therefore, all three aspects need to be taken into consideration while designing for online professional development of teachers. In our framework we have identified three types of contexts: culture, community of practice, and online learning community. Thus, professional development for online facilitators needs to be embedded in the social and physical contexts of OLC and CoP- though there might be virtual surrogates of online and offline work environments.

In this framework of online constructivist continuing professional development, reflection is assumed to play the major role in underpinning the change in cognitive structure through independent study, online collaboration and negotiation, collaborative group/ project work, knowledge construction and negotiation in the community of practice.

Change of professional identity is visualised as the goal of professional development for teachers. Professional development involves participation in CoP, transformation of knowledge Digital Learning | Vol 3 Issue 6 June 2007

in form of experiencing one’s identity and change in both individual and community identities. So, there must be a context in which the change takes place: the context being the transformative practice of the professional community.

Also, culture is an important component of ‘context’ (the other two components being ‘community of practice’ and ‘online learning community’). Culture is intimately related to both online and offline communication, and, therefore, various cultural aspects need to be taken into account while designing and administering programmes for development of teachers.

Collaboration requires an environment of shared goal, peer learning, use of personal experiences and problems, and dialogue in web-based professional

Teachers as professional developers must be helped to transform their frames of reference so that they can best appreciate and understand their own experience. To do this, both observer-mentors and facilitators need to do more critical reflection themselves. Transformation of online facilitators is the goal visualised in the framework discussed above. To effect this, we definitely need to design and develop online resources of various kinds. The online resources can be categorised into five types: Orientation and organisation tools, Learning activity tools, Interaction and collaboration tools, Support tools and Analytic tools.

These components need to be designed such that reflection can be built into various activities, that the use of resources can promote reflection, and that transformative learning and transformation in professional practice can take place. Any ICT intervention in teacher education/ teacher professional development must take these aspect into consideration, as today’s professional development needs considerable transformation.

Dr. Santosh Panda is the director of Staff Training & Research Institute of Distance Education; and Professor of Distance Education at the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), India. He is also Coordinator of IGNOU’s International MA in Distance Education Programme, sponsored by the Commonwealth of Learning and the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, and UNESCO-IICBA; and Coordinator of the National M.Ed. Programme sponsored by the Distance Education Council and National Council forTeacher Education, Government of India.

11

News INDIA National mission for education through ICT soon

ministry is not parting with the design except giving out some of the major details.

ISRO to link Delhi’s engineering colleges

A National Mission for Education through ICT has been proposed by the Human Resource ministry under which all institutions of higher learning would be networked through broadband connectivity. e-Content would be developed and made available through the medium of Edusat, Internet and cable TV networks. Looking to the success of World Bank assisted Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme, the ministry would approach World Bank for the sanction of the second phase of the programme on a bigger scale. All Indian Institutions of Technology and the Indian Institution of Science in Bangalore have jointly developed 225 video and web based courses under the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL). These will be available for use by engineering colleges of the country.

Ministry hopes to make USD10 laptops a reality

Having rejected Nicholas Negroponte’s offer of USD100 laptops for schoolchildren, HRD ministry’s idea to make laptops at USD10 is firmly taking shape with two designs already in and public sector undertaking Semiconductor Complex evincing interest to be a part of the project.

So far, the cost of one laptop, after factoring in labour charges, is coming to USD47 but the ministry feels the price will come down dramatically considering the fact that the demand would be for one million laptops.

The two designs with the ministry are from a final year engineering student of Vellore Institute of Technology and a researcher from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Due to reasons of Intellectual Property Rights, being insisted by the two designers, the 12

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) plans to install a complete ‘Edusat’ hub and studio at the Delhi College of Engineering (DCE) to promote and spread e-Education in the capital.

The engineering college will be linked with over 50 governmentaffiliated premier engineering and management institutes in the Capital and NCR region to beam educational programmes from the next academic session. Unlike IGNOU, which beams information as per its syllabus, DCE would network with other premier institutes to formulate course details according to the needs of the students.

Computer lessons at madarsa Here is some good news for children from under-privileged and minority

groups, like those studying in Manimajra madarsa in Punjab.

The department of UT Information Technology has planned to provide computer training to socially-deprived children.

The initiative is being taken up Under the Chandigarh IT reach out programme (CITROP), an initiative of the Chandigarh Administration for enabling underprivileged and minorities to benefit from the application of IT. The scheme, to be launched under the “IT for Society” administration, will start basic computer training programme for children. The administration in association with United Progressive Muslim Front has started a basic computer programme and soft skills programme for students of Madrasa, Manimajra.

EDUSAT educational programme launched in Haryana The Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh has launched the EDUSAT satellite based educational programmes in Haryana, India.

While launching the EDUSA programme in Haryana, he said that the government was concerned about the poor functioning of government schools especially in rural areas. EDUSAT programme would be an important tool for improving science education in schools. The government has invested crores of rupees in good quality hardware. EDUSAT can also be used for a variety of purposes by

National network to connect all knowledge institutions

A network of all knowledge institutions in India will be one of the most consequential outcomes of the National Knowledge Commission, according to its chairman Sam Pitroda.

The government had begun to coordinate the creation of the National Knowledge Network with gigabit capabilities. The idea is to interconnect all universities, libraries, laboratories, hospitals and agricultural institutions in order to share data and resources across the country. The network will connect some 5,000 nodes covering all major institutions but the commission proposes a phased approach where 500 to 1,000 nodes could be set up in the first phase. Among the many things that the network seeks to achieve is to provide institutions with access speeds of 100 mbps and higher to enhance collaborations both within and outside the country.

June 2007 | www.digitalLearninG.in

district authorities, like teleconferencing, data transmission and so on. He hoped that EDUSAT programme will be used for promoting rural development.

Singh announced about this. The Consultative Committee deliberated upon science and technology education. Ministry had appointed Prof. M.M. Sharma Committee whose recommendations have been accepted

by UGC. The recommendations are under implementation. For this purpose, Prof. M.M. Sharma Committee has also been converted into an Empowered Committee.

Top UK schools to license institutes in India Some top UK independent schools, including Harrow, plan to license their institutions in India and elsewhere. The Harrow school is considering licensing five schools in India, China and other South East Asian countries to fund up to 200 free and subsidised places at its school here.

The move coincides with government threats to withdraw charitable status from independent schools, worth a total of 100 million pounds a year, unless they can demonstrate “public benefit”.

Wellington college, Dulwich college and Oxford high school for girls are among the other independents planning to cash in on the high reputation of British private education to open chains of franchises. There are already Harrow International offshoots in Thailand and China.

Chennai kids take to m-learning

With GPRS connectivity improving and charges coming down m-Learning is here. Mobile learning is the next frontier as one segment of the market is ready to move beyond voice and entertainment to explore the other dimensions of this handheld computer. All one need to do is download the software from Wizdom. in, a website, offering a GRE training programme that can be downloaded to a GPRS mobile phone. And all this for a price far less than what most coaching institutes charge.

13

Orissa Govt. creates online database of students The Orissa state government has created an online database of all 98 lakh children between the 1-14 year age group.

The data base will help the education authorities to start projects and programmes, specifically for remote areas or schools. The state government wants to use the Sarva Sikhya Abhiyan to enroll all children between 6-14 years of age in schools.

Of the total 61 lakh children in the age group of 6 years to 14 years, about 55 lakh students have been

Once it’s on the phone then one can just log on anytime and start studying. If one has any doubt they can write back to a teacher monitoring the progress at the other end. All the data is available to the student facilitator at any point and analysing this data is as good as being next to the student. And the learning of the student’s understanding goes back to the student in the form of feedback which the student can see again on the mobile.

Prof. M.M. Sharma empowered committee’s decisions to be implemented Prof. M.M. Sharma Empowered Committee’s recommendations regarding science education are being implemented sincerely, according to Arjun Singh, Human Resource Development Minister.

While addressing the Consultative Committee attached to HRD, Shri

VTU, the first university to launch VSAT channel The Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) of Karnataka has launched the VSAT channel in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

The channel has two-way video and two-way audio features for the first batch of 30 selected colleges. Currently, VTU is using the DTH Channel and transmitting live sessions from its studio situated at DSERT campus in Bangalore.

ISRO has identified 30 colleges as Batch-1 colleges to get the proposed VSAT channel based on utilisation, location, and response to the current DTH Channel by the Colleges. These 30 colleges would sign an MoU with VTU and ISRO to ensure full utlisation of VTU-EDUSAT network- both DTH and VSAT Channels. ISRO will provide the necessary VSAT, Hub and Teaching end support, while VTU will coordinate with several Engineering colleges affiliated to it and manage the VSAT network.

Google to digitalise 800,00 books of Mysore Google is planning to digitise around 800,00 books and manuscripts, which are available at the Mysore University.

Mysore University has around 100,000 manuscripts, including the ‘Arthasastra’.

The literature would be digitalised either in Sanskrit or Kannada. The main purpose of the digitalisation is to get free links to these materials. Google will also provide expertise, software, and manpower for the digitisation work.

The University will patent the digitised versions of manuscripts depending on exclusivity. Google will also digitise manuscripts as well as 700,000 other books free-of-cost.

June 2007 | www.digitalLearninG.in

country focus

An e-Education Approach to Teacher Professional Development in China Zhu Zhiting, [ztzhu@dec.ecnu.educ.cn] and Gu Xiaoqing, [xqgu@ses.ecnu.edu.cn], School of Educational Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

In China, substantial efforts have been made towards teacher professional development, and a continuing education system has emerged especially in the area of educational technology, which has become a major component of teacher professional competencies, as well as the prerequisite for teachers to step into the lifelong learning system. The article briefs these consistent efforts made and their consequences regarding the development of teachers’ lifelong learning system.

I

n China, substantial efforts have been made since the beginning of this century by Ministry of Education (MOE) and local governments for promoting teacher professional development, which have led to the emergence of a nationwide continuing education system with support of ICT (Information and Communication Technology). In 1999, the Rules for K12 Teachers’ Continuing Education were published through Decree (Issue 7) of MOE, in which the lifelong learning was regarded as the right as well as the obligation for teachers. According to this decree, all of K12 teachers are required to receive a round of trainings summing up 240 hours in five years, with inclusion of training on ICT skills.

In consistence with this, several action plans and proposals have been issued by 14

the central government and MOE one after the other in following years.

Following these policies, a number of nationwide actions and projects for teacher continuing education were carried out, especially triggered by the National Project for K12 Teacher Continuing Education, which started in 1999 and was aimed at providing the learning opportunities for 10 million K12 teachers all over the country.

At the same time, curriculum reforms currently taken in basic education also raise a great demand on teacher training.

Under this consideration, MOE also issued Guidelines on Enhancing Teacher Training on Pedagogy of New Curricula in Basic Education in 2004.

It order to take advantage of expertise of teacher education, MOE organised two expert committees: National Steering Committee of Teacher e-Education

(NSCTeE) and National Expert Committee of Curriculum Resources for Teacher Education (NECCRTE).

NSCTeE has contributed to the establishment of Teacher Education Networking Union and the development of Educational Technology Standards for K12 Teachers (Section 3), while the NECCRTE has supervised the development of curriculum resources for teacher continuing education, 527 pieces of online courses have been selected from 976 works contributed by 22 education and training institutions over the country.

Teacher e-Education (TeE): A new concept in China For the sake of facilitating teachers’ lifelong learning for and with ICT, a new concept called teacher e-Education (TeE) is emerging, which has both implications for institutions to provide June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

MOE Proposal on Promoting Teacher e-Education in 2002 for the implementation of TeE Speeding up the construction of information infrastructure for TeE • Establish the technology standards for information infrastructure and learning resources; • Encourage a part of teacher universities to construct digital learning environment; • Enhance the construction of teacher training institutions with support of ICT; • Encourage and support the interactions and exchanges; • Support implementation of ICT education in rural and poor areas with computer donation in teacher universities and colleges.

