National Policy on ICT in School Education

The Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD) Community organized its Visioning Workshop on the 6th and 7th of December 2007 at Auroville. The workshop brought together over 100 participants from all over India and provided an opportunity for face to face interaction, deliberating on emerging ICTD issues and challenges, sharing members’ focus of work, and strategizing on the future course of action for the ICTD Community. The forum, attempted to explore and share various rural development endeavours by augmenting inclusive and participatory learning. The workshop had an Action Group on National Policy on ICT in School Education, championed by Ms Jayalakshmi Chittoor of CSDMS. The community-at-large supported the Action Group through suggestions on the idea development.

Discussions Outcomes:

• Training of Educomp – Karnataka adopted by state government – none of them were using – Ongoing training for teachers – follow up mechanism needed - Radio

• Books that go along with learning – supply demand mechanism – follow-up

• Lots of ICTs – wider definition is important beyond Computers – gaps exists – infrastructure – multi-media CDs needs to be integrates with classroom integration

• Rural Schools in Maharashtra – creating multi-media repositories – educate teachers to adopt this in the classrooms.

• Teaching material can be developed – to become better teachers, will help in adoption

• License cost is important, sharable content is recommended – content generated by teachers themselves (Thailand – lessons sharable – worked really well) - Fred

• Content generators rather than just mere consumers

• Need to go beyond school

• New forms of learning – peer-to-peer foundation needs to be initiated

• EDUSAT – last 4 years – applications not even 10% - content was not ready. Just connectivity is not enough

• Nepal – community radio has worked with school teachers – to produce lessons – reached school students and non-school students – Use of community radio = must be added in the definition/ in policy

• NIOS – should also be considered

• Inclusiveness should be an important consideration

• Public in higher education – use/train the youth to work in rural areas for the change management process

• Policy should affect all tiers – teachers, pupils, how can we engage the communities

• Sharing of already generated content (across states, etc.) – Larger framework on sharing is needed

• Monitoring role of communities for the ICT integration can be considered

• Regional and state level – consultations for teachers

• Tribal education – (surveys can be done Ravindra Vaidya – need analysis)

• Content in local language – general standards, second language – these are challenges – addressing drop out causes (rajan)

• Best Practices should be documented and share it widely – resource centre - can collated (akshaya, byrraju) – let us make it sharable

• Visual medium should also be included – in the definition – multi-media packages developed by teachers

• Public investments should make publicly sharable

• FLOSS World in education

• Capacity building of teachers – in-service

• AP – first to seventh class in Telegu – SIET – never seen being used – though telecast in Doordarshan – needs improvement – must be used more extensively

• NCERT, SCERT – CIET – multimedia content – State level – Link this to the new policy

• NCTE – teacher’s training – IT initiation camps exists – needs to see how to improve this.

• Gaps in multi-media presentation – interactive: q&a or fill-in or repeat will be more helpful.

• What platform are we going to go with? This is very important – OS upgradation costs is a huge burden – especially on state exchequer

• ICT should add value – only couple of teachers are trained, not all teachers - this trend needs to change – regional hubs for training – Panchayat level – can be thought of.

• B.Ed. Curricula can be changed

• Concept based courseware is better to be developed rather than curriculum based courseware – it will be easily sharable across states

• TV for education: Sesame Street – cartoons

• Mobile phones for school classes (500 million users are likely in the next 10 years) – can be looked at (as in Japan)

• Research is an important aspect - pedagogy

• Videoconferencing, cable connectivity for reach

• Speed up – EFA goals - NCF

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Read all the responses to our call for suggestions, recommendations and position papers on ‘Defining a Roadmap for Building a National ICT in School Education Policy’

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