National Policy on ICT in School Education

NATIONAL POLICY ON ICT IN EDUCATION
Suggestions by Prof Jitendra Shah
Senior Lecturer, VJTI, Mumbai
Rethinking of Education : Avoid retrofitting computer (new bottle ) with
instructionism (old wine)

Premises:

Knowledge must be free. Services may be chargeable

Commerce may facilitate spread of knowledge, but must not restrict access by proprietory controls

Challenge is to spread quality education in conformity with the potential that ICT offers.

Higher education institutes, School Education (both under MHRD) and DIT (under MCIT) and similar authorities in state governments have been operating far too separately for the convergence platform like ICT to show its potential

Not having spread ICT too widely so far, and now with the connectivity becoming widely available, it is the right opportune time to take an integral view of how ICT should be used to leapfrog in education.

Equity and quality are not antithetical but complimentary, if only narrow commercial or other vested interests are discounted.

The communication technology (internet broadband on wireles, satellites including edusat) and mobile computers will synergise easy flow of communication. If we have missed the bus for 60 years, let us not miss the ridethis time around.

India can be on top of the world in knowledge economy, not because we(3%) embrace english while local languages die, but because we (90%)use local languages well and (10%) can also deal better with english.

Suggestions:

1.Answer the question frontally: For whom? Policy for whom? ICT for whom?
(a)For the 3% english knowing and 5% more aspiring to know English or also for the rest of the majority? My answer :priority for the majority . The elite will fend for itself. The national policy must be for the majority. This implies

A.first and foremost make softwares in local language a PRECONDITION
B.Provide incentives to state governments for creating the contents in the local language for free distribution
C.Free the contents from the commercial clutches by making all educational content (curricula, text book material , multimedia contents, all in hard and soft copies) in schools under Creative Commons license or GPL , independent of whether paid for by State or otherwise.
D.All educational software be mandatorily FOSS(Free and Opensource) even if the software is on proprietary platform.

(b)Restrict use of ICT in formal education only to secondary / middle-school/high (8th standard) onward and not in primary .

i.For younger children, the presence of computers in culture around will be enough and let at least 5 years pass before this is brought down to primary levels. This will also help scale up uniformly across the nation and conserve resources.

ii.This does not prevent using computers for training teachers or parents even for primary schools.

2.Technology: Information Flow( with or without internet connectivity):

(a)Use any connectivity method but make internet available to teachers on priority.
(b)Set up a hierarchical system of communication from Centre to state to district
(c)Teachers must have a connection and access to at least a district wise centralised system so they can get messages from and give feedback to the centralised system . This will have to be in local language (with due flavour of the language.
(d)Create/encourage/subsidize hybrid systems (internet+pendrive+State transportbus or Bus with V-SAT )for updating and making available information and content on DVDs/pendrives in district level libraries upto villages (e.g M/S United Villages)

3.Curriculum building teacher capacity building:

(a)Emphasise learning environments that use the interactive , exploratory and collaborative power of computers rather than the static contents modeled on textbook format where computers are largely used as merely electronic page turning device with programmed instructions. This will lead to construction of knowledge and associated charm ( aha!) rather than memorising as learning.( Refer drgeo at www.ofset.org , LOGO ( www.softronix.com unfortunately not FOSS), geogebra (www.geogebra.org) , netlogo ( at ccl.northwestern.edu North-western University, Chicago) and tools like blender3d, GIS etc) Also refer Children's Machine: Rethinking Education in The Age of Computer by Seymore Papert
(b)Create repositories of curricular contents with a one-stop-shop platform for easy collaboration. ( www.curriki.org is one example and see a white paper by Bobby Kurshan from Curriki )
(c)Create multilingual versions of the above repositories, open to teachers, parents
(d)Make the best curricula with all necessary components(see White Paper referred above) fur teachers available to teachers
(e)Encourage teachers to participate in collaborative curriculum building so they are abreast with the best .
(f)Reward teachers handsomely for adding peer-reviewed

i.local (original),
ii.localised(originally from external source) content in international or local languages

(g)Use FOSS GIS for even non-science i.e arts, commerce courses for learning environmental issues, of geography, economics , history , etc

4.Teacher education:

(a)Respect the teachers

(b)Make computers empower teachers

i.in her own learning, access to information
ii.improving and showing her performance,
iii.getting rid of drudgery.

(c)Accept parents as part of teachers and emphasise empowering community facilities (like CSCs, libraries, science museums etc)

5.Books: Gradually reduce spending on paper (hardcopy ) books to the extent softcopies , internet and updating the same can substitute books .Remember the cost of paper is not the market price but the environmental cost too. Not to ignore environmental cost of electronic media.

6.Community: To quote Curriki: �Open Source and the Participation Age :The basic idea behind open source software is simple: 1.read, 2.redistribute, and 3.modify 4.organize and govern themselves, 5.evaluate and 6.improve 7.grow in size and 8.influence. 9.community can fix, 10.improve or 11.adapt � Thus create a community of teachers, parents to participate across the net in continuous learning process.

7.Administration and Policy : Avoid vendor driven policy

(a)Norms for the equipment and software for schools must not be vendor driven but socially determined. Thus purchase , selection of hardware and software must be informed with above premises and compatible with the visons of replication, low cost but highest quality.

i.e.g computers must not be �Microsoft� and Word Processing must not be �Microsoft Word�
ii.Curriculum must be based on generic names of softwares so the best available can be chosen or free and open source alternatives must be utilised to the maximum. In the case of school education we may rerely need to go for any proprietary softwares for standardisation across the nation.
iii.Where needed resources be made available to create the FOSS alteratives using indian software talent.
iv.Emphasise OPEN standards (hopefully this remains as per governement policy) for hardware and software to avaoid vendor lockin.
v.Encourage use of thin-client server based computing to minimise miantenance and management efforts and thus encourage software that can be web or server based.

(b)Funds for teacher education/training etc be used for knowledge genration reflected in visible increment in the pool of repositories and not be certificate-generating systems based on mere repetitions. Thus projects by teachers be pooled and published on websites , classified and peer reviewed with selection for addition to the pool and for rewards.

(c)All curricula be audited and wherever proprietary softwares have been specified, justification of the authors of specification be obtained and the same be vetted by experts including proponents of FOSS Government funds must not be spent on proprietary software unless so justified.

(d)Encourage Open schools : liberal grants for creating public facilities including CSCs (Rural+Urban)

(e)Liberal grants for Opensource and Free contents