Education Development Index - The race is on : February 2008 Issue

The monthly publication on ICT and Education

digitalLEARNING Volume IV Issue 2 February 2008

ISSN 0973-4139

Rs 75

www.digitalLEARNING.in

Education Development Index

The Race Is On

Digital Children: Implications for Education PAGE 35

Envisioning a National Policy PAGE 30

Access

Infrastructure

University of Nairobi, Keen on ICT PAGE 42 Power School

Teachers

Madhuri Parti Principal, Kothari International School PAGE 39

Outcome

National Knowledge Commission Second Report to Nation PAGE 23

Contents Verbatim

Volume IV Issue II, February 2008

I’m a slow walker, but I never walk back.

- Abraham Lincoln Better go back than go wrong.

- Anon The more I read, the more I meditate; and the more I acquire, the more I am enabled to affirm that I know nothing.

- Voltaire An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.

- Anatole France Perhaps the most important single cause of a person’s success or failure educationally has to do with the question of what he believes about himself.

- Arthur Combs

Cover Story

6

Educational Development Index in India

Policy Matter

30

Envisioning a National Policy on ICT in Education

School Track

by Doing: 39 Learning Kothari International School

Anjali Prakash

Research Content 18 Open Methodology and SubjectOriented Educational Environment

Perspective

35

Valery S Meskov, Vlrina V Smirnova and A Mamchenko

Report Second Report to 23 NKC Nation

Interview with Madhuri Parti,

Digital, ‘Highly Connected’ Children: Implications for Education Prof Edna Aphek

Country Focus

42

Kenya’s University of Nairobi Keen on ICT

Principal

The Foyer of Non-English 33 Future Internet

Regulars

45

Mark Your Calendar

News

Corporate Diary

25

Case Study: Teachers Integrate ICT in Education

12 17 27 44

India Asia Corporate World

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

digital LEARNING Volume IV, Issue 2 | February 2008

President M P Narayanan Editor-in-Chief Ravi Gupta Group Directors Maneesh Prasad, Sanjay Kumar Programme Co-ordinator Jayalakshmi Chittoor Sr. Sub Editor Manjushree Reddy Research Associates Rachita Jha Web Editor Arunesh Dogra Marketing Siddharth Verma +91-9811561645 (India) email: siddharth@csdms.in Subscription & Circulation Lipika Dutta (+91-9871481708) Manoj Kumar (+91-9210816901) Sr Graphic Designer Bishwajeet Kumar Singh Graphic Designers Om Prakash Thakur Chandrakesh Bihari Lal (James) Web Zia Salahuddin Santosh Kumar Singh Amit Pal Editorial and Marketing Correspondence digital LEARNING G-4 Sector 39 NOIDA 201301, India Phone +91 120 2502181-85 Fax +91 120 2500060 Email info@digitalLEARNING.in Printed by Vinayak Print Media, Noida Gautam Budh Nagar (U.P.) India Email: vinayakprintmedia@gmail.com 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 & marketed in collaboration with Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd. (www.elets.in)

4 © Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies 2008 (www.csdms.in)

Editorial Remembering the Educational Perspective ‘Education is a lifelong process,’ I’m sure you’ve heard that old adage. But what of education in a changing landscape? Substantive investments have been made to put new era technologies in classrooms so that every citizen is equipped with the skills needed to live and work in the new Information World. However, for us in the developing world, the very mode of education may have undergone a sea change, but increasingly we are called upon to discuss the depths of the subject in terms of quality, relevance, updation and scope, to name just a few.

The road ahead is difficult and basic infrastructure issues need to be resolved alongside the move towards technology. For example, nearly 57% of Indian schools with computers are unable to use them due to lack of electricity.

While education is keystone to preparing the next generation for a knowledge-based society, it is fact that a child learns what he or she lives with. This generation of children have grown up in the presence of computer screens and have a different perspective from us. Increasingly, we find that the young around us are automatically more comfortable with technology. The Internet as a readily available source of information and method of communication has led us to new perspectives in knowledge-sharing and at the same time, brought out the need for greater discernment in terms of the methods used for assimilating information and, or knowledge. There is nothing that is secret any more, everything is read, everything discussed and everything said, as mentioned in Edna Aphek’s article on the Implications of Education in this issue.

All this is not in isolation from the mode of education and it’s delivery mechanism.

We’ve all heard it said at some point or the other that ‘the medium is the message,’ but in this case the use of ICT in the delivery of education has caused a paradigm shift. The first witnessed use of ICT was in the workplace but now ICT has become an urgent component of education which must be woven into the very fabric of Indian society. It has also caused a paradigm shift from teacher-focused or teacher-centric education to a learner-centric one.

Research shows that children are no longer restricted to the curriculum for their inputs.

Learning currently happens in almost a peer-to-peer (P2P) mode and ICT and the Internet provide the backdrop for this. Such as the example of teachers such as Pritam Singh who are using blogs to popularise interest in the subjects they teach. In such a scenario, partnerships, alliances and even a totally current phenomenon such as social networking in the Web 2.0 world have proven themselves as the way forward. We Indians already score high in terms of social networking as it is ingrained in our culture, as is our respect for learning and learning opportunities. I wonder what Web 3.0 has in store for us next?

Ravi Gupta Editor-in-Chief Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in

February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

ORY T S ER V O C

Educational Development Index in India

States falling yards behind EDUCATION FOR ALL goals

Education think-tank National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) has developed an Educational Development Index (EDI) to track progress of states towards Universal Elementary Education (UEE) for primary and upper primary levels as well as for a composite look at Elementary Education. The EDI ranking is expected to enable more effective targeting of the flagship educational project of Government of India, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) to the most backward districts.

It would also help to encourage the states to improve their performance and have a closer look at both 6 the inputs and the outputs of the parameters that affect elementary education.

February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

A

ccording to ‘Flash Statistics: Elementary Education in India and Progress Towards Universal Elementary Education (2006-07)’, released by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) recently, Kerala continues to be a top achiever in composite rankings of primary and upper primary education, followed by Puducherry, Delhi and Tamil Nadu

as toppers in providing elementary education. Bihar remains the state with the worst elementary education report card, while Jharkhand is second-last.

The report was based on a survey of 1.20 million schools spread over 609 districts across 35 states and union territories of India, and conducted by the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) for the HRD ministry. The survey was based on the District Information System for Education (DISE) developed by NUEPA a few years ago.

“The efficiency of primary education system is directly related to the magnitude of the problem of illiteracy.

So far as the school related information is concerned, the analysis should start from the indicators which give information regarding access.

Information on access, should be followed by collection of information on infrastructural facilities available in a school/block/district. Other important information relate to schools need to be collected is enrolment and attendance pattern; and pattern of wastage and stagnation at different levels of schooling. While analysing efficiency of education system, different indicators of efficiency be computed separately for male/female, rural/urban, SC/ST/ General population etc. so that they can help in identifying educationally weaker areas within a block/district.”

Arun C Mehta, Professor Educational Management Information System, National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA)

Digital Learning | Vol 4 Issue 2 February 2008

The report tracks the progress of states towards universal elementary education at the primary and upper primary levels as well as the composite elementary level. Designed as an Educational Development Index (EDI) on which rankings are given based on 23 parameters.

The EDI has been developed keeping in mind four broad parameters—access, infrastructure, teacher related indicators and outcomes. The index takes into account 22 variables.

These variables include: • Access: percentage of habitations not served, availability of schools per 1000 population.

• Infrastructure: average studentclassroom ratio, school with student-classroom ratio greater than 60, school without drinking water facilities, schools with separate toilets for boys and girls as required.

• Teachers: percentage of female teachers, pupil-teacher ratio, school with pupil-teacher ratio greater than 60, single-teacher schools-in schools with more than 15 students, percentage of schools with less than three or less teachers, teachers without professional qualification and • Outcome: gross enrolment ratio overall, scheduled castes: gross enrolment ratio, schedule tribes: gross enrolment ratio, gender parity index enrolment: repetition rate, drop-out rate, ratio of exit class over Class I enrolment-primary stage only, percentage of passed children to total enrolment, percentage of 7

appeared children, passing with 60 per cent and above marks.

Though Kerala tops the combined ranking for both primary and upper primary, Delhi tops the EDI for primary sections. In primary, Delhi is followed

by Puducherry and Kerala. West Bengal is placed at 30. For upper primary classes, Kerala is the topper, followed by Puducherry and Tamil Nadu.

Bihar is the last in both the ranking, and Jharkhand is the second last in both.

Kerala had topped the chart in 200506 too, but this year Delhi has been replaced in the second position by Puducherry in the composite ranking for both primary & upper primary. Delhi is third.

In 2005-06, Bengal ranked an abysmal 32 out of 35 states and union territories, with Arunachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar behind it. Arunachal has now swapped places with Bengal while Uttar Pradesh -- that ranked 31, just ahead of Bengal last year -- has hoisted itself up to 26 in the rankings.

For upper primary education, Kerala is the top-ranking state, followed by Puducherry, Tamil Nadu & Chandigarh.

However, Kerala too has its problems in school education, the report reveals.

While the southern state is near the top in infrastructure, teaching and student performance, access to schools is

with significant minority population and educational backwardness.

Comprising nearly 13% of India’s population, Muslim enrolment at the primary school level (Class 1-5) was a meagre 9.39% of total enrolment figures for 2006-07, while at the upper primary level (Class 6-8) it was 7.52%. All over India, about 70% of Muslim children are enrolled in primary schools; the number falls to 56% at the upper primary level.

In Orissa, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Puducherry, 80% of Muslim children are enrolled in school. In Orissa, Muslims make up only 2.07% of the population but total enrolment of primary and upper

Delhi tops the EDI for primary education, followed by Puducherry and Kerala. Surprising to many would be the fact that West Bengal lags way behind, at 30 out of 35 states and union territories.

EDI Highlights • •

•

•

•

•

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Mizoram outperformed other six states in the north-eastern region Puducherry is ranked 4th in case of Primary (EDI 0.65) and 2nd in Upper Primary(EDI 0.75) levels of education, and is ranked first at these levels amongst the seven smaller states Kerala (EDI 0.708), Delhi (EDI 0.707), Tamil Nadu (EDI 0.701), Karnataka (EDI 0.674) and Himachal Pradesh (EDI 0.668) are the top five ranking states Bihar (Rank 21), Jharkhand (Rank 20), Wes Bengal (19), Uttar Pradesh (18), Assam (17), Madhya Pradesh (16), and Orissa (15) are the seven low ranking states All the 37 districts of Bihar and 15 out of 18 districts of Jahrkhand are placed in the bottom most quartile All the districts of Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim are placed in the top most quartile

poor at both the primary (34) and the upper primary (26) levels. And access at the upper primary level is worse than in overall low-ranking Bengal , for instance. It has also failed to enrol enough numbers of Muslims who comprise nearly 25% of the state’s population, in school.

The 2006-2007 survey had an additional indicator this year, focusing on Muslim enrolment at both the primary and upper primary levels. The figures for 2006-07 show that less than 10 percent Muslims enrolled in the primary classes.

The report also contains the details of SC/ST enrolment and details of districts

primary Muslims make up 7.26% and 6.48% respectively. In Karnataka, there is 13.54% enrolment of Muslims in the primary and 12.39% in the upper primary levels.

For Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh, there is a higher enrolment percentage of Muslims in the upper primary level than in primary school.

This could mean either that fewer numbers of Muslims are entering the school system than before or that Muslims’ share in the population is decreasing in these states and that this is being reflected in the enrolment figures.

States of particular concern are Kerala, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Assam that have sizeable Muslim populations but very low levels of Muslim enrolment in schools.

where it has a large presence, like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Kerala.

Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh and, to an extent, West Bengal are the only exceptions.

The survey shows that the community’s access to education is poor even in states

Kerala has a 24.7% Muslim population but enrolment figures for the community

are abysmal – a mere 10.13% at the primary level and 9.59% at the upper primary level.

In Jammu and Kashmir , where Muslims comprise 66.97% of the population, enrolment of Muslims is 62.52% at the primary level and 60.55% in upper

Educational Development Index - All Schools State/UT

EDI & Rank Composite Primary & Upper Primary 2005-06

A &N Islands Andhra Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh Assam Bihar Chandigarh Chattisgarh D & N Haveli Daman & Diu Delhi Goa Gujarat Haryana Himachal Pradesh Jammu & Kashmir Jharkhand Karnataka Kerala Lakshadweep Madhya Pradesh Maharashtra Manipur Meghalaya Mizoram Nagaland Orissa Puducherry Punjab Rajahsthan Sikkim Tamil Nadu Tripura Uttar Pradesh Uttarkhand West Bengal 10

0.566 0.654 0.458 0.490 0.327 0.690 0.559 0.538 0.592 0.707 0.586 0.630 0.556 0.668 0.597 0.435 0.674 0.708 0.650 0.512 0.635 0.564 0.534 0.650 0.533 0.512 0.700 0.608 0.583 0.635 0.701 0.535 0.482 0.605 0.467

2006-07 20 08 33 30 35 05 22 24 17 02 18 13 23 07 16 34 06 01 10 29 12 21 26 09 27 28 04 14 19 11 03 25 31 15 32

0.676 0.670 0.458 0.477 0.321 0.731 0.521 0.535 0.631 0.757 0.645 0.677 0.612 0.707 0.633 0.381 0.680 0.772 0.692 0.481 0.677 0.598 0.517 0.661 0.581 0.487 0.771 0.654 0.582 0.662 0.741 0.545 0.526 0.629 0.458

11 12 32 31 35 05 27 25 18 03 16 09 20 06 17 34 08 01 07 30 10 21 28 14 23 29 02 15 22 13 04 24 26 19 33

February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

primary classes. And in Assam , with a 30.92% Muslim population, the community’s enrolment percentage in primary schools is a laudable 30.42% but falls significantly at the upper primary level, to 17.39%.

