International Conference on Universal Quality School Education (UQSE) GeSCI Session: Towards a Policy on ICT in Education
23 November, 2007, Hotel Ashok, New Delhi

Participants
Osama Manzar, Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF)
Anshul Sonak, INTEL
Radha Ganesan, QUEST Alliance
Douglas Bell, Education Development Centre (EDC)
Ajay Kapur, Oracle

Recommendations
The International Conference on Universal Quality School Education (UQSE) was organised in New Delhi by Educational Technology and management Academy, in association with UNICEF, UNESCO, and Media Lab Asia. The conference was attended by a number of academicians, educationists and experts from across various sectors that included Schools, corporate, non-government and government. The session elaborated on the role of technology in leveraging school education and emphasised on the need to have a guiding policy at state/district level to solve the complexities of implementing ICT in school education.

Recommendations

• Learner-centric Policy: The country has a young demography and the policy should support the learners and empower them with 21st century skill sets to build an efficient workforce for the knowledge economy.
• Innovation: ICT can act as a catalyst in achieving education for all through innovative uses of technology in the education system. The community should be empowered to bring in innovation in the adoption and use of ICT across the country. ICT should not be just about computers. It should support knowledge creation at local level.
• Strengthening of Dialogue: The policy should support the two-way process of dialogues, which includes the top-down model from the states-to-villages and the bottom-up model of villages/grassroots initiatives being incorporated and recognised by the state. There should be a technology-people connection.
• Infrastructure Standards: There is a need to identify and outline the ICT infrastructure requirements of a school for adoption of technology for teaching and learning. There is a need to outline the role of school management on ICT decisions in schools. The connectivity benchmarks should be laid down for schools.
• Instructional Design: The content should be based on instructional design and pedagogical instructions. The infrastructure component should consider the hardware/software solutions on using digital content for teaching and learning.
• Need Analysis for School-Survey: There is a need to research and execute a survey methodology for identifying the ICT needs of schools for adoption of ICT in teaching and learning
• Setting of Targets: There is a need to set targets for adoption of ICT in schools.
  
  - 5 yrs - 10 yrs computer literacy or Internet literacy should be attained after schooling
  
  - The target attainment of Computer: Student ratio in the next years
  
  
• Professional Development of Teachers: The role of teachers should be defined in the policy and ICT to support the teacher should be outlined and should not aim to replace the teacher. Pre and in-service teachers should be given priority for capacity building and teacher training to introduce the IT skill sets for teachers.
• B.Ed Curriculum: The policy should suggest a change of the B.Ed curriculum of institutes of teacher training to include ICT as a compulsory component. There should be teacher competency standards laid down in the policy.
• ICT for Girl Education: The policy should initiate and support projects and programmes to use ICTs for maximising the education reach to the girl child empowering them for a brighter future and skilled workforce.
• Radio- An Introductory Technology: The innovative use of radio as an introductory technology will provide an opportunity for the schools to start on an ICT roadmap. Radio being cost-effective and high penetration across all rural areas should be promoted as a technology tool for education outreach.
• Introduction of Internet-based research: Connectivity is bringing knowledge exchange and changing interactions nation-wide, knowledge sharing is now two-way global-local. The policy should address issues of connectivity and account for the availability of resources and time to utilise this important learning tool.
• ICT advocacy: The government needs to be aware of the issues of ICT technology and its benefits in the education sector. There is a need for strong ICT advocacy by NGOs, CSOs and other organisations working in the domain of ICT and education. The States should adopt a leadership role.
• Financial Assistance: The policy should allocate the financial outlay for ICT in education programmes as we face lack of funds.
• Content Quality Standards: There is a need to lay down the quality standards on using ICT in education for quality content reaching our classrooms
• Co-ordination of policies: There is a diversity of policies; hence the policy should be in co-ordination with all.
• Building strong PPP: The policy should create a PPP friendly environment for the initiation and implementation of ICT in education projects in India. A good PPP - a larger dialogue of all stakeholders for appropriate mechanism at excellence at all levels: top-down and bottom-up mechanism
• Monitoring and Evaluation of ICT projects and programmes in the education is required through setting up of an agency within or outside the government. It should also monitor the quality of digital content provided into schools.
• Content development: The development of content should be supported by both private providers and community/teachers to progress towards a paradigm-shift of content for school education
• Scalability of pilots: The successful pilot projects should be promoted to be scalable at the district/state level for implementation

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