Speeding up the construction of learning resources for TeE • Developing Satellite-TV and web based courses for distance teachereducation; • Encourage the adoption of multiple approaches in integrating TeE resources; • Construct resource center of regional teacher education; • Establish local resources center and make assessable to schools; Enhancing the construction of pre-service education programmes on information technology education and education technology • Create programmes on ICT education; • Provide common courses educational technology for pre-service teacher students.

• Improve professional competencies for junior faculty members working in teacher colleges/universities in 5 years.

• Offer enhanced trainings on ICT education to the subject teachers of ICT. Exploring new models of teacher education and instructional management in e-Education through research-based efforts • Carry out researches on approaches and models in ICT-supported educational reforms; • Explore effective models of using ICT to improve educational administration, instructional management and learning evaluation.

• Facilitate the ICT integrating into curricula.

Enhancing the leadership, management and evaluation in the process of TeE • Make encouraging policies and assessment mechanisms towards the development of TeE. • Care for securities and qualities of information resources for teacher education by taking technical and human measures.

• Carry out regular assessment/evaluation onto TeE related projects, made by MOE-appointed experts.

sufficient learning opportunities to teachers with support of ICT, and for teachers to develop their competencies in employing ICT to improve their instructional practice.

As for the promotion of TeE, MOE organised a special group called NSCTeE (National Steering Committee for Teacher e-Education) in 2002, with a dozen of established experts in the Digital Learning | Vol 3 Issue 6 June 2007

field of educational technology and information technology education as members.

Meanwhile, considerable amount of actions and projects have been initiated by local governments towards TeE. For example, regional teachers’ education center has been set up in HeBei province; in GanSu province. There have been 49 online courses available

dedicated to teachers’ continuing education; and in Sinkiang, an autonomous province of largest territory in China, there have been 10 thousand teachers accessing over 50 online courses in trilingual of Mandarin, Uigur and Kazak in 2005.

Teacher Education Networking Union: A nationwide TeE platform According to the rules for K12 teachers’ continuing education, it is the right as well as the obligation for all of K12 teachers (10 millions in total) to engage lifelong learning. As a realistic option for using ICT to facilitate teachers’ lifelong learning, the Teacher Education Networking Union (TENU) was established in 2003 under the leadership of MOE, with the purpose to provided a lifelong learning platform for 10 million teachers in China.

Initiated by several key universities such as Beijing Normal University, East China Normal University, Northeast Normal University, Central China Normal University, Southwest Normal University, etc., the union is now comprised of 12 organisational members, which is taken by MOE as a kernel TeE platform for teachers’ lifelong learning. Consequently, a number of provincial TENUs have been brought up. It is expected that every province will establish their TENU soon. In this way, a nationwide TeE platform for teachers’ lifelong learning will be set up in China, up linked to the kernel platform and down linked to country training centres and schools.

The term networking wherein has the implications of establishing a network technologically (by means of satellite communication and cable links), geographically (linking undeveloped areas to developed areas) and organisationally (connecting universities and schools).

Standard-based training in technology for teachers Educational technology has become an important element constituting teachers’ professional expertise. Early in 2000, the Basic Education Department of MOE issued a proposal which advance 15

As a realistic option for using ICT to facilitate teachers’ lifelong learning, the Teacher Education Networking Union (TENU) was established in 2003 under the leadership of MOE, with the purpose to provided a lifelong learning platform for 10 million teachers in China the demand on pedagogical use of ICT in all K12 schools. To reach this goal, K12 teachers certainly should learn how to use ICT and how to apply ICT in their teaching and lifelong learning. In 2004, MOE published the Educational Technology Standards for Primary and Secondary Teachers, which represent the first officially published standards regarding teachers’ professional development in China.

Training Curricula The standard-based training curricula consist of three levels: Basic, middle, and advance level. Two versions of basic-level curricula were approved by MOE through a strict evaluation process in November of 2005. They have been published by Higher Education Publishing (called G-version) and by Beijing Normal University Publishing (called S-version) respectively. Two versions of middle-level curricula are under development and will be published in July of 2007. The authors of this article are developers of the Sversion of basic-level curriculum.

Teacher trainees are asked to create a technology-integrated instructional 16

plan from their coming soon teaching lessons. The curriculum present as a tri-part complex: book, DVD, and website. Abundant cases, templates and rubrics of instructional design are provided by means of DVD. The website is intended for trainees to carry out reflective exchanges and experience sharing.

Training diffusion

This project has been firstly tried out in selected regions including Liaoning, Jiangsu, Henan, Guangxi, Chongqing, Yunnan and Ningxia provinces in 2006. With the experiences taken from the test period, a nationwide training diffusion starts up in 2007. The training diffusion takes a tri-tier model: as course developer, we trained the trainers at national level; the national trainers trained the trainers at province level, and then the trainings spread down to county and school levels. It is planned that the project will be accomplished till 2010, when all K12 teachers will receive a whole round of training on educational technology.

Blended training Given that over 10 million K12 teachers

have to be trained within 5 years, it is unimaginable to accomplish the project if only relies on face-to-face training. Thus a blended training strategy is adopted. The Teacher Education Networking Union (TENU) can serve for a TeE platform, providing nationwide support for online learning and training management. The authors of this article have developed web-based training courses of S-version through team efforts. Using these webbased courses, a pilot training was tried out for over 300 in-service teachers from Jiangsu, Henan and Fujian provinces by means online learning blended with limited face-to-face tutorials.

Certification According to the policies made by MOE, trainees who fulfilled training and passed a testing will receive a certificate.

The National Education Testing Center is responsible for developing and administrating the testing. Over 90 thousands of trained teachers took part in pilot testings up to the present.

As a nation with the largest population, China is faced with the tremendous challenges on providing lifelong learning opportunities for over 10 million teachers across the country.

As a realistic solution, taking Teacher Education Networking Union as a platform, a countrywide framework for teacher e-Education is emerging in China. Meanwhile, to be successful in e-Education, teachers also should develop their competencies in ICT applications, and also bring their students into the era of e-Education.

Dr. Zhu Zhiting is professor of educational technology in School of Educational Sciences, senior researcher of National Institute of Curriculum & Instruction, Director of Educational Information Centre and vice dean of Cyber-Education College, East China Normal University. He has received distinguished professorships from Nanjing Normal University and Beijing Normal University. He is also the chair of Chinese e-Learning Technology Standardisation Committee (CELTSC), Consultant for National Project of Educational Resources, and member of Steering Committee for Teacher Education Informatisation.

Dr. Gu Xiaoqing is associate professor of educational technology in School of Educational Sciences. Her research mainly focuses on ICT in education, ICT-integrated curriculum in K12, ICT pedagogy, web-based learning, teachers professional development for ICT-integrated pedagogy. Her recent R&D projects include Nationwide Development of Educational Technology Competency for K12 teachers, UNESCO-APEID JEIT project Competency-Based Standards for Teacher-Training in Technology-Pedagogy Integration, etc.

June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

POLICY MATTER

Mizo Institutions of Higher Education to be Technology-Driven Mizoram has been impacted by the surge of the knowledge explosion, pushing towards the mainstream of knowledge creation. There are challenges and opportunities on the part of higher education of Mizoram in the global scenario.

Dr Lalzama, the Minister of State, Higher and Technical Education, Mizoram, writes on the state’s efforts to promote quality in Higher Education and to foster for global competition.

H

igher & Technical Education is of paramount importance for social, cultural and economical development of the nation. Thus creating an environment conducive to such development is a major challenge for which institutions of higher education have the main responsibility by providing skills and knowledge creation to make knowledge society.

For knowledge creation, science and technology has emerged as major forces, which havs all pervasive influence in the system of higher education.

With the emergence of globalisation and liberalisation an the advent of information and communication technology, the knowledge platform has been widening out to people living in the remotest corner of the globe, like Mizoram.

The history of higher education in Mizoram started only with the establishment of one private collage Digital Learning | Vol 3 Issue 6 June 2007

in 1958, which is now constituent college of Mizoram University. At present, there are 25 colleges, and 22 of them teach conventional subjects of general education and three others are professional colleges such as College of Teacher’s Education, Hindi Training College, and Mizoram Law College.

There are 10 government colleges and 14 others are called “deficit college” and there is one constituent College of Mizoram University. Seven Colleges offer Science stream along with arts and one college is a Science College.

Bachelor of Computer Science (BCA)

Course / Programme is opened in two Government Colleges.

Technical Education in Mizoram is in a fledgling stage. There are now two polytechnic institutes of diploma standard. Of which one is a Women Polytechnic. There is also one Veterinary College financed by the North-Eastern Council (NEC). The growth is visible with the fact that only six colleges existed before 1975 and all others were established after 1980. There are 14 colleges recognised by the UGC eligible to receive development grants.

Mizo Educational Institutes at a Glance No. of colleges : General Education No. of professional colleges No. of students : Under Graduates (2005-06) No. of students : Post Graduates (2005-06) No. of teachers : University & Colleges Teacher – Student Ratio

: : : : : :

22 3 7964 414 822 10:19 17

Technical Education is where Mizoram is lagging behind from other states.

The State does not have even a single Technical College. This is the area where a thrust is given by the State Government ICFAI University has taken initiatives in Mizoram in the field of management.

Now a BBA Programme has been started.

To promote Technical Education, the Mizoram State Council for Technical Education was established in 1998 under the chairmanship of Minister of State, Higher & Technical Education and Director, Higher & Technical Education as the Member Secretary. The Technical Cell of the Directorate of Higher & Technical Education functions as the administrative unit of the Council. AICTE Norms and pay scales have been adopted for Technical Education in Mizoram. The Govternment has proposed to establish one Engineering College during the 11th Plan.

The Government of Mizoram adopted UGC norms of pay and other facilities for teachers of colleges and other institutes of higher education, since 1986. However, full implementation of the norms are still awaited due to few technical snags in the administrative procedures.

In all district headquarters one or more colleges are established to ensure higher education tenable from the rural folk and to build inclusive society. The State Government has made all-out effort to promote higher education to ensure progress and development of the State and has taken pro-active measures in this direction. State Level Quality 18

Assurance Coordination Committee (SCQACC) and Quality Assurance Cell (QAC) at the Directorate of Higher Education were constituted in 2004.

Quality sensitisation programme was conducted in the state-wide colleges.

High level of motivation for quality promotion was generated in the higher education sector by the sensitising programme. As a result, colleges have taken quality initiatives and quality promotional measures and this movement has substantially raised the quality standard of higher education.

There are nine colleges out of 25 which have been awarded NAAC accreditation.

For quality measures, the Government has set the target for all colleges in the

state to be accredited by the 11th Plan period.

There are some major challenges that the Higher & Technical Education in Mizoram have been facing viz-a-viz with the advancement of Science and Technology, which has set the road to globalisation. However, to make the best use of technological advancements in the teaching–learning process of higher education is one aspect of the needaddressed. Geographical remoteness poses a big hurdle to have better and undisrupted connectivity with the rest of the world. While Mizoram records the second highest position in literacy percentage of the country, it is lagging June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

Major achievements •

• • • • • • •

For quality improvement of higher education institutions, State Level Quality Assurance Coordination Committee (SLQACC) and Quality Assurance Cell (QAC) were established in 2004. Under these initiatives for quality promotion, nine colleges out of 25 Colleges in Mizoram got quality accreditation from National Assessment & Accreditation Council (NAAC).