Orissa plays poor in EDI variables As revealed by Flash Statistics: Elementary education in India : Progress towards UEE-2006-07, Orissa finishes a poor performer in almost all the variables – access, infrastructure, teachers and outcomes – taken to measure the Education Development Index (EDI) of the State. In 2006-07, the State recorded a dip in two parameters like access and outcomes in the primary

level and in three - access, teachers and outcomes - in the upper-primary level.

Global Education Development Index 2006 Rank 6 30 60 63 67 72 76 91 98 101 102 107 113

Country Korea China Indonesia Mangolia Viet Nam Malaysia Philippines Myanmar Cambodia Lao PDR India Bangladesh Nepal

Digital Learning | Vol 4 Issue 2 February 2008

While the percentage of pucca schools here is around 22, Bihar has 68 and Chhattisgarh, the so called ‘Bimaru’ states in terms of infrastructure and other performances has 58%. The distressing trend is declining enrolment in the primary schools with the year 06-07 recording a decline of over 8,000. The dropout rate in the primary level hovers at a high of 21% against the national average of mere 8%. Girls’ enrolment stood at 48% of the total enrolment. In the upper-primary level, the gross enrolment rate has been mere 49% against the national average of 64%.

Sunil Kumar Barnwal Former State Project Director Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Jharkhand

In 2006-07, when nationally 6,000 more teachers have been appointed, Orissa shed 8,500. As a result, the EDI for primary slid to 0.529 and from the

29th rank in 05-06 settled at 30th out of a total of 35. Similarly, with 0.445 score in EDI for upper primary, the State figured at 32 down two from 2005-06.

The State has recorded a steep fall by 21 places in the parameter of outcome, whereas in variables like accessibility it slid by four places.

Interestingly, when Orissa has Government to private school ratio at 94:6, Kerala, the top achiever, has a proportion of 42:58. When Orissa has approximately 52,000 schools in 30 districts, AP has over 1 lakh in only 23 districts. The teachers per school in Kerala hovers above 4 but it is below 3 in Orissa. Similarly, when average number of classrooms is around three in Orissa, it is over six in Kerala.

It is a relative ranking, to see the state Jharkhand ranked second last in the EDI. The State is struggling with issues like school infrastructure, providing more school buildings and other facilities, providing quality education, etc.

Addressing these issues and showing the progress can just not be the reflection of one year. Over a period of time such infrastructure have been created,; similarly progress in some other area can be made over a period. It’s a cumulative reflection, which cannot be reflected in the annual EDI. If States like Tamil Nadu or Gujarat are able to do away with these infrastructure issues, they are concentrating more on the quality issues. Jharkhand also does that. But we are continuously facing challenges on the front of some of these basic educational issues like infrastructure and quality. Just one year period cannot reverse the index, even if we progress on anything. Of course it can be improved, depending on the comparative improvement of other states. The EDI is done for all 35 states.

When we try to improve, the other states are also equally improving. For improving the relative index, one needs to do it in a much faster pace. Unless we address our basic issues, that pace will probably not come.

Technology, of course, can help a lot in adding quality to education.

Student today find it much more interesting and fun reading in a multimedia or an IT enabled environment. This trend helps in bringing down the drop out rates.

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News INDIA India targets 80 % literacy by 2012 The central government is targeting 80 percent literacy by 2012, against the present 65.38 %, with a whopping INR850 billion ($21 billion), five times the budgeted allocation from the previous five-year plan budget, earmarked for education during the 11th Five Year Plan. The bulk of it is for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the ministry’s flagship programme.

According to A.K. Rath, Secretary, Secondary Education and Literacy in the human resources development ministry, India will witness a complete literacy by 2015. He claimed that the dropout rates had also come down and that the government was committed to enhancing the reach of the SSA by emphasizing on quality, equity in the ongoing 11th Plan. It is also looking

at improving basic learning for students, computers, infrastructure in schools and improve teaching standards.

Rural South India slipping in maths education: survey

Contrary to the claims of the government, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) for rural India by Pratham, an NGO, is not on the expected lines. According to ASER (2007) findings, in the rural areas of Tamil Nadu, only 24.8% children in the age group 6 to 10 could listen to a specific subtraction problem and answer.

Only 7.8 % children in the same age group could answer specific division problem.

Spare the rod, keep child in school Corporal punishment severely affects the human dignity of the child, thereby reducing his/her self-esteem and self-confidence. According to the latest Unicef Global Statistical Review, of every 10 children in primary school in India, four drop out

by Class V. India, a signatory to the UN’s Education for All by 2015 goal, shows ‘insufficient progress.’

In 1986 the National Policy on Education explicitly mentioned that corporal punishment should be firmly excluded from the education system. Yet, 20 years later, a countrywide study by the Centre in 2006 had revealed that two out of every three students in India were a victim of physical abuse at school. In between, the Supreme Court, in 2000, banned corporal punishment. Delhi High Court upheld the ban the same year while Calcutta High Court banned caning of students in 2004. But despite the apex court’s decision, only Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh amended their education laws in 2003 and 2002, respectively, to implement the ban.

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) had in the past issued a circular to all affiliated schools, asking them not to resort to physical punishment.

Affiliation bylaws of the CBSE were recently amended to empower the school management to punish teachers guilty of physical abuse of students. The ministry has now asked state education boards to emulate the CBSE reforms.

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Among the children in the age group 11 to 14, 40% could answer specific subtraction problem and 37% could answer division problem. Similarly, in the rural areas of Karnataka, ASER 2007 reported that only 21.3% children in the age group 6 to 10 could answer specific subtraction problem and 5.4 % could answer division. 34.3% children in the age group 11 to 14 could answer specific subtraction problem and 37% could answer specific division problem.

In the rural areas of Andhra Pradesh, ASER 2007 findings reported that 25% children in the age group 6 to 10 could answer specific subtraction problem and 18 percent children could answer division problem. Among the children in the age group 11 to 14, 27% could answer specific subtraction problem and 54% could answer division problem.

India, France ink 21 agreements in education France is now aggressively courting Indian students and linking up with educational institutes here with the establishment of an Indo-French educational consortium to initiate projects of joint research and enhanced cooperation at the Masters degree level and signing of 21 inter-university agreements in the field of student and faculty exchanges at masters and undergraduate levels.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi inked a deal with Groupement des Ecoles des Mines for cooperation in the field of advanced research at the doctorate level in applied mathematics and physics. Similarly, one of France’s best known institutes in political studies, Sciences-Po Paris signed two separate agreements with University of Madras and Delhi’s St. Stephen’s college for exchanges in social sciences and economics.

Mobile TV in India Mobile TV, the advanced technology is soon to debut in India and is a natural evolution in technological innovation as it will enable consumers and users to watch television on mobiles or cellphones. It also assures to open improved opportunities for governments February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

to provide enhanced services such as education, healthcare, safety and security to all citizens. In India it is expected to launch this year.

The country is expected to announce the 3G policy, a vital requirement for introducing this innovative technology.

GPRS edge or 3G, based on Java application, is the fundamental or basic requirement for launching mobile TV. Through this consumers can access all the channels provided by the subscribers.

Ericsson and BPL mobile manufacturers are keen on establishing the Mobile TV platform for telecom patrons in India. BPL is signing a partnership with China´s ZTE to make the innovative technology of Mobile TV possible on GSM platform. Nokia, the world´s largest mobile phones manufacturer, is planning to establish manufacturing hubs in India and China for manufacturing N-Series-Mobile TV Phones. Reliance Infocom has already started offering news channels through video streaming on its CDMA network.

States fail to utilise funds for ICT in higher education While the clamour for more attention to technical education is getting louder by the day, a number of states haven’t even spent a single penny from about INR 211.67 crore released during the calendar year 2007-08 for introducing information and communication technology (ICT) for higher education.

Delhi, Bihar, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Lakshdweep, Arunachal Pradesh, Orissa, Manipur, Pondicherry and Meghalaya haven’t so far utilised the funds allocated for this purpose. Andhra Pradesh has spent the highest with INR 37.5 crore during the year on ICT while Karnataka spent INR 45.58 crore.

Uttar Pradesh spent INR 31.15 crore.

Nagaland INR 12.99 crore and Goa INR 57.15 crore.

The non utilisation of allocated funds is significant as finance minister P Chidambaram has slapped an additional cess of 1% on the name of Digital Learning | Vol 4 Issue 2 February 2008

Budget 2009: INR 31,000 Crore to develop skills The Union government is setting up a INR 31,000 crore skill development mission in the Union Budget for 2008-09. Expected to be operational in the next fiscal year, the programme is to extend training facilities to 10 million people a month, up from 2.5 million a year at present.

The mission, accorded top priority by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is expected to oversee and facilitate the entire process, which the government will run in collaboration with the private sector.

While the mission will be headed by the Prime Minister, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia will be its vice-chairman. Heads of industry associations are expected be part of the mission’s general body. Besides, 17 Union ministries, which are already associated with skill development projects of some sort, will help implement the programmes.

The government has projected that 70 million jobs will be created during the 11th Plan (2007-12) and proposes to spend INR 31,000 crore during that period. The mission will oversee short-term vocational courses ranging from six months to two years, which will be provided by both government and private sector institutions as also certification of such courses. More than 8,000 vocational training institutes run by the government together with those run by the private sector are expected to facilitate the mission and will play the role of sub-missions.

secondary and higher education.

This is in addition to the 2% cess that has been in place, which aim to fund the efforts to universalise elementary education.

up and running the school is expected to be about USD 50,000 US. Of that money, USD 22,000 goes towards salaries for people teaching and running the schools for this year.

Computer connections to make big impact in small village

CAT to go online from November 2009

The village of Chahalka, 50 kilometres from New Delhi, with a population of about 3,000, will soon have a new computer school, thanks to volunteers of four Newfoundland Rotary Clubs who help complete a computer school to bolster the economy of a small village in India.

The group will refurbish two buildings and set them up with 10 computers, a computer teacher and staff in the village of 3,000 people. In the community, people as young as 12 years of age work to make some money for their families and are unable to attend school.

The group, which is comprised of an international team of Rotary members and people associated with them or the project, will also bring sewing and weaving machines to the community to be used by members to produce commercial products. The cost of setting

The directors of the seven Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) will meet to discuss details of a proposal to take the Common Admission Test (CAT) online by 2009. The CAT exams may also be formatted on the lines of the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) so that the scores are valid for two to three years.

The move could benefit thousands of students. In 2007, around 2,30,000 students took the exams. This year the number is expected to exceed 3,00,000. For online CAT exams, the IIMs could outsource the project to an IT firm specialising in education and training services. The IIMs may also conduct a preliminary test for students to be eligible to take the CAT. The format of group discussion and personal interviews will, however, be the same.

13

Taking CAT online stems from IIMs’ concern over the chaos that occurs during declaration of results. Last year, heavy traffic caused the website to crash when the results were declared.

Besides the seven IIMs, which conduct the exams, the CAT results are also used by other 124 management institutions to enroll students.

One-laptop project to debut in Maharashtra

MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project has finally found its way to India.

The project, which aims to provide digitally-enabled education through the use of low-cost laptops to children in developing countries, will see its first deployment in Maharashtra.

About 500 XO laptops, as the laptops are called, would arrive in February for deployment in various schools in the state. The laptops have been localised and come with the keyboard in Devanagari. So far, a few XO laptops had been given to school children in a village called Khairat in Raigadh, Maharashtra under a pilot project started in September-October last year.

India plans to open Central Schools in Gulf India is planning to open central schools (Kendriya Vidyalayas) in Gulf countries to provide affordable and quality education to the large Indian expat population in the region.

The HRD ministry is consulting Indian embassies in the region in this regard to 14

explore the possibilities of opening such schools. Currently, the gulf region is home to around hundred CBSE affiliated schools. However most of the schools are managed by private groups which generally demand high fees.

UK gives fillip to education in India Giving a big fillip to cooperation in the field of education, Britain announced an 825 million pound grant for India, a major chunk of which will be spent on improving the educational infrastructure in the country over a period of three years.

The British Premier Gordon Brown, on his visit to India, at the end of his bilateral talks with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh, made the announcement.

Elaborating on the grant, he said that around 500 million pounds would be dedicated to improving education and health care. The two sides also agreed to initiate specific measures such as setting up an Education Forum and enter into a Memorandum of Understanding on an India-UK Higher Education Leadership Development Programme.

IIT Chennai steps in to improve science education in schools IIT Chennai, has now tied up with number of schools to enhance high school science education in the country.

According to Dr. T S Natrajan of IIT-Chennai, young Indian students are conditioned to answer questions in examinations without being able to relate the concepts to the real world around us.

The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) to enhance the quality of engineering education in the country, the new ‘Science Enrichment Programme’ is first direct initiative of the institute for betterment

of school education. Under the new programme, IIT Chennai will provide consultancy and develop Science Enrichment Program for classes Five to Twelve in Physics and Chemistry by planning and developing problem based worksheets and activities which will make science fun and easy for children.

States lobby for 30 worldclass universities Several states are competing with one another to house one or more of the 30 world-class universities mooted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to upgrade the higher education system and serve as ‘launching pads’ for India’s rightful place in the knowledge economy.

In a bid to upgrade institutions of higher education, the government also plans to upgrade the 19 existing central universities, such as Jawaharlal Nehru University, Benareas Hindu University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi University and Visva Bharati, that are funded and maintained by the central government.

The larger blueprint also includes an upgrade of the existing eight Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), seven Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and five Indian Institutes of Science (IISc) and research establishments. Also on the cards are 14 additional IITs and IIMs across the country, for which the human resource development ministry has prepared a blueprint and which has been submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office and the Planning Commission.

NDMC for quality education accreditation The New Delhi Municipal Council has for the first time approached the Quality Council of India for accreditation of its schools.

According to a memorandum of understanding signed by the Navyug School Education Society on behalf of the NDMC, the Quality Council would prescribe the educational quality management standard for schools and grant accredited status to them if they qualify according to the prescribed standards.

February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

EET H S T FAC

Student-Teacher Statistics (Including Classroom)

Classroom interaction is highly dependent on the pupil-teacher ratio for interactivity.

Challenge of capacity in terms of available teachers in all schools

Still an issue – increasing the percentage of female teachers in elementary education Need of the hour: professionally trained teachers in all subject across all schools

Source: Flash Statistics, National University of Educational Planningand Administration (DISE 2006-07) 16

February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

News ASIA China’s ICT ready to boom Information and communication technology (ICT) is one of the most dynamic market sectors in China’s economic boom. End-user IT spending in China passed $119 billion in 2005.

This data includes all ICT spending as reported by ICT providers. To put into perspective, India, with a comparable population size, spent $35 billion on IT in 2005, while Japan, with a population less than a-tenth the size of China’s, spent more than $292 billion.

China is by far the largest market in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) in terms of total enterprise IT spending.

With a current market size of more than $80 billion, nearly 80 percent of China’s spending on IT, and a 7 % CAGR, the Chinese telecom sector is an extremely significant part of the country’s IT industry. Despite being the world’s fourth-largest economy (when measured in U.S. dollars) and second-largest when measured using purchasing power parity (PPP), the Chinese market can be very disappointing.

According to the Communication University of China, the country has a domestic audience of over 1.2 billion radio listeners and 1.2 billion television viewers. It has 282 radio stations, 314 television stations and 1,913 broadcasting stations at the municipal level. CCTV, the country’s largest TV station, has 14 channels, including English and international channels, and broadcasts via satellite feeds to over 90 percent of the country.

OLE Nepal gaining ground Open Learning Exchange (OLE) Nepal is a Nepali non-governmental organisation dedicated to assisting the Government of Nepal in meeting its Education for All goals by developing freely accessible, open-source ICTbased educational teaching and learning materials.

Digital Learning | Vol 4 Issue 2 February 2008

OLE Nepal’s goals include the development of high-quality free and open-source interactive digital learning materials that conform to Nepal’s national curriculum and to implement a plan to provide universal access to primary and secondary school level ICTbased teaching-learning materials by 2015.

OLE plans to develop core open-source digital learning materials for grades two and six in math and English, develop a virtual library of learning materials, teacher training, monitoring and evaluation and to help the government launch the One Laptop Per Child project pilot at a public school on the outskirts of the Kathmandu Valley in April 2008.

Khmer language ICT textbook released The Cambodian Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS) has launched a new Khmer language ICT textbook that will be used by all public teaching institutions in Cambodia. The book marks the change to use computer software in Khmer language in all schools, phasing out software in English and French. The Secretary of State also inaugurated the Low Cost Computing Research Laboratory for Education, a new research laboratory that will study the issue of sustainability of computer facilities in schools.

Both activities are part of the Open schools programme, a joint initiative of the Ministry and the Open Institute NGO that aims to improve the quality of education in Cambodia through the use of ICT. The Open Schools Programme is a three-phase project that will mainly develop and implement a Master Plan for ICT in Education.

CISCO Networking Academy opens at Abu Dhabi University The College of Engineering and Computer Science at Abu Dhabi University (ADU) announced the launch of a Cisco Networking Academy in cooperation with Cisco Systems, which will open its doors in February 2008.

The Cisco Networking Academy (Netacad) utilises a blended learning model, integrating face-to-face ‎teaching with a challenging web-based curriculum, hands-on lab exercises and Internet-based assessments.

Academy ‎graduates will be prepared for networking and IT-related careers in the public and private sectors, as well as for higher ‎education in engineering, computer science and related fields.

Full literacy by 2015 may be unrealistic for India With the current national literacy rate being 64.8 %, there is a serious question mark on the government’s flagship educational programmes. The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), the country’s official census agency, said the literacy rate grew at a mere 1.5% per year. However, government officials claim they will maintain a steady growth of 5% every year till 2015 to attain complete literacy by 2015.

The UNESCO, in a report, unequivocally stated that India would miss the bus of ending illiteracy by 2015, pointing to huge disparities between urban and rural areas. Nearly 70 % of the country’s illiterate population belongs to the eight states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. All these states have not shown any major improvement in the Government’s flagship programmes, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All), for universalisation of elementary education in a time bound manner, and the National Literacy Mission.

But 13 states – Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Orissa, Meghalaya, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar – have a literacy rate below the national average of 64.8%, according to data published by the Directorate of Adult Education.

Even prominent educationists have apprehensions about the Government’s claim of full literacy by 2015 and the way in which the entire exercise is being carried out.

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CH R A E RES

Open Content Methodology and Subject-Oriented Educational Environment

Valery S. Meskov [MVS947@YANDEX.RU], PROFESSOR, NATIONAL PROGRAMME SPECIALIST, UNESCO INSTITUTE FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES IN EDUCATION (RUSSIA), VIrina V. Smirnova [ISMIRNOVA@STAFF.MESI.RU], PH.D., CHIEF OF THE DEPARTMENT FOR COORDINATION OF ADVANCED PROJECTS, MOSCOW STATE UNIVERSITY FOR ECONOMICS, STATISTICS AND INFORMATICS (RUSSIA), ANNA A. MAMCHENKO [ANNA-PRIV@YANDEX.RU], ENGINEER, STAFF MEMBER, CENTRE FOR HUMANITARIAN EDUCATION, RUSSIAN STATE HUMANITARIAN UNIVERSITY (RUSSIA)

e-Learning is perceived as a new word in pedagogical science and practice, a way of overcoming of crisis of education in all its manifestations.

However, technological solutions influence on the organisational aspects of training, allowing making educational processes more flexible and focused on the user. But as usual in the basis of e-learning system still lay traditional pedagogies build on a paradigm of transmitting of knowledge and cultural samples, conceptually rooted in ‘The Great Didactics’ (1657) by Jan Amos Komenski (Comenius).

The article is focused on inclusion of a Subject into the Picture of Educational World (as a professional area) as well as on some aspects of applying of the post-non-classical approach to the theories of learning and design of subject-oriented environments

Post-non-classical methodology There is a correlation between the level of social development and dominant methodologies. The transition to the next level is accompanied by the paradigmatic transformation of methodology. The methodology corresponding to the Industrial Society is a classical methodology, ‘classical picture of the universe’... but an integrated picture of the universe could not be shaped when taking into account the existence only of the macrocosm and microcosm and not considering presence of the world of information (Infoworld).

Knowledge with which the educational theory and practice operates is the same information which is somehow transferred, structured and created by Subjects during inter-subject interaction and/or through a cultural layer (and education, as it known, is a part of culture). For this reason, in order to 18

understand the post-non-classical approach to education it is necessary to consider at least three central points: a challenge of the Subject’s destination; role of the environments surrounding the Subject, including society and its concrete varieties; and conditions for the subject-to-subject interaction.

of inner and external), always find ourselves plunged into some environment which is per se a specific exemplification of the Holistic World.

Socium and all its professional and social areas (including education) exist as such environments and exemplifications.

Society as Environment and The question is to which extent the mediator Subject can see the subjectiveness of In general case, we, in our capacity of possible Subjects (or differentiator

the Holistic World through a concrete, formed, or designed environment?

February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

If this extent were equal to zero, the subjectiveness of the Subject itself would stay indistinguishable.

Subjectiveness is a property imparted by a Subject to some components of the environment, which interact with it, or the environment as a whole (i.e. the whole world). The Subject’s inclusion into the Picture of the World means not only the inclusion of a person into all observed processes but also the inclusion of the other part of interaction, namely of the World as a Subject.

The environment (including such as societies) serves as their meeting point and mediator.

Object-oriented environment and normative educational paradigm Both Industrial and Consumer Societies are unaware about a human being as a Subject and the World as well as about their ‘middle’ position. Knowledge about a human being is unimportant for them. In this sense, the Industrial and Consumer Societies are rather Objects than Subjects. In both Societies, the borders of the socium are the borders of the World. Hence, the aims of the mass education systems of these societies exist within the range from pragmatics to socialization. These societies have no need in Subjects and they lean not on Subjects (and World) but on norms and hierarchy of prescribed relations that allow the elite to govern/ manage the non-subject majority of people, organisations and productions.

Below, there are several characteristics of the Industrial and Consumer Societies given in correspondence to the aspects mostly general and important for a Subject.

Industrial society • Observable Reality: Description of Macroworld (without a Subject) • Used methodology: Classical methodology (methodology of classical/natural science) • Human Role/Image: Person as a mechanism (mechanical clock) – Worker.

Digital Learning | Vol 4 Issue 2 February 2008

Consumer society • Observable Reality: Description of Microworld (with a Subject as a Recipient, Consumer and Observer) • Used methodology: Non-classical methodology • Human Role/Image: Person as an organism (algorithmic model) – Consumer and Observer.

These types of socium are objectfocused, and the object-focused and normative educational paradigm corresponds to it. Such a paradigm generates a normative educational environment, which is oriented to socialization and implies strictly limited roles for conditioned and externally motivated actors.

Educational Paradigm for the Industrial and Consumer Societies: Objectoriented Type • Mass Education Strategy: Embodying an individual into society (socialization, unification, loyalty of a human being) • Social Role Training: Worker, Consumer, Observer • Principals: From Jan Amos Komenski (Comenius) (‘educational conveyor’) • Educational Environment: Prescriptive and normative The normative environment pushes out a Subject and determines it externally inn such a way that a Subject is ‘reduced’ (diminished) to a sum of normalizing parameters and correspondingly to the normative interactions.

Route of Subject’s Cominginto-being A human being as a Subject exists to the extent of the completeness of its individual Picture of the World. He/she comprehends the World and him/herself indirectly, through activities, observation and reasoning. The validity of each separate conclusion can be estimated through comparison with all others through finding of cognitive integrity inherent only in the human being.

The human being is compelled to seek for integrity within intra-subject

continuing formation of him/herself via cognitive activities expressed in dynamic redefinition of structural limits of ‘Ego’ (‘myself’) and, accordingly, of the Holistic World.

This is his/her internal reason (cause) of activity.

The Subject is a possible, continuously becoming but never the completed project. In reality, the Subject’s route is hardly so direct and smooth.

However, on the Subject’ way from ‘folded’ to ‘unfolded’ state there is an important spot where a person finds out the evidence of existence of him/herself in its capacity of a Subject and, consequently, the evidence of existence of the World as the Subject.

This spot (more precisely – event) which figuratively refers to as ‘Second birth’ is a point of transition from the ‘Object being’ to ‘Subject being’, that is subjective self-identification, both internal and external.

Hence for the Holistic World. Education as a part of the World should serve, first, to the World, and only after that to its particular incarnations that themselves require the coordination of their purposes with the interests of the Holistic World. Education should be shifted from social-oriented to worldoriented one.

Subject-oriented educational environment and new educational paradigm The post-non-classical Picture of the World assumes an ‘uneliminated’ inclusion of the Subject in it that requires the adequate use of concept of environment. In this context, environment is a dynamic set of the opportunities identified by the Subject in only cases when it has a corresponding value motivation and the concepts of environment and Subject have complimentary relations. The Subject can only be found within an environment. The only Subject can define (and interpret) the boundary between itself and environment, i.e. between the senses ‘inside’ and senses ‘outside’ (or inner senses and external senses).