Financial assistance is given every year to Mizo Students from the Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS) of Post -Matric Scholarship to Scheduled Tribe students.

Under the State Plan Fund. Post-Matric Merit Scholarships is also given every year to meritorious students.

Research Fellowships are given annually to a limited number of Research Scholars.

The Mizoram Hindi Training College has shifted to its permanent Residential Complex from its rented building. The complex was developed with the grant of INR 72.25 lakhs released from Government of India.

Almost all Colleges in Mizoram were given permanent affiliation to the University. More than 50% of the colleges have got UGC recognition under 2(f) and 12(B).

Mizoram Law College the only Law College in Mizoram has been upgraded from aided to deficit status.

During 2006-2007, 31 new lecturers were recruited for deficit colleges.

far behind in the technical education from other states. In the age of Science and Technology, Mizoram has made a poor show in these aspects and this has to be addressed with vigour and earnestness.

Even though the Department of Higher & Technical Education would like to take qualitative measures to improve the higher education systems, financial constraints make it a hinderance to attain the desired goal. More fund allocation to higher education shall help improve the quality infrastructure.

Technical Education is where Mizoram is lagging behind from other states.

The State does not have even a single Technical College. This is the area where a thrust is given by the State Government ICFAI University had made initiatives in Mizoram in the field of management. Now a BBA Programme has been started. To promote Technical Education, the

Mizoram State council for Technical Education was established in 1998 under the chairmanship of Minister of State, Higher & Technical Education and Director, Higher & Technical Education as the Member Secretary. The Technical Cell of the Directorate of Higher & Technical Education functions as the administrative unit of the Council.

AICTE Norms and pay scales have been adopted for Technical Education in Mizoram. The Government has proposed to establish one Engineering College during the 11th Plan.

There are now 2 Polytechnic institutes in Mizoram. One is Mizoram Polytechnic, which was established in 1981 and situated at Lunglei, the second Capital in south Mizoram. The buildings and laboratory are constructed under the 3rd Technician Education Project.

This institute offers 3 yrs. Diploma courses under streams like Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering,

Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, with intake capacity of 20-30 students in each stream.

The 2nd institute is the Women Polytechnic, which was established in 1998 for promotion of women’s empowerment. The physical infrastructure was constructed under 3rd Technician Education Project equipped with latest state of the art facilities. This institute also offers Diploma courses under streams like Electronic and TeleCommunication Engineering, Modern Office Practice, Garment Technology, Beauty Culture and Cosmetology.

In addition, Technical Vocational Educational and Training Course and Community Polytechnic are introduced.

The Department of Higher and Technical Education, Government of Mizoram has a vision to make institutions of higher education technology-driven and quality-motivate institutions to impart world-class education by 2020 AD. The Department has drawn up an Action Plan during the 11 Plan as under as steps towards realising the visions.

• Provincialisation of 12 deficit colleges • Construction of College of Teacher Education building • Construction of Government Zirtiri Resident Science College • Construction of power supply installation and rain water harvesting at Mizoram Hindi Training College, Durtlang • Establishment of Mizoram Engineering College • Establishment of 6 Polytechnic in 6 Districts of Mizoram • Infrastructure improvement of colleges in Mizoram by construction of College building whereever necessary • Construction of collegiate hostels for boys and girls.

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought.

Let’s discover more @ eINDIA2007 Digital Learning | Vol 3 Issue 6 June 2007

19 www.eindia.net.in

case study

Green Teacher online

ICT Enabled In-Service Teacher Training in Environmental Education Shivani Jain, [shivani.jain@ceeindia.org] and Meghana Gaonkar, [meghana.gaonkar@ceeindia.org], Centre for Environment Education, Ahmedabad, India

I

n the year 2003, the concern for mainstreaming EE in India was spelled out by the Supreme Court of India in its directive making EE compulsory at all levels of schooling. Yet another set of reality is the reality of concerns with regard to teacher training in the country.

These include inadequate resources or facilities for EE, limited access to teaching aids, tremendous workload on teachers and the fact that teachers cannot take off long periods of time for enhancing skills or professional development.

Over the years, working with teachers and schools, at Centre for Environment Education (CEE), India, it has been felt that there is an increasing interest among the teaching community to bring environmental concerns into the classroom, as well as to explore innovative and participatory methods of teaching. Schools have become increasingly supportive of such endeavors, and the students themselves are more concerned about the environment and keen to learn about it.

In India today, while a number of teacher training institutions concerned with in-service teacher training, as well as NGOs all over the country, offer a variety of short-term training programmes on EE, it would be fair to say that EE training is not available anywhere near the scale that it is either required or demanded. Besides a gap between the need and the availability of in-service training opportunities, in the Indian context some of the other key challenges/barriers to effective teacher training in EE include: Duration of capacity building opportunities: Most in-service training efforts are short duration workshops (of 3 or 5 days), which act more as ad-hoc ‘orientation’ opportunities rather than sustained capacity-building processes of orienting teachers to EE, hand-holding and guiding them through the initial stages of learning, supervising them in the trial and experimentation phase and building their capacities to the level that they feel confident to be able to take on EE within their teaching-learning assignments.

Time availability with learners: A large number of teachers to be trained fall under the ‘in-service’ category, thus their ability to take on intensive, long duration training programmes is limited.

20

Professionals involved in educating and communicating for environment and development need to have a multidisciplinary perspective; an understanding of development processes, and they also need to possess unique set of skills. However, very often practicing teachers as educators are not necessarily trained in these. This gap in capacity building of teachers makes in-service teacher training in Environment Education (EE), a long felt need.

Today in countries like India, in-service training faces a number of challenges like, lack of time, training programmes not being always relevant to the work situation and needs, limited resources available for training, etc. Green Teacher, a distance education course in EE for practicing teachers was launched by Centre for Environment Education, in partnership and with support from the Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver, Canada in the year 2005 as an experiment towards meeting some of the challenges of in-service training programmes.

With the feedback from pilot run available, it is felt that Green Teacher has relevance to not only practicing teachers in India, who have been assigned to teach environment in their schools, but also for teachers from the neighbouring countries. As a result, the Green Teacher is now being also developed as an on-line traininglearning programme.

June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

Heterogeneity in the ‘learner group’: Since the essence of EE is in being multidisciplinary, EE concerns all subject teachers. The challenge in designing a training programme is thus to ensure that all subject teachers find the training meaningful.

Diversity-Flexibility: In terms of EE, dealing with high diversity, ecological as well as cultural, is challenging. For a training programme to be effective and relevant across a vast country with tremendous diversity, a high degree of flexibility is a must.

Limited resources: In countries like India, the sheer numbers that need to be dealt with tend to always pose the challenge of resource limitation. This challenge requires that by appropriate design a training programme becomes cost-effective.

Overcoming challenges: From ‘inservice’ to ‘on-the-job; on-site’ training CEE, a national centre of excellence in EE has been closely involved in teacher education and training of professionals since 1984. Through its six regional offices, over 30 state offices in the country, and strong networking and partnership with education departments and other NGOs across the country, CEE has, over the last two decades, offered numerous in-service training programmes in EE, mainly through the mode of face to face training and orientation.

However, with the concept of inservice training changing rapidly, not adequate time for teachers to come out of classrooms, need for customised training, peer-learning, learning by doing, the challenge for CEE was how to bring in principles of good quality education into in-service training without necessarily having professionals take off from work for long to come to the ‘training room’. On-the-job; on-site training was obviously the answer and this was possible for CEE to implement only by adopting the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) mode. In the year 2002, CEE, with support from the Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver Canada, undertook an experiment in Digital Learning | Vol 3 Issue 6 June 2007

the form of an ODL teacher training programme in EE. In 2005, this programme called The Green Teacher - the first in-service teacher training programme in EE offered through ODL in the country, was launched. The Green Teacher is designed as an in-service training programme with the objective to enable teacher-learners to effectively take up environmental concerns and issues in the classroom, and engage their students in practical, action-oriented EE activities and projects. Over the last two years, about 150 teachers have been transformed into Green Teachers.

The Green Teacher: A podium for excellence in EE The Green Teacher Distance Education Course is structured such that: • Process of development of course material was participatory, bringing in experts from relevant fields.

• The writing style followed is of self-learning which is suggestive in its tone rather than prescriptive.

• Not all the course modules follow the same pedagogical approaches used. From module to module, based on the focus, objectives and expected learning outcomes, the writing style varies.

• Course design takes into consideration the principles of adult learning, realities of in-service training and features of ESD. Besides the 4 course modules, there is also a 5-6 course project.

• Course timing decided to match

•

•

•

with convenience of teachers in the school calendar.

Course delivery is of ‘blended’ nature, commencing with a compulsory contact session.

Learner support system is being built up with the philosophy of providing some ready-made support features, but several of the features are tailor-made. Further peer support is being strengthened as a key mechanism.

Examination scheme has equal weightage on knowledge and skills components. Course-project makes an important part of this.

From ODL to ICT-enabled on-the-job learning The past two years of successful experience of the Green Teacher illustrates the immense potential that ODL has in meeting the challenges of learnings for sustainable development.

With the feedback from pilot run available, it is felt that the course is required to be translated and adapted to various vernacular languages in India. and that Green Teacher has relevance to not only practicing teachers in India, who are interested in or have been assigned to teach environment in their schools, but also for teachers from the neighbouring countries. The growing demand of EE training across teachers of a variety of disciplines, classes and countries and also the need to provide much locale-specific; subject-specific and customised learning experiences to 21

a teacher-learner are posing challenges of meeting these demands of on-the-job; onsite training without losing the quality and essence of the training programme.

Several features of ICTenabled learning are: • Bringing training to the door-step of the learners - on-the-job; on-site • Providing scope for developing a flexible training design; • Providing effective, efficient and adaptable versions of training material to suit individual learner’s need, making learning more customised; • Providing real-time learning - ondemand training; • Providing more choices and options to learners, thereby making learning experiences more relevant for individual needs; • Enabling very high scope for learner participation in the training programme (comment, contribute and provide feedback to the training design and content thereby ensuring that learners appropriately also become facilitators/trainers); • Enabling the training experience to be not just ‘learner-centred’ but also ‘learner-controlled’; • ICT-enabled tools can help make ‘learner-support’ more responsive and supportive.

As a result, the Green Teacher is now being also developed as an on-line training-learning programme. This programme, called the Green Teacher online is being developed as an experiment of combining the immense potential that Open and Distance Learning (ODL) has in meeting the challenges of learnings for sustainable development with the wide reach and that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can provide to a programme in terms of its reach, timeeffectiveness, cost-effectiveness and learner-controlled.

Lately in India, ICT, as an area of 22

•

To establish a learner-centred and learner controlled, selfsustaining, continuing, ICT enabled open and distance learning programme.

Expected outcomes

supporting communication, learning and training, is growing by leaps and bounds. This is supported the fact that India has launched a satellite devoted exclusively to learning, education and training called the EDUSAT - providing virtual classroom situation, learning experiences and training opportunity to not just the children in all corners of the country but is playing a major role in continuing education, in-service training and learning in the country.

Green Teacher Online The programme is based on an existing print based ODL course called The Green Teacher, developed and offered

by CEE and COL. Green Teacher online will be offered through an ICT-enabled, web-based, Learning Management System.

The larger aims of the Green Teacher online experiment are: • To test and validate the effectiveness of ICT-enabled, webbased learning management system in providing effective, customized and accessible in-service teacher training.