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The post-non-classical methodology claims that the Subjects cannot interact directly, and this interaction is always carried out via an environment. The environment operates as a carrier of certain properties and opportunities that can be transferred to the Subject and expressed through the competences. In case of education, the necessary degree of coherence of the environment and the Subject can be articulated within the framework of the competency approach according to which a competence constitutes a generated multivariate fixed image determining one’s ability to be engaged in some professional or social practices.

The inclusion of only one Subject into the environment imparts it a property of subjectiveness.

• What the subject-oriented environment transmits?

• From the denotat’s point of view: forms.

• From the designat’s point of view: senses.

• From the professional point of view: competences.

• From the Subject’s point of view: subjectiveness.

The basic, fundamental distinction between e-learning and any others concepts of mass educational practices is the following: e-learning exists and functions within a specific environment with a potential to educate. e-Learning environment contains a set (in the 21st century increasing in quality and quantity) of educational opportunities which can be found, identified and acquired by the Subject in course of personal interaction with environment. Properly designed e-learning environment allows accumulating, generalizing and radiating subjectiveness required for transformation of ‘Ego’ in its capacity of Subject and thus assumes the roles of the Teacher.

In contrast to earlier mentioned characteristic features of Industrial and Consumer Societies, the Knowledgebased Societies should possess not simply other but fundamentally new characteristics: 20

The coherence of the Subject and environment in narrow and wider sense attributes to new educational paradigm some exemplifications of which can be observed in e-learning

A competence is described as readiness to some activities, which combines knowledge, skills, motivation, necessary experience, personal characteristics and ethical ground rules

practices of the latest generation (e.g. developed with Web 2.0). We suggest the motto for new education: ‘Embodying an Individual into the World through embodying the World into an Individual’. (Note: embodying into the World, not only into a community/ social group!).

for activities. The readiness holy belongs to a Subject. The transition to a model of competences means in practice a long-expected inclusion of a Subject into the Picture of Educational World.

Subjectiveness via competences: roles of actors in Subject-oriented educational environments Each subject-oriented environment promotes the Subject’s coming into being (birth). The educational environment is intended for doing this massively, and tuned for the Subject’s transformation, which is its professional competence. The environment has this competence because it possesses properties of stretching, storage, accumulation and translation of the competences, which belong to the Subjects (in our case of the learners), included in the environment. Thus, the environment becomes the carrier of the Subjects’ competences and realizes their interaction.

Acquiring of a competence is a result of the dynamic interaction of a Subject with the educational environment. A Subject and the environment undergo transformation throughout this multifaceted process. A degree of the transformation could not be measured (by anyone and by anything) but could be assessed to the Subject (and not to the environment).

According to the European model of the competences as well to the findings of Russian researches, the basis of all professional, social, cultural and (inter) personal competences consists of basic (humanitarian) competences: • Motivation for self-development and activity of a Subject; • Development of thinking and intellect, coming to Open Mind; • Communicative competences, openness and benevolence; February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

The Comparative Analysis of Existing and Post-non-classical Educational Paradigms

•

Aspects

Existing object-oriented system of education

Subject-oriented education for the Knowledge-based Societies

Methodology

Classical and non-classical

Post-non-classical

Type of a resulting educational environment

Mainly object-oriented (normative)

Mainly subject-oriented (educative)

Social environment

Occupies position of the World

Occupies median position between the Subject and the World

Weltanschauung (World view)

Social-oriented

World-oriented

Values

Values of the Subject are determined by values of a society

Values of the society are determined by values of a Subject

Customer

The state, society, labour market, etc.

The Subject itself

Mass Education Strategy

Embodying an individual into society

Embodying an individual into the Holistic World

The purposes of education

Socialization

The Subject’s coming-into-being

Source of the quality assessment criteria

From outside

From the Subject

Social roles

Normative and strict (learner, teacher)

Situational (a spectrum of ‘flying’ roles, generated by the subject-tosubject interaction)

Type of socialization

Social adaptation

Social responsibility

Sharing of responsibilities between the individual and social institutions

Imparting of responsibilities to the society

Delegation of responsibilities

Type of communication

Prescribed (determined)

Motivated by the Subject

Type of the social designing

System (normative) designing

Environmental designing (designing of opportunities)

Objective

Transmission of cultural samples

‘Cultivating of sense creation,’ i.e. nativity of a Subject

What to be formed

Knowledge-abilities-skills

Competences as the features of a personality

Means

Teaching practices

Educative practices

Process

Design of an Object (metaphor: modeling)

Transformation of a Subject (metaphor: nativity, actualization)

Creative competences, respect for cultures, creativity, history, religions, traditions, etc.

Digital Learning | Vol 4 Issue 2 February 2008

The competence model allows clinching an old argument on priorities by giving the priority to education as

upbringing and not as training. What is more, this model regards the Subject’s transformation as a crucial prerequisite 21

for upbringing/education of a person as a member of the Knowledge Society.

Via the gaining the competences the educational environment pilots a learner to the birth of a Subject, i.e. to the forming of a holistic image of himself/herself. This forming conforms to the initial meaning of the word ‘formation’ (in many languages relevant to ‘education’).

Taking into account our model of roles and functions of the educational environment, we must adjoin to former roles some new ones, namely those which are related to the level of a Subject and serve for upbringing and ‘obstetrics’ during the actualization of the Subject: from a possibility – through the ‘Second birth’ – to a manifested and maximally completely realized one.

The first three (normative) functions do not require the participation of a Subject and can be realized by an environment itself.

Roles of actors in educational paradigm and properties of educational environment of Subjectoriented practice Subject-oriented educational environments potentially exist and always have, but the system of mass education formed by the moment leave the issues concerning a Subject, its transformation and (worldview) behind the area of its activities, and this situation is unacceptable for the Knowledge Societies.

The task of forming for a Subject of the mass, accessible and open environment may be accomplished with e-learning. However, in the case of design of such environment with the use of the object-oriented methodology a normative educational environment is trivially produced. The post-nonclassical methodology (for example the open content methodology) allows forming the subject-oriented educational environment of e-learning adequate to the Knowledge Societies.

The mentioned environment has a property of stretching, stocking, accumulating and translation the 22

competences of included in it teaching and learning Subjects. The environment turns into bearer of their subjectiveness and in such a way obtains the abilities (competences) of a Teacher. Such environment gains the properties of atmosphere, ‘nutrient medium’ which promotes the included Subjects’ comingto-being and develops into more and more sophisticated. At the same time it undergoes transformation by way of each subject-to-subject interaction.

Open content: exemplification of Subjectoriented educational environment The post-non-classical methodology is a generalized theoretical concept.

However, the true exemplification of it may be found in some virtual community practices under name of open content and open source projects.

In the narrow sense, the Open Content means digital content under the specific (open) regime of using, usually regulated by the special open license for dissemination of content. But the concept ‘content’ must have not so primitive exploration. In Post-nonclassical Paradigm, the content as a Sequence (collection) of Subjectorganized senses indissoluble with carriers will play a key role.

In the broader sense, the concept ‘open content’ (or simply Content) constitutes a holistic virtual milieu, which includes: • An environment of the virtual (third) culture • Individuals as Subjects of interaction with this environment • Individuals as Subjects of interaction with each other within this Environment • Processes and products of mentioned interactions

In place of a conclusion As it mentioned above, historically

education in many cultures/languages was equal to formation. Though since the middle of the 18th century one may track the tendency towards interpretation of education as a process of building of a person ‘on the inside’ or its ‘self-formation’, all systems of mass education were shaped for producing of ‘useful members of society’ (whether it be a social group, either a community, or working team, etc.). In such systems the process of the Subject’s cominginto-being takes place spontaneously, sometimes it may correlate with educational procedures (lucky is a learner in this case!) but often it is in conflict with them (in this case both learner and teacher are unhappy).

The modern teachers were brought up and act now in a paradigm of professional school of the classical type, and it could be difficult for them to get used to an idea that the education system instead of polished through centuries translation of knowledge should intervene in the most complicated intrapersonal processes which can’t be assessed with any external criteria.

Modern systems of mass education and educational environments are also created mostly in the old style scarcely corresponding to contemporary challenges and still are resistance to any modification or simply inert.

Considering education via a prism of the post-non-classical approach one may find that the sense (or core) of education should be a Subject’s coming-intobeing. The Open Content experience of last years has shown possible handling with the unsettled problems mentioned above. The open content environment is a subject-oriented environment, and new open content methodology (as post-non-classical one) applied to eLearning theory and practice could and should advance mass education towards meeting the Knowledge Societies challenges.

Valery S. Meskov is a Professor, UNESCO staff member, a Programme Specialist (NOD) at the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (IITE). His interest areas are logics of research, logical analisys of theories and quantum logics; application of information and communication technologies in education, distance education and digital information resources for education.

February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

ORT P E R

NKC Second Report to Nation

S

am Pitroda, Chairman, National Knowledge Commission (NKC) has recently released the 2nd annual ‘Report to the Nation’ which was presented to the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh. The Report assumes importance in the context of Government’s commitment to the knowledge initiatives in the XIth Plan endorsed recently by the National Development Council.

The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) was constituted on 13th June 2005 as a high level advisory body to the Prime Minister of India. NKC has a designated time-frame of three years: from 2nd October 2005 to 2nd October 2008.

The Plan places high priority on education as a central instrument for achieving rapid and inclusive growth with specific emphasis on expansion, excellence and equity. This is reflected in the proposed allocation of INR 3,00,000 crore, a five-fold increase over the Xth Plan. The share of education in the total plan will accordingly increase, from 7.7 percent to 20 percent, representing a credible progress towards the target of 6 percent of GDP. NKC believes the education agenda outlined in the XIth Plan is a critical step t owards realising the objective of an equitable society.

The second Report to the Nation includes recommendations on Portals, Health Information Network, Legal Education, Medical Education, Management Education, Open & Distance Education, Open Educational Resources, Innovation, Intellectual Property Rights, Legal Framework for Public Funded Research and Traditional Health Systems.

Together, in the last two reports, the Commission has covered 20 subjects and outlined about 160 concrete action items. Most of NKC recommendations on Education, Vocational Training, Libraries, Translation, National Knowledge Network, Innovation, IPRs, Traditional Health Systems etc are Digital Learning | Vol 4 Issue 2 February 2008

for Higher Education (IRAHE), at an arm’s length from all stakeholders, that would accord degree granting power to universities, is one way to supplement the process of setting up universities through legislation. The regulator would also be responsible for monitoring standards and settling disputes.

Open and distance education & Open educational resources NKC recommendations on distance education focus on creating a national ICT infrastructure, developing web based common open resources, establishing a credit bank and providing a national testing service.

Regulation of distance education would be performed by a sub committee under the proposed independent regulatory authority.

NKC recommendations on education

Professional education NKC has recommended that the present regime of regulation in all professional education streams, be replaced by subgroups on different streams under the proposed independent regulator.

This would have to be accompanied by independent multiple accreditation agencies that provide reliable ratings.

Other measures include allowing greater autonomy to institutions, reforming the current examination system, developing contemporary curricula that are regularly updated and encouraging research.

Right to education NKC has reiterated the need to ensure that a financial provision requiring the central government to provide the bulk of the additional funds needed for realising the Right to Education must be there in the central legislation.

NKC’s recommendation to set up an Independent Regulatory Authority

Indian Law schools need to orient themselves to meet the growing international dimensions of legal education and of the legal profession.

Centres for Advanced Legal Studies and Research (CALSAR), one in each region, have been proposed by NKC to carry out cutting edge research on various aspects of law.

integrated in the XI Plan and adequately funded.

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Innovation and entrepreneurship have been and would continue to be the key drivers of India’s growth story. Together with skilled manpower, they form the pyramid on which our economic powerhouse will emerge. Our education system at all levels, namely, school, vocational, higher and technical must respond to this challenge Vocational education and training NKC’s recommendations focus on increasing the flexibility of vocational education and training (VET), within the mainstream education system. They point to a need for quantifying and monitoring the impact of vocational education.

It is necessary to ensure a robust regulatory and accreditation framework, along with proper certification of vocational education and training. This will allow easier mobility into higher education streams, enhancing the value of such training and providing continuous opportunity for upgradation of these skills.

Libraries NKC recommendations focus on modernizing the management of libraries to ensure greater community participation; including creating models for public private partnerships in LIS development. Leveraging ICT for various applications such as cataloguing, digitisation of content, creating e-Journals, etc, is also highlighted.

English language NKC recommends that the teaching of English as a language should be introduced, along with the first language (either mother tongue or the regional language) of the child, starting from Class I. Further, NKC has also focused

on the need to reform the pedagogy of English language teaching and learning, to reduce the disproportionate emphasis on grammar and focus on creating meaningful learning experiences for the child. Given that language learning is contingent on the environment, all available media including audio visual and print should be used to supplement traditional teaching methods.

character. NKC facilitated the setting up of a teachers’ education portal.

Translation NKC recommended setting up a National Translation Mission with a focus on promoting translation activities across the country.

While releasing the first NKC Report to the Nation at the start of the year 2007, the PM emphasised that the Commission “must be involved in ensuring the implementation of their innovative ideas”. The focus of NKC work has therefore been on ensuring that while the Central government designs appropriate strategies supported by financial allocations to implement their recommendations, the Commission engages simultaneously with diverse stakeholders to build up a groundswell of favourable opinion and assist preparation of implementing strategies at the grassroots.

Knowledge network An important recommendation emerging from NKC is to interconnect all knowledge institutions throughout the country, through an electronic digital broadband network with gigabit capabilities, to encourage sharing of resources and collaborative research.

Portals NKC has proposed creating national web based portals on certain key sectors including Education. The portal would serve as a single window for information on the given sector for all stakeholders, from students to researchers and practitioners in the field.

These portals should be managed by a consortium consisting of representatives from a wide range of stakeholders to ensure that they are not owned by any one organisation, but have a national

The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) was constituted on 13th June 2005 as a high level advisory body to the Prime Minister of India. NKC has a designated time-frame of three years: from 2nd October 2005 to 2nd October 2008.

NKC has tried to provide a platform for sharing and debating ideas, a critical requisite for accepting and steering change. NKC is now moving on to the next stage of its work which is formulating Knowledge Initiatives at the State and the District levels to ensure that there is institutional and mental preparedness at the grass root level to absorb the financial outlays of the XIth Plan.

Major Components of the XIth Plan Relate to Some of the Recommendations Made by NKC. Look for the Update in March Issue of Digital Learning

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February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

CORPORATE DIARY | CASE STUDY Koshish

Teachers Integrate ICT in Education

www.intel.com/education/in

As computers were launched commercially in this country, schools began to incorporate technology into their curriculum.

In India, Intel launched its Intel Education initiative in 2000.

Under this initiative, its flagship CSR programme – Intel Teach was launched in two cities. This programme grew at a great pace, owing largely to the growing demand from the schools. Under this programme, teachers were trained on how to use computers and Internet in the school setting and use these to enhance student learning. Most of the teachers trained on this curriculum saw its utility and also the potential of technology to transform education.

Some of the like-minded teachers who underwent the Intel Teach programme were so influenced by this programme, that they came forward to the cause of education. The aspect of technology integration that impacted these teachers most was the ability of technology to make the student a selfdirected learner. The teacher’s role changes from the provider of information to that of a facilitator. The teacher is able to develop student centric learning environments, without feeling threatened by the presence and integration of technology.

These teachers formed Master Trainers’ clubs in their respective cities.

forward. Over the past 5 years, this club has enrolled 275 individual and 35 institutional members.

As an educator’s forum, Koshish organises regular open forums focusing on value addition for educators every month.

It also involves the Government Education Heads and School Trust Heads to facilitate and propagate the forum.

It organises events like TAL weeks to assert collaborative working of schools; Principals’ Conferences to facilitate bringing together of administrators to deliberate on the key issues of implementing TAL in schools. It has also launched a newsletter – ‘Endeavour’ for its members to express & voice their views about technology as an effective tool to selflearning for students. The club won the award for the best club in the year 2003 from Intel Innovation in Education. It has also received the prestigious Chandigarh UT State Award for the outstanding contribution in the field of education in

Gradually, these diverse and local Clubs were brought together under the banner of National Educators’ Network (NEN), an innovative educators’ forum of like-minded and techno- savvy educators. NEN works towards interacting with maximum number of schools possible, and involving them in the events of the network and encourage them to participate; support and motivate Master Trainers to enhance technology supported Project Based Learning (PBL) in the classrooms and providing a productive platform to interact. The network impacts students, teachers, schools, Principals, parents, community, Government and Trusts. Presently, ten clubs are active in different cities. These clubs organise trainings, events, contests, tech-carnivals, publish newsletters, maintain their websites, and conduct many more activities. The case of one club and an affiliated school is being cited as an exemplar of the kind of work being done by NEN and its associated schools.

The Club at Chandigarh was christened Koshish by its members. It is an attempt to support and motivate schools and teachers to take up Technology Aided Learning (TAL) Digital Learning | Vol 4 Issue 2 February 2008

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CORPORATE DIARY | CASE STUDY An excerpt from an interview with Duggal, Principal of Vivek High School What is your vision for Vivek High School and what is your message for the students?

Our students stand poised today to take their right place in the more progressive schools of the country. Our endeavor at Vivek High will be to make a mark at international level in the IT scenario.

The world is a mix of rainbows and dark clouds, of opportunities and pitfalls, of streaks of silver in gray areas and a host of other permutations and combinations. If every child has imbibed the essence of ‘Vivek’, he goes forth, into the wide world, confident with the knowledge that when choices are laid before him, he will make the correct one.

How has Intel helped to integrate technology in the school? What kind of support did you get from Intel?

IntelTeach is a programme that can be used by the teachers for making the classroom teaching more effective along with other conventional teaching methods and tools. This training made the whole process of teaching learning not only effective but also efficient and interesting for both, tutor and students. Vivek High School is proud to be a pioneer in the field of integrating technology in education, with the help of Intel Teach. Refresher courses in various computer modules are an ongoing process in Vivek High School. The training given by Intel is tremendously beneficial for both, the teachers and the students.

2007.The network was felicitated on Teachers’ Day (5 September ,07) by Gen. Rodrigues (Retd.), Administrator of Chandigarh UT and Governor of Punjab.

As an example of what Koshish has helped schools achieve is seen in the case of Vivek High School, Chandigarh. Catering to over 1500 students, the school supports a challenging curriculum to improve teaching and learning and thus, increase students’ motivation to learn. This strong belief had led them to get all their teachers trained under the Intel Teach programme. This programme ignited the spark that the entire school and the teachers began to implement technology aided learning. In terms of technology infrastructure, the school is equipped with a high-tech computer department, having 100 computers networked throughout the school, each facilitated with Internet. There is centralised Office automation software, which maintains the school records. The school has intramail, which is regularly used by teachers, students and administrative staff. Tutorials and assignments are given, submitted, assessed using intramail.

Vivek High uses technology as an enabling tool not just within the school precincts. The school has adopted a school in a nearby slum called the Pustak School, which it supports

in multifarious ways. Two teachers of Vivek High are constantly posted at Pustak School. Students volunteer their time once a week to help their underprivileged neighbors.

Two computers have been placed at Pustak School, and the students and teachers of Vivek High train them.

These efforts were recognized formally when the school aced the prestigious National Award for Excellence in Computer Literacy 2007. This award has been instituted by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India for appreciating excellence in integration of computer literacy and information technologies in schools and universities. The award recognizes the performance of schools in imparting computer literacy, IT infrastructure, trained faculty, participation in IT related events, etc.

Thus, the schools are gaining in momentum to build and enhance quality inputs through ICT. While all of them are attempting to integrate technology in the best manner possible, the rare school like Vivek High takes up the lead to spread the light to the under-privileged and underserved communities. Needless to say that such practices need to be highlighted, shared and emulated by schools all across.

Globalisation-led convergence promotes collaboration Information-led convervegence enables connectivity Tech-led convergence stimulates creativity And knowledge-led convergence builds competencies Let’s converge at eINDIA2008 29-31 July 2008, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi www.eINDIA.net.in 26

February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

CORPORATE DIARY | NEWS Private sector has big role in education: Finance Minister Calling upon the private sector to play a major role in providing higher education, Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram is hopeful that as long as there were regulatory bodies that established and enforced standards, it did not matter whether institutions were run by government or private bodies.

Noting the UPA government was committed to carry out the decision to provide 54% reservation for Other Backward Classes in higher education, he said achieving this needed capacity expansion of the existing institutions.

Another key area where private agencies could make significant contribution was skill training to help children who did not move beyond school education, to come up in life.

Tata Indicom spurs mobile education

Tata Indicom has joined hands with SNDT Women’s University, ATOM (Any Transaction on Mobile), and Indian PCO Tele-services (IPTL) for an initiative called Mobile Education (m-Education).

The purpose of this programme is to aid distance learning, support learning for rural communities and for the physically challenged. Through M-Education, the coalition wants to make education available in the remotest corners of the country. For the purpose of imparting m-Education, SNDT University will develop and manage content, Tata Indicom will be the carrier, ATOM will provide the intermediary interfaces, while IPTL will look after service distribution and dissemination. In the beginning, the M-Education service will be available in Hindi and English languages. The alliance plans to later Digital Learning | Vol 4 Issue 2 February 2008

make the service available in other regional languages as well.

SNDT, HP Labs in education initiative

provides customers the ability to import and view course scheduling information from Banner. Faculty and staff can then use MRM to see classroom availability and schedule the same rooms for other events, with assurance that those schedules do not conflict with courses scheduled in Banner.

HUL launches website for management graduates

SNDT Women’s University, in collaboration with HP Labs India, announced the launch of HP Educenter Lab, an innovative engineering learning programme comprising a digital library solution, multimedia content, and computing infrastructure. A nodal association comprising all seven IITs and the IISc, NPTEL, has created multimedia content in engineering and science courses. HP Educenter Lab is designed to provide SNDT students the digital library and technology backbone for ‘on demand’ access to this high quality multimedia engineering course content.

HP Educenter Lab is based on a software developed indigenously out of HP’s laboratories in Bangalore. It provides a solution for capturing, storing, editing, and using multimedia in the educational process, made available over LAN to students on an ‘on-demand’ basis.

Asure Software announces classroom scheduling solution for higher education Asure Software, headquartered in Austin, Texas, a leading provider of workforce management software, announced the expansion of its flagship room scheduling product, NetSimplicity’s Meeting Room Manager (MRM), to include the ability to integrate with SunGard Higher Education Banner(R), the world’s most widely used collegiate course scheduling solution.

This new import capability, available with Meeting Room Manager 7.6,

Hindustan Unilever Ltd has launched Hul.CouldItBeU.in, an interactive website designed to influence postgraduate students to join the company.

Hul.coulditbeu.in has various contests, tips on making a resume, interview and placement tips and reading material on leadership, among other features.

Currently, the website has been launched in 14 campuses including the six IIMs, Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai, and SP Jain Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai. There is also plan to introduce the site at other B-schools and some graduate colleges.

Online test portal of success runway Premier training organisation BASE and ExcelSoft, an e-Learning solutions company, announced the launch of www.successrunway.com, a portal offering online test series for students aspiring to get into professional institutes like IITs, NITs and engineering colleges.

Students can take five tests on the pattern of the competitive examination so that they become familiar with a wide variety of questions. Feedback is available immediately on answering the test.

UniGuru launched to guide Indian students looking for courses abroad Hotcourses India has launched UniGuru. com that aims to guide Indian students looking for courses in higher education institutes abroad. UniGuru.com claims to offer peer-to-peer advice on over 100,000 courses at 808 institutes in UK, US, Singapore and Australia. According to the company, UniGuru.com will 27

CORPORATE DIARY | NEWS feature written posts, video diaries and photographs from existing students about aspects of their lives and studies.

StudyPlaces gets $3 million VC fund from KPCB, Sherpalo, Info Edge Education portal StudyPlaces.com has received USD3 million from venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers (KPCB), Ram Shriram’s Sherpalo Ventures and the Internet company Info Edge (Naukri.com).

The three investors have committed USD1 million each into the e-Learning company. Info Edge has already invested USD500,000 against the total proposed investment of USD1 million in StudyPlaces through its wholly-owned subsidiary Info Edge (India) Mauritius.

Interestingly, Info Edge is also preparing to launch its own education portal Shiksha.com.

TutorVista plans to raise USD15 million to launch its services in India Online tutoring firm TutorVista, which has made inroads in US and UK, is now rolling out a major India business plan for which it is planning to raise USD15 million. Earlier, TutorVista had received USD2.5 million funding from Manipal Education Group, USD7 million from Lightspeed Ventures Partners and USD2 million from Sequoia Capital India.

The company also plans to set up around 300 offline learning centres in B and C class towns in the country, mostly on a franchisee basis, for such students who seek quality tutoring but do not have a PC and Internet connection at home.

TutorVista, the company aims to triple the number of its students to 30,000 by the year-end from the existing 10,000 students.

Everonn Systems gets into e-learning Everonn Systems India Limited, a leading satellite-based education service provider in education and training, announced that it has acquired the 28

MBD Alchemie launches courses for CBSE Class X & XII on CDs MBD Alchemie, India’s largest online educational academy, a venture of the INR 200 crore MBD Group, launched MBD Alchemie CBSE crash courses and CBSE test series for the Class X & XII board examinations 2008 on CD’s. The CDs will be available through more than 10,000 leading booksellers spread across the length and breadth of the country.

MBD Alchemie, a pioneer project on e-Learning in India endeavours to become India’s mass education offering through dissemination of high quality standardised content across the country. The first CD offering from the company has an integrated web mentoring model, available to students for the first time in the CD category.

The CD based market for CBSE test series is estimated to be around INR 142 crore and MBD Alchemie is looking at tapping a sizeable part of this market.

The products are available in individual packing as well as combination packs at costs that provide immense value for money. The MRP of the individual class X CBSE Crash Course is INR 349, while the combined pack is available for INR 599. The subject dealt with in CBSE X are Maths and Science and Technology and for CBSE XII are Maths, Biology, Physics and Chemistry.