This course will provide teacher/educators across various countries, an opportunity of being trained in Environmental Education at their door steps. In the South Asian context, Green Teacher online course would prove very worthy and effective as an e-Learning tool for adult learning. This online course will enhance skills of teachers in implementing effective Environmental Education in their schools/communities.

This course will also help learners, to share knowledge among them allowing the much valid wisdom and experience of learners to influence the training process.

The above mentioned examples and many more recent developments in the country are providing very supportive indicators to the use of ICT for on-thejob training and learning for educators.

The increasing recognition of ICT enabled open and distance learning as one of the most effective modes of offering on-the-job and in-service training opportunities ensures good acceptance and greater demand for ICT enabled, web-based courses especially for educators and communicators. With a view to making on-the-job training and learning meaningful and relevant, the Green Teacher online is being taken up as a case of educating the educators using ICT based in-service training programme in a highly contested, contextual and dynamic subject, i.e. environmental education and education for sustainable development.

Shivani Jain is a Sr. Programme Coordinator at CEE. She coordinates the Secretariat of Consortium on ODL and has been involved in developing an on-line learning module on MDGs. She contributed to South Asia EE and Training Action Plan 2002-2007, developed by SACEP in partnership with UNEP. Meghana Gaonkar is a Project Officer at CEE and works on teacher training and teacher education projects at the Centre. She is involved in developing, organising and conducting training programmes in Environmental Education (EE) for teachers and educators. Meghana coordinates the Green Teacher programme meant for in-service teachers developed by CEE. June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

3rd Annual ICT4D Conference and Exhibition

7 tracks India's Premier ICT4D event

40 countries 75 corporates

31 July - 03 August 2007 Hotel Taj Palace, New Delhi, India

Limited Delegate Seats Available

75 thematic sessions 1200 delegates

www.eINDIA.net.in

Key Speakers at eINDIA2007 Ashis Sanyal

Aruna Sundararajan CEO, IL&FS

Amar Kumar Joint Secretary Department of IT, Government of Uttar Pradesh

Astrid Dufborg Executive Director GeSCI

Deepinder Singh Bedi Director, Tulip IT Services Ltd.

G Narendra Kumar Secretary, Department of Training & Technical Education and Higher Education, Government of NCT of Delhi

Senior Director, Department of IT, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India

Amit Goel Advisor, Ministry of Panchayat Raj, Government of India

Arvind Kumar Director (BP&L), Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India

Ajay Madan CEO Essar Telecom Ltd.

Aakash Sethi

Basheerhamad Shadrach

Executive Director, QUEST Alliance, International Youth Foundation

Sr. Programme Officer telecentre.org/IDRC, India

G P Sinha Deputy General Manager, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL)

Gerolf Weigel SDC Switzerland

Joselyne Josiah

Capt K J S Brar

Advisor, Communication and Information for Asia, UNESCO

CEO Designmate India Pvt. Ltd.

M Moni K. K. Gupta

M. Rajamani

General Manager, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD)

Joint Secretary, Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India

Deputy Director General , National Informatics Centre, Ministry of Communication & Information Technology, Government of India

Maxine Olson United Nations Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in India

O Nabakishore Singh Commissioner, Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, Government of India

Manish Gupta

Dr M C Pant

Vice President Aperto Networks

Chairman, National Open School

Pravin Srivastava Director Ministry of Health & Family Welfare Government of India

R Chandrashekhar

Dr. Ravinder Singh

Additional Secretary, e-Governance, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India

Director, Ministry of Health & FamilyWelfare, Government of India

Richard Alvarez Canada Health Infoway

Rajat Mukarji Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, IDEA Cellular Limited

Subhash Khuntia Joint Secretary, Ministry of HRD Government of India

Shantanu Prakash

Shashank Ojha

Managing Director Educomp Solutions

World Bank

S Abbassi Shankar Nath Goswami Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Media Lab Asia

Trevor Hodge Canada Health Infoway

Department of IT, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India

Solutions Exchange, UNDP

Veerendra K. Jaitly

Vishal Gandhi

President, Software Technology Group International Ltd. (STG)

Vice-President Life Sciences & Technology, YES Bank

Vaibhav Magow Director, Marketing HughesNet Fusion Hughes Communications India Ltd.

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Corporate Diary | Leaders’ Speak

Over A Million Students Rely on us for Digital Content Needs!

A learning education company, Educomp Solutions has grown over the years a pure education company today, pioneering in digital content, online tutoring, ICT in Education, and many more, through management of learning, content creation and delivery of learning all around the globe. And the man reckoned as the global learning enabler, Shantanu Prakash, the Managing Director of Educomp Solutions, makes education the vision and mission of his life.

Digital Learning | Vol 3 Issue 6 June 2007

27

Corporate Diary | Leaders’ Speak

F

or Shantanu Prakash, education in India is a INR 10,000 Cr business to tap!

service in the Middle East and Dubai markets.

‘The acquisition of ThreeBrix is part of our move to get into the value added part of the education business. A part of the education business happening outside classroom too, through tutoring. ThreeBrix is into e-Tutoring, and we believe online tutoring has a vast potential in near future. By this acquisition, we can jump and tap the online tutoring market more conveniently.’

“In a country currently 1,50,000 schools short, you need to encourage more private capital to come into the sector, so that more infrastructure can be developed. Yet for historical reasons education has always been considered a non profit. We as a for-profit company, certainly look at education as a business, and bring in all the efficiency of the best practices and processes to education industry, starting from the content creation, till delivery. Being for profit enables us to sharply focus on results and the educational ROI to students, Shantanu says.

True! Then why only INR 10,000 Cr? What about nurturing this business further?

India spends about 5% of its GDP in education and this is a number that is still lower if compared to other countries, where as countries like Thailand or Indonesia have 6-8% of their GDP spending in education. If India reaches to that level, then not INR10,000 Cr, but 100,000 Cr business opportunities will be created for India, envisions Shantanu.

Today Educomp Solutions, which is growing at over 100% annually over the past 3 years, with ten offices in India, a fully owned subsidiary in the US and more than 1000 employees, presence in over 2,000 schools in more than 30 cities across India has scaled up to creation, management and delivery of content for the school education system in a big way. Though the visionary man is not thinking of diversifying beyond schools, today Educomp’s technology solutions cover the whole gamut of education starting from multimedia based curriculum content to teacher training for technology and pedagogy, custom content in regional languages, education portals, and online tutoring.

Shantanu does not forget to add, however, ‘We are the largest digital content company, and the largest 28

Shantanu Prakash, the Managing Director of Educomp Solutions Limited founded the company in 1994. He is well known as a thought leader in the education technology space. He founded Deumatics Corporation USA in 2001, and Lakshya Digital Pvt. Ltd. a game development company in 2004. He is also the managing trustee of Learning Leadership Foundation a non-profit working in the areas of bringing best practices in education to schools in India professional development company. We are into Education Process Outsourcing too. And recently we have ventured into pre-school initiative- Root to wing, for basic education.’

This is adding to the fact of Educomp recently acquiring 76 per cent stake in ThreeBrix E-Services, a company that owns ‘The Learning Hour’ tutoring service and was started in 2005 by three IIM - Ahmedabad graduates, and also has gained quick success in e-Tutoring

The company eyes on the Indian market for providing its e-Tutoring service, although it sees the US as an important market for its digital contents. And why not? India’s tremendous potential is visible through its 220 million student learners! The size of the instructor led tutoring market is over INR 5,000 crore in India.

Here is a critical view that Shantanu added. ‘We want to bring in an enduring understanding; understanding the fundamental concept behind any learning. Tutoring is the area where we are trying to expand. Instead of tutoring we rather use the word supplemental educational service. By tutoring we supplement teaching outside the classroom.’

What next?

“Preschool education is another area of expansion for us. And online education is the third expansion area. ‘Mathguru’ is the example of that expansion.”

The maths help programme ‘Mathguru’ hits a massive success with 10000 students as registered users across India.

With this, Educomp is all set to launch probably the country’s first online science tutor - ‘Scienceguru’, a unique model to help students to learn about science subjects as per their school curriculum over the next 6 months.

How does the company read the minds of the students? How does Educomp’s educational services cater to different learning styles of the students? What gives the company the impetus to June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

Corporate Diary | Leaders’ Speak venture into such services and products, that matches the student needs? ‘No, we don’t read their minds’, Shantanu contradicts.

understand, we should not allow rope learning. A multi-sensory environment for student education can break the learning barriers.’

‘We want to bring in an enduring understanding; understanding the fundamental concept behind any learning.Tutoring is the area where we are trying to expand. Instead of tutoring we rather use the word supplemental educational service. By tutoring we supplement teaching outside the classroom.’

‘We don’t need to! CBSE data gives a clear information of the fail percentage of the students in subjects like Maths.

CBSE does not prescribe how we should teach; they have only laid the curriculum. It is we who decide how to make teaching effective. And we

We are also the largest teacher training company in India.

This year we trained few lakhs teachers in the country. ‘We send the trainers to the schools and there, they train the teachers.We have a programme called QuEST – Quality Education for Schools and Teachers, through which we take care of both the pedagogy as well as the technology aspects of training’

Educomp not only helps building student capacity through technology enhanced learning, it also helps improving teacher competency by providing teacher education. ‘We are the largest teacher training company in India. This year we trained 250,000 teachers in the country.

Our focus is very much on the teachers, as we understand, they are the key.’

Any teacher training academy Educomp runs?

‘We don’t have any academy as such’, Shantanu answers. ‘We send the trainers to the schools and there, they train the teachers. We have a programme called QuEST – Quality Education for Schools and Teachers, through which we take care of both the pedagogy as well as the technology aspects.’

So, with all these diversified services taking Educomp to the No 1 position, does Shantanu see a competitor in the education services market?

‘We compete every day. For example, in our Smart_Class project, our competition is not really with other companies. Our competition is with the sluggish school management system.’

Educomp competes for change; And any change needs a fast pace. But never to worry. The company works for well designed learning that can improve the quality of learning. Yet there is a lot of pressure in quick learning too. Educomp thrives with the balancing act between a well designed and a rapidly designed instruction occupying the same space in the education world.

So what does he expect ultimately? The sky is not far up for the man with so many service packages, acquisitions, and expansions. ‘In a recession-proof market that is usually not affected by the external forces, it is not much required to aim and achieve high. Our ROI (Return On Investment) is nonfinancial, which is more in terms of globally educated and trained talents.’

Digital Learning wishes more ROI, more feathers of success for this learning solution company, and for the man behind its vision, to expand the horizon of growth.

Globalisation-led convergence promotes collaboration Information-led convergence enables connectivity Tech-led convergence stimulates creativity And knowledge-led convergence builds competencies Let’s converge at eINDIA2007 Digital Learning | Vol 3 Issue 6 June 2007

www.eINDIA.net.in

29

Corporate Diary | News PARTNERSHIP Satyam, IBM set up KidSmart centres

share Literature/Content/information on emerging trends in technology with the university for academic purposes.

HCL, Saba Alliance targets India

HCL Technologies, a global IT service provider; and Saba, the premier Human Capital Management (HCM) software and service provider have joined forces to provide Saba’s products bundled with HCL’s services to the customers.

Satyam Foundation, the corporate social responsibility arm of Satyam Computer, along with Byrraju Foundation and IBM and Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA), has set up two KidSmart centres in the Indian city Hyderabad.

Taken up on a pilot basis at the Boys Upper Primary School and Government’s High School, they expect to replicate it in other schools later.

The IBM KidSmart early learning programme is a corporate community relationship initiative from IBM. It deploys latest hardware, software and educational materials to give young children with a stimulating environment.

It is aimed at pre-school centres and primary schools.