The USP of these products is that besides being very competitively priced, the MBD Alchemie CBSE offering comes integrated with an online mentoring module, where the student who buys a CD can opt for online mentoring – almost like having a virtual teacher at your help at a minimal cost of INR 150 per month.

e-Learning division of Aban Informatics (P) Ltd, a part of Aban, a transnational group based in Chennai.

The acquisition will enable Everonn to have access to world class content for K-12 segment and will enable Everonn also to reach out and become a complete e-learning solution provider within India and abroad.

Afilias and Cert-In sign mou to improve internet security in india Afilias, a global provider of registry services, today announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) to share critical information and resources to enhance cyber-security in India and world-wide, increase awareness of important security issues and to cooperate in emergency response to critical threats.

As part of the agreement between CertIn and Afilias, the two organizations will form a joint committee and agree to share best practices related to security threats to improve security of the infrastructure of the Internet.

In addition, both organizations have agreed to collaborate on emergency response initiatives to tackle emerging cyber-security problems, to take proactive measures that can help protect consumers, and to participate in joint education and outreach initiatives on key security issues.

February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

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ICY L O P TER T MA

Envisioning a National Policy on ICT in Education Anjali Prakash, CEO, LEARNING LINKS FOUNDATION

I

f India today aspires to emerge as a front-runner among the knowledge based societies, the usage of ICT in providing education of desirable quality can hardly be over emphasised.

While many states have their own ICT policy, it has been felt that a coherent and enabling policy for ICT at the national level would have tremendous benefits for the synergetic growth of our country. There is a need for a National Policy which would need to consist of objectives, guidelines, practices and must clearly articulate the role of ICT in school education.

Globalisation: While recognising the phenomenon of globalisation, The National Curriculum – Framework for School Education - 2006 speaks of the emergence of learning societies due to the multiplication of sources of information and communication, transformation of the nature of work requiring flexibility, necessity of team work and use of technologies.

Integration of technology would have several other implications. This in turn would make demands on educational planners. Media production, interactive video and multimedia computer software shall have to be perceived as an integral component of the curriculum development processes, rather than external to it.

Technological Advancements: Unimaginable changes are happening every single day in the realms of technology. These advancements have been brought about due to massive installation of undersea fiber-optic cable and bandwidth that have made it possible to globally transmit and store huge amounts of data for almost nothing. Second, the diffusion of PC’s around the world. Third, the 30

Education aspires for the empowerment of people. While education systems in India face enormous challenges, the oppourtunity to apply Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to address many of these issues is very significant. A national policy for ICTs in school education linked to national educational objectives can lead to proliferation of replicable ICT initiatives across India. While looking at a policy for Technology in Education, it becomes pertinent to always remember, who are we looking at? Why are we doing what we are doing? What are the challenges and issues to be considered? How do we ensure quality in the scenario of technology and education? How will we face the challenges thrown up by Globalisation?

convergence of a variety of software applications – from email, to Google, to Microsoft Office, to specially designed outsourcing programs – that when combined with all those PC’s and Bandwidth, make it possible to create immense technological advancements.

Changing Pedagogical Paradigms of the 21st Century: Today’s education faces irrelevance unless we bridge the gap between how students live and how they learn. Students will spend their lives in a multitasking, multifaceted, technology-driven vibrant February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

ICT in Education Policy must continually anticipate the future needs of society, and work towards fulfilling those needs, develop appropriate ICT skills required for the future, address the issues of Relevance, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Access, and Equity

world and they must be equipped to handle the challenges of the 21st century effectively. It is obvious that the old pedagogical framework of de-contextualised instructional practices and fixed curriculum is clearly inappropriate. With information having increasingly short shelf life, education must empower learners to learn for themselves, and to continue to do so incessantly. It is important to understand the key learning skills of the future – interpersonal skills, information skills, technology skills, basic skills, thinking skills and learnability.

National Curriculum Framework: The NCF clearly focuses on the child as an active learner. It takes into account the importance of children’s experiences, their voices and their participation. The NCF talks of the need for adults to change their perception of children as passive receivers of knowledge and that children can be an active participant s in the construction of knowledge. The school should recognise the innate ability of each child to construct his/her own knowledge, and the fact that every child comes to school with a fund of pre-knowledge. The NCF recommends significant changes in language – Maths, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences with an overall view to reduce stress, make education more relevant and meaningful. NCF states, ‘Integration of Information and Digital Learning | Vol 4 Issue 2 February 2008

Communication Technologies (ICT) into schooling needs serious consideration. Teachers, educators, curriculum developers, evaluators and others will have to redefine their roles to tackle ICT rich environment and harness its full potential for the benefit of learners.’

Quality of Education: Planning for ICT Policy must definitely keep in mind the quality aspect of education. It is crucial to analyse what quality in education means, how it can be assessed and how it can be measured. Research conducted around the world reveals that using standardized quality standards enable schools to move towards organisational excellence. Quality bench marks in the areas of visionary leadership, strategic planning, student and stakeholder focus, workforce engagement, process management, and diverse results have now been accepted. The criteria are designed to help organisations use an integrated approach that results in delivery of ever-improving value to students and stakeholders, contributing to education quality, organisational stability and personal learning.

An overview of the policy framework as envisaged The ICT in Education Policy is a blueprint for the integration of Information Technology (IT) in education as a strategy to equip our

children to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The ICT in Education Policy must continually anticipate the future needs of society, and work towards fulfilling those needs, develop appropriate ICT skills required for the future based on 21st century skills, address the issues of Relevance, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Access, and Equity.Operational dimensions of any policy enable vision to be translated into reality.

Curriculum, pedagogy and content development We have to prepare for a future in which information will be increasingly accessible and the renewal of knowledge in many fields increasingly rapid. The school curriculum will have to evolve a better balance between the learning of factual knowledge and the mastering of concepts and processes. Learning would shift from information receiving towards an emphasis on finding relevant information, learning to apply information to solve problems and communicating ideas effectively.

Integrating technology into the curriculum and assessment • ICT should be integrated into the schools to meet the curricula goals.

• Effective integration of ICT in schools must consider integration issues into both the curriculum and assessment.

• When ICT is introduced into the assessment process, there is a need to reconsider the assessment approaches. There may be a greater role for formative assessment when ICT is integrated into the assessment process.

Shift in pedagogy, redesign of curriculum and assessment, and greater school autonomy • In order to optimise the potential of ICT, there should be a change in pedagogies, redesign of the curriculum and assessment, and more autonomy for schools. When ICT enters the school environment, everything in the environment has to change to take up the opportunities and address the limitations of ICT. 31

•

The shift in pedagogical approaches should be consistent with the goals and underlying principles of the education system.

Content development that supports the curriculum • Local development of ICT-based resources is crucial to support the curriculum. It increases the relevance and enhances the

• •

•

Train the trainer and fan model could be adopted for the training.

The ICT professional development programme should focus on both pedagogical and technological aspects of ICT integration.

Faculty professional development in the teacher education institution is crucial to the success of the preservice education program in ICT. There is first a need to re-examine

•

integration in the pre-service education program should focus on applying ICT skills to achieve pedagogical objectives, rather than teaching ICT skills in isolation.

That is, ICT skills should be learnt within the context of classroom objectives and activities.

The pre-service teacher education institution should collaborate with private or public ICT training agencies to equip trainee teachers with the basic ICT skills.

These agencies are specialists in ICT training and may be more competent and effective in the training. The teacher education institution can work closely with these agencies to develop the curriculum of the workshops, and leave the training to the latter.

Technology infrastructure and connectivity •

•

•

authenticity of the resources for the students and teachers.

In order to develop high quality ICT-based resources, the Ministry of HRD should attract well-established education software developers to work with pedagogues. This will also promote the transfer of skills and technologies.

The ICT-based resources should be customisable so that they will meet the needs of the teachers and students based on their context.

Professional Development (Pre-service and In-service) Teacher training is a key element to education reform, particularly training that focuses on classroom practices and engages teachers in a community of professional practice and development.

Policy in teacher training on ICT • The ICT professional development program for teachers must plan for the continuous training of teachers – from pre-service teacher education to induction to in-service professional development.

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the existing training model with regard to objectives, methods, costs, and effectiveness.

Need for ICT competencies and standards before training • The application of ICT competency standards allows teachers and students to seamlessly integrate learning materials from a wide range of sources.

• The ICT competency standards should avoid software or product specific skills. Instead, the standards should focus on generic skills of particular applications.

Content focus of capacity building for pre-service teachers • The ICT professional development program of teachers should be planned based on the vision of the ICT Policy of the government.

• The foundation course on ICT

•

•

•

Operational policies must include a provision and budget allocation for technical resources that are needed to accomplish the nation’s strategic goal.

This is typically a policy emphasis in the early stages of a country’s use of ICT in education.

Such plans often include the amounts and type of computer and multimedia hardware that will be purchased but they may also refer to resources related to television and radio, especially in developing countries.

Increasingly, the Internet and local networking resources are also included, along with a budget for educational software.

Technical support – Another important operational component is ongoing technical assistance, which teachers need not only in early phases of ICT use but as hardware and networking technologies become more sophisticated and educational applications become more complex.

Dr Anjali Prakash is currently CEO of Learning Links Foundation, a trust providing a variety of services for the developmental sector. She has worked extensively in both the government and private sector, providing consultancy support to Central Government bodies on the use of educational technology in curriculum transaction. In addition, she has developed extensive educational content for use by teachers using ICT in the teaching-learning process with guidelines for effective delivery.

February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

ER Y O EF

TH

Future of Non-English Internet

International Domain Names (IDN) have become the subject of discussion at a recent press conference organised by to spread the word on the inclusion of domain names in various other languages, other than English. Imagine writing an email in Urdu, using Urdu script, an Urdu email id within an Urdu domain and receiving a reply in Hindi, with a Hindi e-mail id, Hindi domain, etc! Well, if the work being done by Afilias is completed sooner than later, then we should see the Internet truly go international, along with internationalised domain names.

Emerging Trends – Shift to the East While domain names are the single most important way to locate resources on the internet, a look at the limitations placed upon internet access by language will show that 65% of the world’s internet users don’t speak English.

As the figures show, about 65% of the world falls outside the Englishspeaking segment. A case in point being

China. In China, 90% of Internet users prefer accessing content in their local language.

However, if you look at the statistics for internet penetration, you will immediately notice that the 65% of internet users have low penetration rates. This scenario is further augmented by the fact that it is actually the non-English speaking regions which contain the largest percentage of internet users as well as exhibit the maximum growth in terms of internet users.

English Chinese Spanish Japanese French German Portuguese Arabic Korean Italian

30% 15% 9% 7% 5% 5% 4% 4% 3% 3%

How it works How it works is that when you type in a URL (currently in English), your computer communicates with the ISP Provider, who in turn communicates with a root name server, which authenticates your IP address and the URL text. The last suffix of the URL is known as a Top Level Domain (TLD). TLDs include extensions such as: • .gov • .com • .in • .med • .mobi • .org.

Due to technical limitations, top level domain (TLD) names can only be registered in ASCII characters.

International characters such as those written in Hindi (Devnagaribased) cannot be interpreted by the DNS, and therefore cannot reside in a domain name registry as a registered name.

The standard governing IDN names is known as ‘punycode’ and is an international standard that was adopted in 2003. Punycode translates words containing non-ASCII characters into an ASCII string that can be registered by the domain name registery and resolved through the DNS. Bi-lingual keyboards, instant messaging or chat or mobile phone text messages (SMS) are some aspects of ICT that have already started moving towards non-English formats.

However, in the case of e-mails, specialised setups are required. Also, while the text may contain native

Digital Learning | Vol 4 Issue 2 February 2008

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language characters, the e-mail addresses themselves are not.

Afilias is no stranger to IDN, having launched the first standards-compliant script in the .INFO domain, back in 2004. Due to the various scripts and languages used in India, plus the fact that many of them have very similar characters (22 official languages involving 12 different scripts), development of IDNs of India’s .IN domain is being worked on in consultation with Government organisations such as, Department of Information Technology, NIXI, CDAC and ICANN. From the Government’s side, issues such as maintaining the sovereignty (such as linking domains such as .BHARAT with .IN); elimination of security threats such as cyber terrorism, and of course, access to the Internet in regional languages.

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February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

P

IVE T C PE S R E

Digital, ‘Highly Connected’ Children: Implications for Education

Prof Edna Aphek [EAPHEK@GMAIL.COM], EL-HI NETWORKS

AND

DAVID YELLIN COLLEGE

OF EDUCATION, JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

In the past decades tremendous digitaltechnological innovations have flooded our lives. The impact of these inventions on socialisation, ways of thinking, and modes of learning, is far reaching. The new digital technologies challenge many of our concepts and beliefs and make new demands on us as to understanding the new high-tech, digital culture .In order to do so one has to be skilled in digital literacy.

According to Yoram Eshet-Alkalai, a scholar from the Tel- Hai College in Israel, the new digital literacy is penta componental. These five cognitive thinking strategies can help the perplexed: • Photo-visual literacy • Reproduction Literacy • Lateral Multi-directional Literacy • Information Literacy • Socio-Emotional Literacy Let me elaborate on each of these components: Photo-Visual Literacy If we look for example at our computer desktop, at out car panel or at the cellular phone, we’ll see that they all give us iconic information. These photo –visual signs serve as shortcuts for action and do away with the mediation of the cognitive skill of deciphering and understanding the alphabetic symbols.The use of emotics e.g.; / ;-),(-: and the shortened Internet writing such as b4b and cu, all emphasise the tendency to break away from the traditional, alphabetic writing.

Digital Learning | Vol 4 Issue 2 February 2008

Reproduction Literacy Reproduction Literacy could be likened to what John Kao (The Art and Discipline of Corporate Creativity, HarperBusiness,1996) calls jamming: ‘taking a topic, a question, an idea, disseminate it, break it, manipulate it, and reassemble it...creating something new.’

In the information world, an enormous amount of information and spiritual creations are ‘out there’ in cyberspace.

Billions of pages carrying artistic work, articles, essays, music and graphics, can be accessed and made use of. We are therefore, faced with a new challenge to use these existing spiritual treasures in innovative ways, thus creating new concepts and forms.

Lateral literacy A strategy much needed for deciphering and navigating in the new digital literacy, is lateral- multi-directional thinking. This literacy marks a shift from the more structured, well planned traditional book-like literacy. Unlike the closely structured book environment in which the amount of information and the order of presenting the information are predefined, the net environment is open to rearrangement. Linear structures following sequential logic, give room to non-linear, hypertext, associative structures. On one hand, this loose structure fosters creativity and is open to new creations and interpretations, on the other hand the new open-ended exploratory environment is dynamic and even chaotic.

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New cognitive skills are needed in order to navigate freely, yet mindfully among the many sites, and from site to site, while using the hypertext. The ability to focus, as well as integrative and summative skills are necessary in order to reconstruct knowledge out of huge chunks of information arrived at in an unstructured manner.

Information literacy Another problem, we are faced with is that of reliability: how do we know that what we read, saw or heard comes from a reliable source? How do we evaluate the information gleaned?

Yoram Eshet suggests a cognitive tool in order to cope with this problem: Information Literacy: Trust nobody.

This literacy acts as a filter: “It identifies false, irrelevant, or biased information, and avoids its penetration into the learner’s cognition.... without a good command of information literacy, how can one decide which, of the endless

their content which though reliable, might be shallow. Technological mastery is no way equivalent to deep thorough thinking as many recent researches show: Miller and Almon (2003) in the USA, Fuchs and Al (2005) in Germany, and Eshet and Hamburger (2005) in Israel. There is a dire need for quality assurance at a time when seemingly everything and anything goes.

instant messengers. This has to do with protecting oneself from the dangers of the digital, highly connected world and at the same time to guard the rights of the other by adhering to the rules of netiquette: the etiquette of the net.

I would like to add two more literacies to the five literacies mentioned by Eshet.

Moderation and Self- regulation Literacy The new technologies have the power to carry us away. There is much talk

The various literacies or strategies are interconnected and sometimes they even overlap. They function as guidelines to help us find our way in the maze of the digital-information world and to best use the immense options and possibilities this world has to offer. These literacies are needed outside the Digital Culture scene, but when it comes to the digital environment the mastery of these literacies becomes a must. Kids are great consumers of the digital media.

Strangely enough they are the masters of the new technologies.

Some Statistics We came of age with the Internet. Early-adopting, hyperconnected, always on: Call us Children of the Revolution, the first teens and tweens to grow up with the network.... While others marvel at the digital future, we take it for granted. In the past, you put away childish things when you grew up. But our tools are taking over the adult world. pieces of contradicting information found on the web, to believe? The fifth literacy advocated by Eshet Alkalai is the Socio- Emotional one.

Much of the work and information sharing done on the Internet is conducted in cooperative learning or any other form of information sharing: in chat rooms, online communities, groups and forums. Meeting of the other and Cooperative Learning necessitate socioemotional abilities.

Socio-emotional literacy The socio-emotional literacy also has to do with the ability to tell right from wrong and good from bad: to know how to roam the web with discretion and to tell the sincere and honest person from the imposter; to spot disseminators of hatred and pedophiles, and to take precautions at the chat room and the 36

about the addictive element of the Internet and the danger of information overload which might result in the IFS- Information Fatigue Syndrome (researched by Reuters). In order to avoid these dangers of addiction and of becoming datachoholics, we must learn and teach strategies for using the digital media with discretion and moderation.

Quality Assurance Literacy This literacy is sort of ‘meta literacy’ as it is needed in all the other literacies. It entails first and foremost an awareness of the need and commitment for quality and excellence.

With the use of the new technologies at the tip of one’s fingers, new embellished creations can be relatively easily produced. The external beauty of PowerPoint presentations and websites might cover for the lack of quality of

Before going into statistics it’s important to note that much of the data I am going to present comes from the American scene. However, these statistics might give us some indication as to the trends of media and especially internet usage by children and teens in other countries, especially the Western ones. Kids are great consumers of the Digital media.

A study conducted by Knowledge Networks in 2003 “finds that a significant number of children have various media and entertainment devices in their bedrooms.” 61% of the kids who took the survey have a television set in their room 57% said that most of their Internet access is done from their bedroom.

Another research done by Nielsen from the end of 2003 shows that more than 2-in-10 Internet users during September 2003 were between the ages of 2 and 17.

A study from the same year run by the Indiantelevision.com team, indicates that most teenagers and young adults in the US prefer surfing the Internet or watching television over reading for recreation. Here are the figures of the Indiantelevision.com team, giving February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

information about the number of hours teenagers spend on the various recreation activities.

Activity

is emerging; he finds the Net children who master technology, to be inquisitive learners, responsible, tolerant and caring individuals.

Hours per week

Internet surfing

16.7

Watching TV

13.6

Radio

12

Talking on phone

7.7

Reading books/magazines magazines

6

A survey published in March 2003, conducted by Grunwald Associates (www.grunwald.com), found that 2 million American children have their own websites. The survey also predicts that the number of kids with personal sites is expected to rise to more than 6 million American children by 2005. The following table prepared by Grunwald Associates will give us some idea as to the ages of these young web masters.

Kids as Webmasters Have Site

Plan Site

Ages 6-8

4%

28%

Ages 9-12

9%

33%

Ages 3-17

15%

29%

Ages 6-17

10%

30%

Base: Kids 6-17 with home access Source: Grunwald Associates

What influence do the Digital Media have on the wired kids?

I would like to present two opposing views as to the influence the electronic media might have on the Digital Born children. One view formulated in the eighties, is that of Neil Postman, an American philosopher. Postman deals mainly with the children of TV. Postman is wary of the new technologies. He fears that by adopting them too quickly we bring about the disappearance of childhood and destroy learning and logical-sequential thinking habits, structure and order.

The contrasting view is that of Don Tapscott, who comes from the business world. Tapscott’s view deals mainly with the children of the Internet .

Tapscott believes that a new better order Digital Learning | Vol 4 Issue 2 February 2008

Let’s take a closer look at Postman: According to Postman, the world of electronic communication is a world without values, books and order. This is especially true of the world in which television reigns. Postman’s child is one who lost his childhood but never reached maturity. Postman describes a society in which children and adults watch the same movies and tele-romances (soap operas), listen to the same pop music, and play the same computer games.

The adults in such a society become more and more childish as they try to pursue the youth culture, whereas the children, to whom all the secrets of adulthood are revealed, especially violence and sex, become, seemingly, mature. Seemingly, because they are mature externally but not emotionally.

As the differentiating line between the child and the adult blurs, concepts that distinguish the adult from the child, such as independence and responsibility, become unclear too. Postman describes a society at risk, living in a sinking world without books, without order; a chaotic meaningless world.

In his writings Postman describes children who live in a ‘twilight zone’ between illusion and reality. It is a world in which parents and teachers have lost much of their authority: Postman suggests that adults should gradually unfold the world of adulthood to their young ones. The content, the dosage and the timing should be determined by the adult, or else the very essence of childhood will disappear.

Another view of the New Child: Don Tapscott and the Net Generation Postman places television at the center of our children’s life, and blames TV for many of the illnesses of today’s youngsters. Unlike Postman, Don Tapscott thinks of the new child as the computer-and-Internet child.

Tapscott points out that whereas the TV child maybe passive, computer-and-Internet children are active and creative.

In his book Growing up Digital, Tapscott describes the highly connected N-Geners: These youngsters love to learn. They are curious, inquisitive, studious and responsible.

Tapscott’s children tend to learn in unorthodox ways. These high-tech children don’t necessarily study the curricula written by adults. They take responsibility over themselves and their learning, are full of initiative, and are willing to give of their knowledge to others. According to Tapscott these digital children are caring, outspoken and aspire to improve reality.

The Internet has become the new country of immigration. From different parts of the globe, people are coming to the new land of unlimited possibilities in which sound, music; picture, animation and text are intertwined. In lands of immigration, the young ones are the first to integrate in the new society and to speak its language. Very often they teach their parents and even grandparents the language and customs of the new land.1 This is what is happening nowadays, as the highly-connected children build sites and teach older generations the language of the high-tech.

Tapscott characterises the N-Geners as tolerant, inquisitive and eager to learn.

The Oracle company harnessed this inquisitive element, to the building of subject-matter-oriented Internet sites.

The company initiated a competition, geared to schoolchildren, on Internet site-building. Students have constructed more than 5,000 such sites for students, teachers and Netizenscitizens of the net.

The N-Geners are a caring and sharing generation. They often create new Internet sites for the common good.

Jason Fernandez from Mumbai in India built such a site (http://www. perceptivei.com/jason/jason2/LDkids/ index2.htm). Jason’s site gives support to children with learning disabilities and their parents and teachers. The site (in ten languages!) contains thorough and valuable information on various types of learning disabilities.

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When I uploaded my article on Children of the Information Age on the Internet, Jason got in touch with me via e-mail.

This alone might indicate the busy life and the involvement of the youngsters on the net. I asked Jason what prompted him to build his site. He said that he learnt from the founder of Apple about the power of the individual and that the site he, Jason, built is a manifestation of his own individual power.

Three youngsters with physical disabilities set up a site (http://www. wheelg2life.info/who.htm) for other young people suffering from physical problems. This is how they explain why they took up this endeavor upon themselves: “We set this web site up for three reasons: • We feel the information available for young people with disabilities at the moment is too often written from an adult’s perspective.

• Information tends to be based around one region rather than covering the country.

• The information available assumes that every young person with a disability has a similar background”.

Another characteristic of the young N-Geners is their emotional openness.

There is nothing which is secret anymore, everything is read, everything discussed, everything said. Postman would probably see this element as an indicator of the disappearance of childhood as secrets are divulged and children share and gather unscreened information on the Internet quite often without the mediating voice of the adult to guide them.

These youngsters are not only direct and outspoken, but they are also well informed and involved in political issues.

The N-Geners use the Net to express their opinions, independence and their protests against big companies and the controlling establishment.

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The new technologies also assist us in becoming technically independent.

Many of the professions held in the past solely in the hands of adults, such as printing, publishing, graphic design and others, are now at the tip of the fingers of youngsters and anyone else possessing computer skills and the ability to build Websites.

The new land, the Internet, is a megapublishing house. Unlike traditional publishing houses where a chosen group of people decides whether a poem, a story, an essay or an article are fit to print, or a work of art fit to display, on the Net such decisions are usually not made. Everyone, regardless of age, gender or education can publish their work. The children of the Net eagerly upload their ideas and works to the Internet.

These independent, active, innovative youngsters are about to change, according to Tapscott, our ways of learning and working and our social structure.

Computer and Internet activities outside the Net The children of the computer and the Internet are active offline as well. They are willing to give from their vast knowledge in computers to others in face-to-face meetings.

Observing the computer-and-Internet children, one can’t help but realize that the old hierarchical structures of teachers-and-children and parentsand-children have disintegrated. In the new reality dictated in part by the new technologies we can’t expect the ‘highly-wired’ children to adhere anymore to the old rules of time and place. We, educators, can’t expect them to be satisfied with predetermined content material and subject matter.

In this reality many of the concepts we teachers and educators grew up

on are undergoing a major shift. The meanings of “difficult,” “easy,” “first,” “important,” “unimportant,” and “graded learning,” are changing. The teacher is accustomed to a certain order, to learning and teaching in installments.

The teacher’s concepts are still based on adults’ knowledge and ideas as to what is easy and what is difficult to learn.

Curricula and books are still written according to these notions.

Our N-Geners live, work and perform in a very different world which involves much doing. Their world is complex, ungraded, multi-age, interactive and dynamic. In this environment the youngsters decide for themselves what is easy and what is appropriate. The NGeners learn and research thoroughly that which they find interesting. They are the decisionmakers as to pace, rate, content and the time element involved in the learning process.

This reversal of roles and ‘Power Shift’ presents us with a probortunity, i.e.; a problem which is really an opportunity, to re-define the purpose of education, and- to rethink our pedagogical beliefs and concepts; to reassess the theories we base our work on and whether they are appropriate to the Information Age. We have the probortunity and the responsibility to balance: to balance the photo-visual literacy with the alphabetic literacy, to balance the almost infinite accessibility to information with tools for screening and evaluating information.