Wipro Infotech signs MoU with AMU

Wipro Infotech, the India, Middle East and Asia Pacific IT Business Unit of Wipro Ltd, announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Centre for Distance Education of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in Aligarh to act as the strategic IT services partner for the Institute.

Through the partnership, Aligarh Muslim University has engaged Wipro as the preferred IT partner for providing technology solutions and participating in the e-Learning initiatives at its Centre for Distance Education (CDE).

Wipro will offer value added services in the form of imparting training by conducting seminars / workshops for students and university faculty members and technical staff in both academic and practical spheres. Wipro would also 30

The two companies will provide their services and relationships throughout Asia Pacific, mainly India, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. They are also planning to expand in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

Saba will offer knowledge management services such as learning management, system implementation, performance management, talent management, eLearning and courseware. The company already has its sales and marketing office in Mumbai.

The Indian customers will be offered Learning Management System (LMS) in-house, and Product Implementation system benefits. The Saba LMS, implemented by HCL, is a high level strategic solution for planning, delivering and managing events within an organisation; and includes e-Learning, re-skilling, talent, and employee first initiative.

Adobe to tie-up with schools in anti-piracy push

Adobe India plans to forge alliances with educational boards at the school level as part of its initiatives in the areas of building an employable talent pool and spreading awareness about the need to curb piracy.

It is looking at tying up with educational boards including CBSE and ICSE apart from extending its initiatives at university level. Adobe has tied up with the largest university in Tamil

Nadu and are in talks with various other universities for partnership. The company would be providing software and training for faculty and students.

The company is working closely with Business Software Alliance (BSA) for preventing privacy. BSA along with Nasscom has churned out strategies to curb piracy. As a result, piracy in India has come down from 72% in 2005 to 71% in 2006. However, Adobe found that piracy of its software is about 90% and it is trying to bring this down.

PRMIA enhances their partnership with KESDEE in India

PRMIA (Professional Risk Managers International Association) has established a strategic relationship with KESDEE through a PrivateLabel Learning Portal. KESDEE has developed and hosted this private-label portal for PRMIA to train future Risk Managers.

PRMIA offers the only globally endorsed Professional Risk Manager (PRM) certification programme, pursued by over 1,800 active candidates from more than 90 countries. India has over 155 candidates who have already initiated this programme and over 385 new candidates who will start the programme this year.

KESDEE has developed “ePRM Coach” to be a comprehensive online tutorial for the Professional Risk Manager (PRM) Exam. KESDEE’s ePRM coach is designed in accordance with PRMIA’s exam structure and the prescribed study guide. This e-Coach is useful not only for those pursuing certification but also for everyone as valuable reference tool and benchmark of Risk Management competency as per Global Certification Standards. KESDEE also signed a contract recently with Standard Chartered Bank for the implementation of KESDEE’s financial e-Learning solutions globally. All 500 e-learning courses offered by the company will be made available to Standard Chartered Bank for the training of its staff.

June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

Corporate Diary | News PRODUCT Tata Interactive Systems launches TOPSIM Tata Interactive’s suite of business simulations – TOPSIM, which are being launched globally are made available to the UK market for the first time.

TOPSIM offers a rich and highly complex environment with a case-based approach. Over that period, it has been used by major corporations as well as by universities and business schools in Europe and, more recently, India and the USA. TOPSIM is not e-Learning but blended learning with the emphasis on the classroom and where the learning is collaborative. As a team-based competitive simulation, TOPSIM requires that players show the ability to make strategic decisions as a team.

As it simulates the whole business environment, it gives participants a bird’s eye view of business management and competitive dynamics.

TOPSIM Simulations are advanced and comprehensive models that simulate operating environments, used as innovative methods to teach business and management competencies. The simulated environments include business start-ups; a single business function; overall management of an enterprise; managing in global markets, and the macroeconomics of a country.

SkillSoft avails on-demand video SkillSoft PLC , a leading provider of e-Learning and performance support solutions for global enterprises, government, education and small to medium- sized businesses, announced commercial availability of the

Digital Learning | Vol 3 Issue 6 June 2007

Leadership Development Channel (TM), a unique collection of on demand video learning programmes featuring prominent thought leader and CEO content designed to accelerate performance and success at all levels of an organisation.

Building upon SkillSoft’s extensive library of rich web-deliverable learning assets, the Leadership Development Channel provides executives and managers with cutting-edge thinking in business and leadership in a dynamic, engaging and easily consumable video format.

SkillSoft’s Leadership Development Channel is a growing online library of over 450 video learning assets that can be accessed on demand for concise, just-in-time application-based learning.

The Leadership Development Channel can greatly enhance existing multimodal learning programs and is ideal for both individual and group learning experiences, including use as a meeting starter, for one-on-one coaching and during facilitated learning sessions.

The collection is regularly updated with new programmes and encompasses a wide range of online, live and ondemand video learning assets. In addition, select videos are available for download for use on portable devices, including cell phones, iPod and BlackBerry devices.

Infotech companies enter in educational sector Many infotech companies like Microsoft, HP, Zensar and Cadence are working with NGOs to provide better infrastructural facilities to schools, teaching them the use of computers in their education.

Companies like Intel, Cisco, and Yahoo have been involved more directly in education programmes. Recently, Intel has donated INR 1.5 million to the Karnataka state government, India.

Intel employees had invested 13,500 voluntary hours in educational institutes.

While Yahoo! India employees have been working Parikrma Humanitarian

Foundation to empower underprivileged children by providing them quality education. Recently, Yahoo! has inaugurated new school for slum children.

Cisco Systems has partnered with educators, businesses, governments and community organizations to launch the networking academy programme, NetAcad. Cisco employee volunteers explain technical updates like VoIP to students.

PROJECT Cisco to create virtual classrooms

In what could be termed as first time in India Bapatla Engineering College, an Andra pradesh based institute, has announced that it will deploy Cisco Digital Media System to extend the classroom environment and create anywhere, anytime learning experiences.

Cisco Digital Media System will virtualise the classroom environment with remote broadcast and viewing of lectures and on-demand materials.

The college will stream live, sessions conducted by visiting professors and subject matter experts to the classrooms.

Lectures can be viewed online in 15 classrooms and 40 e-class rooms simultaneously. The solution will also help the institute to simultaneously record and archive the sessions. This will help the students to refer the sessions at their convenience from their hostel rooms as well. The archived sessions is presented to the students over Cisco Video Portal, a web-based application that allows students to quickly browse, search, and view digital media interactively.

31

Higher Education

UGC-INFLIBNET

The Knowledge Link From Book Racks to PCs Manoj Kumar K (director@inflibnet.ac.in), Acting Director, Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) Centre, Ahmedabad, India The objective is to facilitate academic communication amongst scientist, engineers, social scientists, academics, faculties, researchers and students through electronic mail, file transfer, computer, audio, video conferencing, etc.

The objective is to establish a computer communication network for linking libraries and Information Centres in universities, deemed to be universities, colleges, UGC Information Centres, institutions of national importance and R&D institutions, etc. The objective is also to promote and establish communication facilities to improve capability in information transfer and access, that provide support to scholarship, learning, research and academic pursuit through cooperation and involvement of different stakeholders.

Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET), the autonomous inter-university centre of the University Grants Commission (UGC) located at Gujarat University Campus, Ahmedabad, is engaged in modernisation of libraries and information centers for information transfer and access, to meet all these objectives and there by establishing a national network of libraries and information centres in higher learning in India.

32

has been providing grants (initial and recurring) to the universities identified under the programme. Every year 15-20 libraries are identified and initial grant to the tune of INR 6.5 lakhs is provided.

This enables the university libraries to purchase computers, modem, telephone, printer, air-conditioner, softwares (OS) etc. These selected universities are also provided with recurring grant for the first five years after the installation of systems. Till now, 142 universities have been given grants for the automation purpose. The above support has given tremendous boost to the automation activities at the participating universities. The Centre has provided technical guidance, including configuration of the systems, modality, execution and retrospective conversion of the data, common standards, etc.

INFLIBNET is a co-operative endeavor in resource development, sharing and its utilisation at national level. Initially, it was started as a programme under Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune on project mode and since May 1996 it attained the status of a full fledged Centre and is set out to be a major player in promoting scholarly communication among academicians and researchers in India.

Library Automation The automation of University Libraries is an important activity of the Centre, since it is also a pre-requisite for networking of libraries and resource sharing under the INFLIBNET Programme. Realising the importance of this basic necessity, INFLIBNET through University Grants Commission

Development of Union database The Centre has developed many databases to support libraries and academic community. Online National Union Catalogue of academic libraries is one of the important databases created over a period of time with different types of material (Books, Serials, Theses etc.), which comprises of eight million bibliographic records and provided building blocks for resource sharing infrastructure both at national and regional level for university libraries in India.

The Centre is also engaged in creating other databases, such as Experts, Research Projects, Experts in Science and Technology etc., which can be June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

• • • • • • •

UGC-InfoNet has become a vehicle for distance learning to facilitate spread of quality education all over the country.

UGC-InfoNet is tool to distribute education material and journals to remotest of areas.

UGC-InfoNet is a resource for researchers and scholars for tapping most up-to-date information.

UGC-InfoNet will form a medium for collaboration among the teachers and students not only within the country but all over the world.

UGC-InfoNet is an Intranet for University Automation.

UGC-InfoNet encompasses entire University System for most efficient utilisation of precious network resources.

UGC-InfoNet establishes a channel for Globalisation of Education and facilitate the universities in marketing their services and development.

accessed online using Internet through INFLIBNET website www.inflibnet. ac.in.

majority of them are from library, information and computers science disciplines.

Software research and development

Programmes Special training 174 Jointly organised Conference/training 149 Jointly organised training for college principals / librarians- 14

The Centre has designed and developed a state-of-the-art comprehensive Library Management Software called SOUL (Software for University Libraries) through its R & D pursuits. It is aimed at accelerating the library automation movement in the country, which has gained lots of popularity in past few years and the installation base has reached to 1350 as on date across the country. This installation base includes Universities, Colleges, Research Centres, Institutes of higher learning etc. due to its user-friendly features and over 1000 orders for installations are in pipeline. It has generated a revenue of INR 3 cr. (approx) for the Centre.

Human Resource Development INFLIBNET has been conducting various training courses/workshops of short and long duration; International Conventions like International CALIBER and PLANNER are regular features too. Several other types of training courses and workshops are conducted in collaboration with different national agencies like ICSSR / NASSDOC, All India Radio, DRTC, ICAR and Kendriya Vidhyalaya Sangattan(KVS), Govt. of Gujarat, Govt. of Andhra Pradesh, etc. So far about 22500 professionals/ academicians in various disciplines got benefited out of 342 activities and Digital Learning | Vol 3 Issue 6 June 2007

Beneficiaries 2939 17290

2250

UGC-Infonet The Centre has been able to realise its one of the objectives by setting up a major communication network of universities and it has successfully interlinked 149 universities through UGC-Infonet which has been planned, implemented and monitored by INFLIBNET using ERNET India, New Delhi (a Govt of India society under Ministry of Information Technology) backbone with state-of-art technology.

Main features of UGC-InfoNet are: • Scaleable Architecture to grow nation-wide terrestrial backbone using fiber optic links • Integrated satellite WAN supporting broadband and SCPC technology • Comprehensive Network Management systems for overall monitoring of the network • Linkage with other academic and research networks all over the world • Security for data and virus protection using firewalls and intrusion detection systems • Dedicated Data Center for Web hosting, e-Journals and Mail Boxes • Broadband Multimedia and Video Channels for Distance Learning

Network Architecture of UGC Infonet UGC InfoNet is based on open IP platform, employing state-of-the-art technologies like IP Multicast, TCP Spoofing and other Internet tools that provide interactive education on PC or TV, enabling on-line response to queries. Open systems architecture will ensure support for current and future applications.

Connectivity options for universities UGC-InfoNet is overlaid on ERNET Infrastructure including a nation wide terrestrial backbone and a complimentary satellite Wide Area Network (WAN). As such ERNET can provide a complete range connectivity options to the universities depending upon their location and bandwidth requirements. Efforts will be made to connect the universities on the terrestrial media. Alternately, a satellite connection will be provided through VSAT. Total bandwidth provided by ERNET for domestic and Internet bandwidth are 288 Mbps and 96 Mbps in last year which is expected to increase to 375 Mbps and 125 Mbps respctively in the year 2007.

Digital Leased Lines In the localities where telecom network is well-developed dedicated leased line will be hired from basic telecom service providers. Such links are primarily for 256 Kbps and 2 Mbps speeds.

Radio Link The universities located within 30 kms of the ERNET PoPs will be provided 33

with dedicated radio links operating from 256 Kbps to 2 Mbps speeds

and Humanities are provided free of cost to 124 universities through UGC Infonet infrastructure and about 60 lakhs articles have been downloaded during three of operation. Through this initiative, savings to the tune of INR 350 Cr(approx.) has been achieved to the national exchequer in first two years(2004-2005).

The Centre has been able to realise one of its objectives ERNET operates a Satellite base Wide Area Network (SATWAN) using C-Band by setting up a major transponder on INSAT-3C. SATWAN communication network hub, located at Bangalore, supports of universities and it has Broadband VSATs with up to 45 Mbps successfully interlinked 149 shared bandwidth and Single Channel universities through UGCPer Carrier (SCPC) VSATs capable Infonet which has been of providing up to 2 Mbps dedicated planned, implemented and bandwidth. monitored by INFLIBNET Satellite based Wide Area Network Special drive for North-East ERNET operates a Satellite base Wide and Jammu & Kashmir Area Network (SATWAN) using C-Band transponder on INSAT-3C. SATWAN hub, located at Bangalore, supports Broadband VSATs with up to 45 Mbps shared bandwidth and Single Channel Per Carrier (SCPC) VSATs capable of providing up to 2 Mbps dedicated bandwidth.

e-Journals Consortium To promote higher educational system, its standard, quality research and bridging the digital divide amongst Indian Universities, INFLIBNET has initiated UGC-Infonet: e-Journals Consortium under UGC in the year 2004 under 10th Five Year Plan.

During the last three years, effective implementation and execution of this programme has made it as one of the largest and successful consortiums around the world. Under the programme, over 4500 high quality peer reviewed priced full text scholarly journals in Science, Technology, Social Science 34

A special annual programme for the benefit of professionals in all eight sister states in the North East region was initiated by way of organising PLANNER(Promotion of Library Automation and Networking in North East Region) in the format of Convention. Four such programmes were organised in four different states in collaboration with different universities in the region.

The response was overwhelming and attracted more than 1000 professionals from the region besides participation from neighbouring countries such as

Bangladesh, Nepal etc. Moreover, under the aegis of Prime Minister’s Office a special drive for automation of college libraries in the region was under taken and SOUL software was supplied free of cost along with training.

The same scheme was also extended to Jammu and Kashmir Colleges. Special training for College Principals of these region was also organised to create greater awareness and ensure speedy implementation.

Consultancy and funded projects The Centre has successfully carried out various projects funded by agencies like WHO, DST/ NISSAT etc. and providing technical consultancy services to various universities. The expertise of the Centre is also sought by Higher Education Department of Sri Lanka, BIS, NISO for standardisation, National Knowledge Commission, INDEST-AICTE consortium, Department of BioTechnology, Government of Andhra Pradesh, Government of Madhya Pradesh, Government of Gujarat, Sakshat Portal, etc.

Future Programmes Entering in Global Village (OCLC, NDLTD, etc.), promotion of e-Learning for remote users, emphasis on e-Journals/e-Books in colleges, digitisation and hosting of Indian academic contents including non print materials, Centre of Excellence in library, information and computer sciences, creation of national academic e-Archives, help in creation of institutional repositories in universities and colleges, high priority on lib automation and networking of remote locations including North East, Jammu & Kashmir, etc., are some of the future programmes of the centre.

The author Manoj Kumar is the Acting Director and the senior most scientist in the INFLIBNET Centre and has joined the centre in 2004. He has more than 15 Years of wide experience in Library Networking, Information and Technology which includes more than 5 years service in Indian Institute of Management of Kozhikode (IIMK) in multi layered architecture with File servers, Database servers,Web server, FTP server, Email server and other high-end servers/computers. He is the Executive authority of the Centre and responsible for development of various library related software packages, setting up of networking facilities, advising and assisting libraries in computerisation process, training the library professionals in use of computers, etc.

June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

Meeting Creates Understanding

Understanding creates Networking. Networking creates Experience.

Experience creates Knowledge. Knowledge creates Technology.

Technology creates Convenience. Convenience creates Well-Being.

Well-Being creates Feeling. Feeling creates Motivation. Motivation creates Participation. Participation creates Meetings!

31 July - 03 August 2007, Hotel Taj Palace, New Delhi www.eINDIA.net.in

resource sHelf

Repository for Educators Knowledge Innovation for Technology in Education (KITE) Provides a knowledge repository for teacher educators and teachers on information about technology integration experiences. The KITE project visited schools, interviewed teachers about their technology integration experiences and organized those stories into cases for use in the KITE case library. (http://kite.missouri.edu/jkite/browse.htm) Technology integration learning environment, the tool assists teacher educators in utilizing KITE cases. The learners are presented with learning scenarios, given KITE cases to help them solve the problem in the scenario, and asked to develop products that demonstrate their learning. (http://www.coe.missouri.edu/~tile2003/) School Administrators’ Technology Integration Resource (SATIR) is a bilingual Canadian initiative, which provides tools and resources to help school administrators successfully integrate ICT into curriculum in their school. The focus of this project is not on the basic skill development but on the development of ICT pedagogy integration skills of educators by sharing successful cases and practical ideas. (http://www.2learn.ca/SatirRitas/SatirMain.html) Preparing teachers for tomorrow (PT3) is a US federal grant programme for training future teachers in using modern learning technologies. Even though many pages of the portal website are currently offline, the PT3 resources database links to a abundance of documents, policies, strategies, tools, video case studies and many other resources provided by grantees and/or pedagogical faculties. (http://www.pt3.org/resources.php) ItrainOnline provides three categories of resources: Effective Training resources include guides for developing ICT workshop materials and strategies for promoting collaboration; a Multimedia Training Kit provides training lesson plans and modules for promoting skill development at different levels, from burning CDs and searching the Internet to creating databases; Topic-specific resources include handouts, slide shows, and workshop outlines for teaching ICT basics such as using the Internet and writing emails to advanced topics such as creating websites and presentations. (http://www.itrainonline.org/itrainonline/english/trainers.shtml) Teacher Resource Exchange, NGFL an easy-to-use database providing teachers and trainers with ICT lesson and training resources. One can find lesson plans, homework, and concise manuals for both primary and secondary levels that coincide with over 20 academic subjects. Materials are geared toward helping students and teachers building ICT skills such as creating/using databases, word processing, using presentation

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software and conducting online searches. (http://www.tre.ngfl.gov.uk/) TERC is organised around several lines of TERC’s work in areas such as curriculum development, research, professional development, equity and out-of-school learning. Although it deals not specifically with ICT, there are indeed some interesting contributions on developing applications of new technology, school reform through research and technical assistance, exemplary models of professional development and a collection of online brochures, project websites etc. http://meet.terc.edu/ is about providing technology-professional development to Massachusetts educators. (http://www.terc.edu/) E-Tiger, the e-learning package is initiated by the Virginia Department of Education to train all school administrators in appropriate use of technology to support student learning. There are eight learning modules in the package addressing the issues, tasks and policy matters that must be resolved by administrators. (http://e-tiger.org/) 4teachers supports the integration of ICT in the classroom by offering tools and online resources to enhance teacher’s skills and knowledge in technology. Besides ready-to-use Web lessons, quizzes, rubrics, etc., there are valuable professional development resources dealing amongst others with the integration of technology into the teacher’s curriculum and technology planning. (http://www.4teachers.org/) Teachers Evaluating Multimedia (TEEM) gives teachers reliable and objective evaluations of educational multimedia. (http://www.teem.org.uk/) ICT Portal for Teachers provides a gateway to Internet resources and websites for utilising ICT resources to enhance teaching and learning. Includes articles and reports describing training projects from developed and developing countries, templates for assessing teacher and student performance, articles on effective use of ICT in the classroom, downloadable software for incorporating ICT into classroom teaching and learning. (http://www.unescobkk.org/ips/ict/ict.htm) Intel Teach to the Future offers free comprehensive workshops which can be customised and utilised in teachers training. Readyto-use materials include presentation slides, facilitator notes, and handouts for participants. The Intel Teach to the Future programme also provides face-to-face professional development. Participating teachers receive extensive instruction and resources to promote effective technology use in the classroom. (http://www.intel.com/education/guide/topics.htm) June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

News asia Colombo University starts m-Learning Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel has partnered with the University of Colombo to introduce an innovative concept, ‘m-Learning’, in the university.

The University of Colombo will design and compile the curriculum.

Initially the course offered through “m-Learning” will be the “Executive Diploma in Marketing” (EDM). This programme is currently offered by the Faculty of Graduate Studies of the University of Colombo, and will be a stepping stone for students with only AL qualifications, providing them with an entry point to move further into pursuing the Post Graduate Diploma in Management and thereafter the Masters in Business Studies (MBS).

The Executive Diploma in Marketing (EDM) will provide students with an intermediate level of knowledge to be applied in the marketing field.

MTC-Vodafone e-learning center leads the way to higher education in Bahrain e-Learning is set to change the face of higher education in the Kingdom of Bahrain as a result of the recent opening of the MTC-Vodafone e-Learning Centre.

The centre, which is Bahrain’s first higher education e-Learning facility, has enabled the University of Bahrain to become a vehicle for e-Teaching and e-Learning. The centre focuses on promoting the adoption of wireless technology to support teaching and learning programmes across eight university departments. It can be 37

accessed by 8000 students, and both staff and students are benefiting with 145 teaching modules already tailored for delivery on the university’s e-Network. The centre has a broader remit to cascade and share the knowledge and expertise acquired through the e-Learning and e-Teaching with other academic institutes and professionals throughout Bahrain.

UNESCO-SALIS e-Learning portal on information literacy

for the visually impaired in Bhutan.

The NID Khaling will function as the national centre for ICT particularly focusing on the need of the visually impaired. The NID Khaling, will open few more centre and provide assistance in ICT to all visually impaired people in the country on use and application of computers. The centre will also function as resource centre. The training is one of activities within the comprehensive package of creating a computer centre for the visually impaired at NID in Khaling. This training will enhance visually impaired people to improve their quality of work through Internet access.

ictQatar luanches e-Learning portal ictQATAR and the Institute of Administrative Development (IAD) have launched an e-Learning portal, a new online educational tool for the country.

The Society for the Advancement of Library and Information Science (SALIS), India, in collaboration with UNESCO, has just launched a sixmonth project entitled Interactive e-Learning Portal on Information Literacy Competency Development Skills for South Asia.

The e-Learning portal will cover a number of self-learning modules, like Information Literacy Models and Standards, Information Communication Technology (ICT), etc. The portal will be developed using Moodle Open Source software. On completion of the project, the information professionals, educators and other persons may participate in the ensuing online course to enhance information literacy skills based on a set of interactive activities.

ICT access for the visually impaired in Bhutan The teachers from the National Institute for Disabled (NID), Khaling and Drukgyel Higher Secondary schools are on training with Media LT, an NGO to spearhead the development of ICT

Now university students and employees in Qatar will have free access to a wide range of professional courses through new online educational tool. The government has developed the portal in collaboration with the Institute of Administration Development (IAD).

The portal will provide users access to 4,000 free courses covering business and professional development, IT and computer software programmes.

Blogs replace blackboards as Singapore schools go high-tech Blogs are replacing blackboards as Singapore moves high-technology into its classrooms as teaching tools.

Under the FutureSchools@Singapore programme, blogs, video-conferencing, tablet PCs, podcasts, 3-D software and interactive whiteboards will be available for learning. Five schools in the city state have been selected to pioneer the use of innovative teaching methods that harness infocommunication technologies (ICT).

Tech-savvy Singapore, one of Asia’s most wired nations, aims to set up 15 such schools at primary and secondary levels by 2015.

June 2007 | www.digitalLearninG.in

Tryst with ICTs Vishwa Bharati Women’s Welfare Society was formed in 1951, in Srinagar, Kashmir, when some concerned members of the society came together and resolved to dedicate their services towards nation building through uplifting of the status of Women in the post Independent India. Starting from a one room cottage today the Society is successfully running a chain of institutions in different parts of the country. Vishwa Bharati Public School, Noida was started in 1988 and since then has grown to become one of the most reputed schools in NOIDA. Rashmi Kakroo (rashmikakroo@rediffmail.com), the Headmistress of the middle school, shares more about the school engagements with ICTs.

Power School Schools have often had a love-hate relationship with the use of ICTs, though things are changing even as I write this. The Central Board of School Education, India has made it mandatory for schools to have computer education taught in classes. The pattern of assessment has also seen a drastic change, with no exams but a system of continual assessment till 9th grade. These decisions coupled with the fact that everyone is understanding the importance and the ease of using ICTs, the school has adopted innovative ICT practices and tools to get teachers and students alike acquainted with such usage and more importantly to make things simple!

ICTs in academics...

All this started really with a small computer lab, where BASIC was the only language taught. As the curriculum allowed for further computer education to be introduced, several computer labs and courses were initiated. The school boasts of computer labs for pre-primary, primary, middle and senior school students. Several courses are taught and students are encouraged to use computers for their regular assignments as well. The assessment system has also brought in new type of report cards, wherein the student performance is gauged periodically, and computerised graphs are used

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to show progress of the student individually or with respect to other students in the class. This helps parents also to monitor the progress chart of their children closely.

Capacity building of the staff as well as the students for these processes is also ensured. Apart from this the whole school has LAN connectivity with every class being connected to the main server. A central announcement system has been installed to pass on the necessary information to all students and staff at any given point of the day

Going on the Web… The school recently also got a website – www.vbps.info which though still in the nascent stages, has been made in-house and would simplify a lot of procedures by making genera; information, application forms, syllabi, etc. available for students and teachers online. Though, most of the school’s staff tends to believe that the manual system works fine, they also agree that the website does have the potential to change thingsmaking them efficient and easy to use. Net connectivity is available at certain a number of systems in the school, though students are given little or restricted access to the Internet within school. This is mainly due to the surge in the number of students spending time on social networking sites and downloading materials which are far from

School Track academic. An attempt has been made to provide enough offline materials to students to work with.

For the teacher was talking too…

An innovative use of ICT has been seen in the usage of finger print identification for marking teacher’s attendance in the school. Like several software companies, the teachers have to mark their attendance by putting their finger across a system, which recognises them and marks the time of their attendance. This system makes sure that if a teacher is late, the accurate time recorded notices that, and the teacher can be marked absent. Punctuality has seen a drastic improvement and it has been noticed that teachers tend to spend less time talking to each other; often, they are seen rushing to their classes!

In the pipeline…

The school is planning to change the classrooms into smart classes wherein plasma screens will be installed and computer-aided education will be imparted to students. This would be a follow up on the connectivity, which has been brought to every class. A study centre will also be established wherein the teachers will work on the study material for the smart classes will be developed.

Things-they-are-achanging…

The world’s changing with the Internet boom and the sudden inflow June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

of knowledge which was initially thought of being erudite or for people of a higher stature. Things which were so difficult and out of reach are now taken as matter-of-fact. The changes in students who are exposed to all this are also tremendous.

Though, all the knowledge and new technologies have also resulted in some common cases of improper usage on the part of the school community. Thus all this, has to be taken with a pinch of salt and a bit of caution. On the positive front though, things have become easy and the school community definitely more knowledgeable. Things seemingly common only for tech-savvy people are now normal for everyone around.

Things have changed, sometimes making it tough to believe that this is the same school which I joined thirty years back!

Rashmi Kakroo joined Vishwa Bharati, Srinagar in 1977. She joined Vishwa Bharati NOIDA in 1990 and was the heading the junior school for 15 years.

She has now taken as the Headmistress of the middle school.

Knowledge Bank Teaching Science with ICT Most of the students today are found to be lacking in creativity, analytical and critical thinking, as the traditional approaches do not encourage students for analytical and critical thinking. Evidence from a number of disciplines suggests that oral presentations to large groups of passive students contribute very little to real learning. In physics, standard lectures do not help most students to develop conceptual understanding of fundamental processes such as electromagnetism, mechanics, etc.

It is difficult to imagine learning about science without practical demonstration. Labs are wonderful settings for teaching and learning science. They provide opportunities Digital Learning | Vol 3 Issue 6 June 2007

to the students to think about, discuss, and solve real problems.

ICT (Information Communication Technology) can be used to enhance teaching and learning in the school curriculum. It refers to the use of a wide range of computer workstations and display facilities, software, specialist hardware, still and animated images, graphic calculators, etc.

Students can access a large range of information that included assessment materials from CD-ROMs, from the Internet and from resources prepared by their teachers. They can use these materials to carry out and test how well they understood, and could visualise a number of key scientific

ideas. Using ICT, students could archive a high levels of motivation.

This motivation provides a climate in raising students’ attainment in coursework. ICT can be an essential part of teaching, which improves students’ understanding of subject.

Using ICT, students can simulate experiments and visualise the processes, which are otherwise abstract. Used as a follow-up to a real experiment, ICT is a great step forward in the teaching of science. It is amazing how many different experiments can be tried in a short span of time. There are some experiments, which, are too dangerous for pupils and yet they really ought to do, e.g. in Acid-Base Titration, they can experiment with a wide range of acids and bases more efficiently using ICT. Students’ achievement in a number of aspects of physics and mathematics can be promoted with the effective use of ICT. For example, diffraction, interference, beats and the Doppler effect, hard to demonstrate on

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blackboard, become so easy using multimedia animations. Similarly ICT grabs students’ attention in Biology for understanding some abstract concepts of cell biology and biomedical techniques.

Physics can be more innovative using multimedia as well as real life problems. Physics is a highly visual subject, and many concepts of physics can be best covered graphically. Figures do far more than algebra-based physics- often the graphics bear the main burden of the description. For example, in physics certain microscopic phenomenon such as double slit experiment for interference in which due to variation in wavelength the fringe width also varies, physically, it doesn’t seem feasible to represent this process in the class room but multimedia based teaching can show it more effectively.

Multimedia based physics teaching develops the interest of the students in the subject and help them to imagine a world governed by the fundamental laws of physics. Einstein has mentioned, “Imagination is more important than the knowledge”.

One of the most common methods to learn is by comparing and contrasting. Learning of diffraction, another important phenomenon, which is generally given with black and white image, can be more effective by using colour images.

Since physics applies to everything in nature, so it is quite reasonable to point out the applications of physics with the real world. Angle of a talus slope is determined with the help of static friction, ultrasound as an application of sound waves; water

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drops can be used as convex lens, thermograms, i.e., photographs made with infrared radiations, provides a useful method for measuring temperature as warm portion appears reddish whereas cold portion appears bluish.

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• •

• Chemistry is the subject in which students try to understand natural phenomena systematically.

Students often develop scientific understandings as a result of selfobservations but this approach is problematic when the phenomena are unable to observe directly.

Molecular phenomena are mainly shown in 2-dimension, but that can be explained more effectively by providing 3-dimensional view using multimedia. Multimedia-based chemistry teaching can help students to overcome the difficulties in understanding chemical phenomena.

Biology is the study of all spheres of life, related to our body and our surrounding. It is difficult to observe many biological processes such as internal structure of leaf, circulation of blood and DNA structure in the classroom scenario, but multimedia allows the students to observe these experiments in action.

With the continuously developed and improved web-based resources, teachers will have an opportunity to produce tailor made resources, at no cost, which will match the curriculum and the needs of the students. The resource can be used in a variety of ways.

• Make the learning experience more interactive • Permit ‘virtual science’

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experiments to be carried out in interactive Internet sessions Allow teachers to freely share resources with colleagues and students at other institutions Create more opportunities for students to learn independently Make course documentation freely available to students and their parents Explore, describe and explain number patterns Apply and Practice number of interactive exercises to assess and consolidate their knowledge Develop their vocabulary, logical thinking and problem-solving skills Provide opportunities for students and ex-students to contribute directly (by producing web pages) and therefore to feel some sense of ownership and involvement Develop their ability to think flexibly and innovatively Support educational management more effectively.

ICT is not just about computers, it includes using tape recorders and video and digital cameras, these resources will prove invaluable in teaching and learning. For students with major physical impairments, severe dyslexia or impaired cognitive development, an on-screen grid can help them to communicate better.

Having auditory feedback where the word processor ‘speaks’ each letter or word can enable improved access for many students. Development of information technology in education can be utilised in an exciting way to enhance teaching methodology and to move towards the familiar future from the remote past. Moreover, ICT provides professional and personal growth to the teachers.

Pankaj Agarwal has a Ph.D. in Physics with over 10 years experience of teaching Physics.At present, he is working as Subject Matter Expert (Physics) in JIL Information Technology, Sahibabad, Ghaziabad, where looks into visualising the concepts and developing content for the production of a multimedia based classroom centric teaching aid. He has been selected as Member for NASA’s Saturn Observation Campaign for 2006.

June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

Learning Curves Free tool to create animations

Star rating for Malaysian school ICT usage The Information Communication Technology (ICT) division of the Education Ministry in Malaysia will grade government schools on their usage of ICT with a star rating system similar to hotels.

Five-star rating would be accorded to schools where students used 80% of the computers and equipment installed during curriculum and extra-curricular activities. This is one approach of the division to measure the effectiveness of ICT in schools.

Scratch is a new programming tool that allows anyone to create their own animated stories, video games and interactive artworks has been developed.

Primarily aimed at children, Scratch does not require prior knowledge of complex computer languages. Instead, it uses a simple graphical interface that allows programs to be assembled like building blocks. The digital toolkit, developed in the US at MIT’s Media Lab, allows people to blend images, sound and video. Scratch is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, with financial support from the National Science Foundation, Intel Foundation, and MIT Media Lab research consortia.

Scratch is now available to download for free and works with both Apple Macs and Windows PCs. A version of the tool is also currently being developed for the XO laptop, designed by the One Laptop Per Child Project. It is free to download from: http://scratch.mit.edu/download

Out-of-school youths can still get high school diplomas Four agencies opened the “E-Skewela: Ang Kwelang Eskwela Training Center” at the Tejero Elementary School to give out-of-school youths in Philippines a second chance at getting a high school diploma. ESkwela is a project to bring technology to out-of-school youths as a way of intervening the vicious cycle of poverty.

The E-Skwela training center in Tejero is the fourth in the country and the first in the region. Other E-Skwela training centers could be found in Cagayan de Oro City, Quezon City, and Bulacan. There are 20 computers with headsets at the E-Skwela Center in Tejero. The center caters to out-of-school youths and adults in four barangays but the people in other places can still enroll as long as they are out-of-school, regardless of their age. Screening of students, supervising the center, and overseeing the students’ performances will be done rigorously by DepEd personnel.

Tech-voc education in 140 Philippine schools The Department of Education is set to implement technical-vocational education in selected 140 technicalvocational and trade schools in Philippines starting this coming school year.

The strengthened technical-vocational education programme is a competency-based high school curricula for 18 priority subject areas jointly developed by the DepEd and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA). In connection with this, some 1,539 Technical Vocational Teachers (TVE) in the country are now participating in a three-week related training being conducted at various regional training centers of TESDA starting last May 21 to June 8. By school year 2009-2010, the DepEd expects that the number of tech-voc schools in the country implementing this strengthened tech-voc education programme will increase to about 261 tech-voc schools.

Digital Learning | Vol 3 Issue 6 June 2007

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the foyer

Curtain Raiser

Digital Learning India 2007 7 May, 2007, India International Centre, New Delhi, India

The largest ICT and Education annual conference and exhibition is preparing ground for a take off! Preludes...

The third in the series Digital Learning India conference and exhibition on ICT in Education is scheduled to take place in the Hotel Taj Palace in the Indian capital city, New Delhi from 31 July to 3 August 2007. It is expected to be graced by over 1500 delegates from countries all around the globe.

The meeting with the conference programme advisory board on 7 May, 2007 at the India International Centre, New Delhi, was a curtain raiser of the conference that is being organised by the Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, in collaboration with the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Govt of India and UNDP. Only 120.59 thousand schools imparting elementary education in India have computers in place, out of one million plus schools. Only 5.14 per cent Government schools have computers, while it is 30.52 per cent in case of Private managements schools. There is significant difference in percentage of schools having computer in rural areas (8.05 percent) and urban areas (30.07 percent). A significant difference is still noticed in the availability of teachers in rural areas (3.76 teachers) and in urban areas (7.40 teachers) and also in schools managed by government (3.62 teachers) and private managements (7.10 teachers).

Envisioned upon these backdrops, the 42

conference has been scheduled with some discussion themes like ICT in Education policy, Content Development and instructional design, Teachers’ capacity building in ICT-enabled education, School management with ICT, e-Readiness of Higher Education, Online courses and Mentoring in higher education, Showcasing new tools and technologies in education, amongst other strategies and discussion points.

The Advisory Board met to discuss and deliberate on the agenda for the ‘coming soon’ conference- Digital Learning India 2007. The Meeting saw participation from the Programme Advisory Board members and other key resource persons from Government, Private sector and civil society organisations. The meeting was chaired by R Chandrasekhar, Additional Secretary, Department of IT, Government of India, and Co-Chaired

by Subhash Khuntia, Jt Secretary, Department of Secondary and Higher Education, Ministry of Humans Resource Development.

The Jt Secretary pointed out that while the country is moving towards connecting all secondary schools with broadband, it is extremely important to keep the focus on making the teachinglearning process more effective. He said, the conference is happening in the right time and the conference participation and discussion will be even better than last year.

Ravi Gupta, Executive Director, CSDMS and the convener of the conference, while explaining the the main objective of the event said, it is to bring policy makers, leading private sector players, social investors in ICTs, academia, and civil society organisations to confer, consult and share knowledge June 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

on good practices of ICT4D for policy action and effective planning and implementation of programmes.

The members’ comments, feedback and suggestions on the conference agenda was quite encouraging.

Members’ suggestion on conference agenda • IT implementation in primary education should also be given due care; • To not reinvent the wheel and learn from Britian and Malaysia who have made huge investment in IT at school and smart school projects; • Central Board of Secondary Education should be called to justify the IT curriculum for school; • Need to discuss the certification procedure in the higher education process, need to understand the need of these students who do not feel confident with the present certification process;

Digital Learning | Vol 3 Issue 6 June 2007

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There is a need for guiding principles for ICT enabled learning at the state level; Questions were raised as to whether a policy of ICT in education that may define a framework will be welcome by the states- as education being a concurrent subject, the states are not under obligation to follow the framework- it was also pointed out that the states may find it useful to follow such a framework as in many cases the states are not aware and often look for guidance for ICT-enabled education processes;

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Outcome of the conference should reflect on the policy of the government.

As the Jt Secretary said in his concluding remarks, lessons and inputs can be taken form the conference on key issues of ICT-enabled education, which will add to the knowledge sharing for effective ICT-enabled education in India.

For more information about the conference Digital learning India 2007, visit www.eINDIA.net.in/ digitalLEARNING

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News world Government approves 5 ICT initiatives for tertiary institutions of Ghana Federal Government of Ghana has approved five ICT initiatives for the nation’s tertiary institutions to be coordinated and supervised by the National Universities Commission (NUC).

These five initiatives are Students ICT resource centres; computer acquisition scheme for lecturers; upgrade of websites; pooling of bandwidth requirements and video driven lectures. Each resource centre will consist of a cyber centre with at least 200 computers connected to high speed Internet through C-Band. Under this programme, four or more fully equipped classrooms for instructor-led technical training; provision of physical accommodation space for Students Career Counselling and Campus-wide wireless distribution to support future growth would be provided.

Uganda Govt provides solar computers to rural school

The Uganda Government has approved the proposal to provide solar powered computers to children in rural schools.

The government has approved the production of the solar-powered computers for use in rural schools.

This would be first kind of project in Uganda to provide computer skills to children in rural schools. The computer is powered by a small battery. Inveneo, a US firm based in San Francisco, will produce the computer. The cost of solar powered computer is about $250. It has Internet reception capability and is compatible with both wireless and Intranet.

Ugandan university goes digital

Makerere University in Uganda has become the first higher learning institution in East Africa to install new information and communication technology.

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The installed information portal aims to enable students to settle school fees, register, manage their course work as well as crosscheck their assignments with the use of Internet. The portal also includes back end devices that include servers, storage devices, back up devices and a dedicated twenty four hour wide wireless access system through an interactive website www. mymubs.ac.ug that can be accessed at any Internet connection in the world.

15 universities in six other African countries, including Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria have already gone digital.

Digital Bridge Project launched in Liberia University

The Digital Bridge Project has made its public debut at the main campus of the University of Liberia. The Digital Bridge Project is aimed to bridge the digital divide in Liberian universities.

The laboratory includes 200 computers with access to a university Intranet, research database and a VSAT Internet connection. The project will help students to register for courses, get assessments and pay fees online. The aim of the multi-media PC laboratory at the University of Liberia is to partner with Liberia to accelerate its transition to a knowledge-based society in which the currency of exchange is information.

Brunei’s Education Ministry offers one click access service to teachers

The Ministry of Education, Brunei will allow teachers, students and other public members to access various services through new ICT project `MoE Enterprise Service Portal.’

The Education Ministry of Brunei has signed an agreement with local firm TechnoNet Sdn Bhd on the provision of the Enterprise Service Portal, which will set up all enterprise information management (EIM) systems in scale and functionality.

The MoE Enterprise Service Portal is one of the projects under the flagship of e-Education, which is categoried into five programmes, namely Edunet, e-Learning, Education Information System, Digital Library and Human Capacity Building. The portal will provide all services of Education Ministry into one framework, which would be accessed by administrative staff, teachers, students, and the public, according to their respective permissions. The application will run on Singaporebased solutions provider specialising in learning management systems, Dnium’s e-Learning engines and written in Sun Microsystem’s Java Enterprise Edition.

Morocco progresses in e-Learning programmes

Distance learning is gaining momentum in Morocco with help from both the public and private sector.

Around 15 percent of private companies are investing on distant learning programmes.

The increased availability and functionality of IT has brought new teaching tools to the Moroccan market, including mobile phones, video-conferencing, e-mail, discussion forums, chat software and document sharing. Recently, Morocco’s finance ministry has decided to integrate a dedicated distance learning service into its organisational structure. The Ministry of National Education has begun work on an interactive television system (TVI), which aims to provide remote training for teachers across the Kingdom. Formademos, a local firm, has launched two Masters programmes aimed at university graduates with at least one year of work experience. One programme offers a degree in “education and employment systems technology”, and the other programme offers a degree in business administration.

June 2007 | www.digitalLearninG.in

Mark Your Calendar june Instructional Strategies for Blended & Online Learning 13 - 15 June, 2007 Boston, MA, United States http://www.academicimpressions.com/conferences/0607-instructional-strategies.php?q=confalerts&c

Higher Education in the 21st Century - Diversity of Missions 25 - 27 June, 2007 Dublin, Ireland http://heconference.dit.ie

International Management Education Conference 2007 (iMEC2007) 22 - 24 June, 2007 Penang, Malaysia http://fpe.upsi.edu.my/imec/index.htm

july Blending High Tech and High Touch: Improving Customer Service and Student Retention 12 - 13 July, 2007 Boston, United States http://innovativeeducators.org

International Conference on Imagination and Education 18 - 21 July, 2007 Vancouver, BC, Canada http://ierg.net/confs

31 July- 3 August, 2007 Hotel Taj Palace, New Delhi, India www.eINDIA.net.in/digitalLEARNING

august The Green Olympiad 15 August, 2007 TERI, New Delhi, India www.teriin.org/olympiad

Digital Learning | Vol 3 Issue 5 May 2007

International Conference on Management of Technological Changes - MTC 25 - 26 August, 2007 Alexandroupolis Greece http://www.cetex.tuiasi.ro/mtc2007

Teaching and Learning in the Changing World of Higher Education 30 - 31 August, 2007 National University of Ireland, Ireland http://www.aishe.org/events/2006-2007/conf2007/ call.html

september iPED Conference 2007: Researching Academic Futures 10 - 11 September, 2007 Coventry, England United Kingdom http://www.corporate.coventry.ac.uk/cms/jsp/polopoly. jsp?d=3182&a=18618

Case Study: The Implementation of a Student Success Course at One Community College 27 September, 2007 Online http://www.innovativeeducators.org

october 2nd Athens International Conference on University Assessment: Assessing Quality 12 -14 October, 2007 Athens, Greece http://quality.hau.gr/

Institutional Research and Accountability in Higher Education 17 - 19 October, 2007 Reno, NV United States http://www.rmair.org/page.asp?page=1246

Nominations open for Manthan Award 2007 Digital Empowerment Foundation has invited the nominations for Manthan Award 2007, in order to recognise the practitioners of eContent for development at the grassroots level.

Nominations from individual participants, organisations, individuals seconding nominations for grassroots practitioners who are doing pioneering work in developing, creating and dissemination digital content, be it online or offline, for grassroots empowerment and development in daily walks of life.

Categories for nominations • e-Business • e-Learning • e-Culture, • e-Government, • e-Health, • e-Enterprise & Livelihood, • e-Entertainment, • e-Inclusion, • e-Education, • e-News, • e-Localisation, • e-Youth, • m-Content, • e-Environment, • Community Broadcasting Last date for nomination is 15 July, 2007.

One can file in nominations in two ways: 1.

Online filing of nominations after visiting relevant section on this site, or

2.

Downloadable nomination form to be sent to manthanaward@ gmail.com

Form can be downloaded from http://www.manthanaward.org/

Enlist Your Event Here. Write to info@digitalLEARNING.in

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May 2007 | www.digitalLearning.in

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