We also have the moral responsibility to be less busy with covering specific subject matter and to be more concerned about guiding our digital youngsters morally and emotionally on their voyage into the socio-emotional virtual and non-virtual space.

Prof. Edna Aphek lives and works in Jerusalem, Israel. An Israeli, educated in Israel and the USA, she is a linguist, educationist, specialising in the introduction of computer literacy in general and the IT in particular in educational and social systems. She also works in the areas of the development of thinking skills in general and creative and inventive thinking, problem solving and the implementation of change. She designed and implemented innovative educational and social systems, designs and builds. She also developed the concept and built on the Internet a “Virtual College for Senior Citizens”, for the college Department in the Israel Ministry of Education

February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

Inculcating Leadership Qualities

Learning by Doing Kothari International School www.kotharischool.com

School Track

Kothari International School, a GEMS affiliated school situated in Noida, India catering to students from Playschool to Grade 10 follows the National Curriculum for England and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). As one of the world’s largest providers of private K-12 education, GEMS Schools caters to nearly 65,000 students from 124 countries. KIS benefits from the sharing of best practice across the GEMS and other global network, aimed primarily at enhancing the standards of learning and teaching. The principal Madhuri Parti shares her experiences of integrating technology into the school curriculum.

Power School How do you see the usages of ICTs in teaching and learning processes?

Until and unless we as schools and as teachers have our role clear in ICTs, it may seem like we are just the facilitators, guides, and the outsiders.

It is very important to understand how do we watch and how much we see from outside! Instead of becoming an informational tool, it has become a communication tool.

We go on the Orkut, we go on Google, Yahoo..., we just talk. The idea is not that. Communication is one of the things that we want children to do, but that is not the only thing that we want them to do. So here comes the role of schools, teachers, parents, and leaders, to take it beyond communications, to facilitate for further knowledge.

We did a website for schoolVasudhaiva kutumbakam (All the world is but one) - www. effortsunited.com. Here we brought in everybody together, parents, teachers, students, govt., and the community at large. We had captured right from Kashmiri Shawlwala, what is the impact of terrorism in his life, up to the government, people who have been on their peace force, to every strata Digital Learning | Vol 4 Issu 2 February 2008

Madhuri Parti, Principal

Unless and until we, like a rattle, tell them how to use it before actually handing it over, we cant succeed. So, integrating that into our system and not as a subject to be taught, but as one of the tools of learning, that will be the best of options we have.

Has the classroom(s) gone beyond computers, when we talk about technology?

Of course! Technology has taken classrooms to collaboration at global level. We are participating in various contests, we are doing a lot of web conference in different parts of the world. We have lot of e-pals...

and segment of life. So we get the students technology, but at the same time we facilitate.

Even when a child is a couple of months and we give him his first toy, a rattle, we actually make him to imitate by acting in front of him.

Hundreds of generations have used the toy, but still before giving the toy, a tool to enjoy, we tell the child how to go about it.

But when we are giving something as powerful as ICT, we as teachers, parents, do not take our role of telling them how to go about it.

What is the participation level of the students in all these activities?

Most of these activities are carried out by students only, where teachers only facilitate. There are partner schools we have in different parts of the world, which are again not necessarily only the GEMS managed school, but others also. We are going through Mondiaigo, UNESCO; we are going through Think Quest. We have done lot of collaborative learning and thinking, and bring the concept of I, You to WE. There are lot of projects happening in collaborative learning and thinking in different parts of the world. That is how we have to bring the globe together.

That’s how we have to make the children feel that we are all a part of the same earth, where there are no boundaries.

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The School Campus

Any kind of difference do you notice with children in such collaborative learning process?

See, these include a lot of team work.

There is lot of analytical thinking and collaborative thinking that is happening. We are all plus-minus as teenagers, facing the same difficulties in our lives. We go through the same cycles.There is nothing different in other parts of the world also. It is plus-minus of few cultural differences, but then we are all part of the same world.

Would you like to discuss more about these global collaboration projects?

We are collaborating with the iEARN (International Education and Research Network) in India; with Mondialgo, UNESCO in Czeck; Think Quest with Oracle, ‘Doors to diplomacy’ with Global SchoolNet. We are also doing ‘CyberFair’ with Global SchoolNet. From computer education to global collaborations...where are we moving with technology?

Computer is just a tool of learning.

This tool should now enhance the other components of education- the content, methodology... We had the simplest of the pen earlier, that we used to dip in ink and write.

Today, it has developed into Luxor.

Has that changed learning? It has only enhanced learning. These are tools to enhance learning and we learn to handle them to enhance our learning. The ultimate goal is to enhance learning, and not to sound

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hi-tech, whether it is a smart board, computer, video conferencing....

The other important aspect is- we spend lot of time with children. But then we forget to tell them to use their time constructively. If we are giving something like this to children, then there is time-management to be taught to them. How to handle the spare time that you are left with is important, if you are enhancing the time Vs achievements.

How do you build teachers’ capacities in rendering technology mediated education?

There are lot of in-house teachers’ training. We call lot of people from out side, who add to our capacity building programmes. Last week, we had a team from Australia, who shared with our teachers as to how technology is being used there. A team from UK again talking on how multiple intelligence along with the ICTs is being included in the school curriculum.

What are the challenges you come across while integrating technology to the teaching learning process?

Teacher’s training was a big challenge. Our teachers, of course, are trained to handle technology very well. But certainly, how to integrate it into education is one thing we are still struggling with. We have much better plans for next year. Curriculum for 2008-09 is going to be technology driven. But as I shared earlier, before handing it over to children, we will tell them how to use it.

How do you evaluate the plentiful content or teaching learning material provided by the solution providers today?

We are also negotiating with lot of the solution providers for such materials, basically for the content.

But we do not want couch potatoes.

I am not looking for somebody who would give a ready made information to my teachers and students. Rather, I would want somebody who can just guide them to go for research, and make them inquisitive. I want my students to be think tanks. I want somebody who will take them through the path, give them a helping hand to carry out the research and show them what kind of research to go for. Because, every time it is not possible to come from Principal’s office or Coordinator’s office. It has to come from within the system. That is what we are looking for.

Is there any success story of the school which you would like to share with us?

We just went for a quality circle forum international convention to Lucknow. It was more on problem solving, and how students can find solutions through their own think tank with the help of analysis tools like YY tools, fish bone diagrams, etc. We had taken 52 students from Kothari International.

What are your plans for the future?

I would love to prepare children more as global citizens. I think we need to teach them to forget all differences.

Just be great human beings! To add with, positive thinking is very important. They should know how to analyse things critically. We are doing a lot on this.

In terms of technology, we plan to do a lot of our chapters with podcasting next year, specifically for higher classes.

Since it is an up-coming school, there is a lot that we can do before we actually set the ball rolling.

February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

Learning Curves CBSE to introduce ‘HOTS based question papers’

CBSE to start counselling for students prior to Board Exams

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is all set to introduce High Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) question paper for class X and XII examinations commencing from March 1, this year.

In an effort to help students overcome exam related stress prior to Class-X Board exams, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has scheduled counselling dates for students and their parents. The board will hold counselling session from February 1 to March 31, to help students and parents deal with exam related stress.

About 10 per cent of questions will be very short answer type and about 20 per cent of questions will be designed to assess HOTS. While for 7.65 lakhs students, appearing for the class 10 examinations, the HOTS pattern will be implemented in all subjects, question papers for 10 chosen subjects for XII standard students, comprising of more than 5.4 lakhs will be based on the new design. These ten subjects include Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, Business Studies, Accountancy, Economics, Political Science and History.

The CBSE has appointed counsellors and school principals in various states to listen to students’ stress related problems. Students can call their nearest counseling centre for help. The counsellors will provide guidance and suggestions to students and their parents. The counsellors will be available on these numbers during the mentioned timings only.

Bharti Sharma (principal): 8am-12noon (29561606); Geentanjali Kumar (counsellor): 8am-12noon (9810435544); Anita Sharma (principal): 12oon-4pm (9899017867); B Singh (principal education officer): 12noon-4pm & 4pm-8pm (9873173122, 9927736600); Sunita Roy (counsellor): 4pm-8pm (26948025); Vithika Rahul (counsellor): 4pm-8pm (9871057666); Vinita Kaul (counsellor): 4pm-8pm (9810937187); PC Bose (Retd. deputy director): 4pm-8pm & 8pm-12am (25281663, 9899105129); Sarita Manuja (principal): 8pm-12am (9910343348); Vijay Sehgal (counsellor): 8pm-12am (9891057775); Deepa Saini (guidance counsellor): 8pm-12am (24621630); Sangeeta Bhatia (principal): 8pm-12am (9811689898); Deepti Singh (counsellor): 4pm-8pm (9911104050, 9927736600).

Centre to open model schools in every block The central government has decided to open 2,500 model schools on the lines of Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs) with private partnership across the country. These schools are part of the 6,000 model higher secondary schools, one to be opened in each block of the country in the next four years.

The model schools will be set up under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) scheme where non-profit trusts and societies would be called for opening the schools. The government will provide some resources. The Ministry is also planning more Public Private Partnership in higher education. It will very soon formulate a broad policy for universities, IITs and IIMs to have tie-ups with private sector companies to improve the quality of education and bring in additional resources.

NCERT to implement ‘reading cell’ In an effort to increase the reading habits of school children, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has decided to introduce the Reading Cell Project in over 500 schools in five blocks of Mathura district by the end of March this year.

The project, funded under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, aims at focusing attention on the reading skills of students of Classes I and II. In the first phase of the pilot project about 500 schools of Mathura district would be equipped with a reading rooms and small libraries. The libraries will be meant for small children where they can engage in reading activities and explore different storybooks other than the regular text books.

Digital Learning | Vol 4 Issu 2 February 2008

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US

CO

OC F Y TR UN

Kenya’s University of Nairobi

Keen on ICT www.uonibi.se.ke

T

he University of Nairobi is a pioneer institution in university education in Kenya and in the region. Established in 1956, the university has upheld its tradition of delivering diversified academic programmes and specialisations in sciences, technology, humanities, social sciences and arts. Currently the University has developed and evolved approximately 200 education programmes that are disseminated across the seven campuses located in the capital city of Nairobi, Kenya.

Far cry from the earliest years when the University was transformed from the existing Royal Technical College into the second University College in East Africa, in 1961 under the name, Royal College Nairobi. The University began preparing students in its Faculties of Arts, Science and Engineering for degrees of the University of London.

Other faculties, such as the Faculty of Special Professional Studies (later called the Faculty of Commerce) and Faculty of Architecture offered diplomas for qualifications of professional bodies/ institutions.

In 1983, the University restructured itself in order to decentralize administrative facilities by creating six campus colleges headed by individual principals. These are: • College of Agriculture & Veterinary Sciences (Upper Kabate Campus) • College of Architecture & Engineering (Main Campus) • College of Biological & Physical Sciences (Chiromo Campus) • College of Education & External Studies (Kikuyu Campus) • College of Health Sciences (Kenyatta National Hospital Campus) • College of Humanities & Social Sciences (Main Campus – Faculty of Arts; Parklands Campus – Faculty of Law; Lower Kabete Campus – Faculty of Commerce) From its inception in the 1960s, the University has expanded exponentially

in terms of the number of students, staff and physical facilities. From about 2,580 undergraduate students and 184 postgraduate students in the 1970-71 academic year, to its current population of 36,000 students, 7,000 of which are postgraduate students pursuing their studies. In the same manner, the number of teaching staff has increased to 1,330 and an administrative and support staff of about 4,000. Over 90,000 graduates have passed through the University of Nairobi.

The academic streams offered by the University of Nairobi have contributed significantly to the high-level training requirements of human resources in Kenya and Africa. Besides traditional areas, highly specialised areas such as Agricultural Science, Diplomacy and International Relations, Development Studies and Mass Communication are some of the areas not catered to by any

On May 1964, the Royal College Nairobi was renamed University College of Nairobi, and was designated a constituent college of the inter-territorial Federal University of East Africa. This meant that the degrees awarded were of the University of East Africa and not of the University of London. Come 1970, the University College Nairobi underwent another transformation and emerged as the first national University in Kenya. However, another change was in the offing, which saw the University renamed as the University of Nairobi.

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February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

other educational institution of higher learning in the country and the region.

These addition of a continuing education or module II degree, diploma and certificate programmes has opened up the option of learning for those Kenyans, and even non-Kenyans who are not able to secure admission in the University itself due to limited places in the module I degree programmes.

The rules and regulations for the module II programmes are the same as those for the the module I programmes. All very much in keeping with the University mission statement: A centre for learning and scholarship; preparing students for academic pursuits, professional development, enhanced personal lives and responsible global citizenship; extending the frontiers of knowledge through research, creative works, and scholarship; fostering an intellectual culture that bridges theory with practise; contributing to social, economic, and cultural development; and through intellectual products, enhances the quality of life of the people of Kenya and all humanity.

In fact, the core of the University’s offerings has been the intent to serve society through the transfer of intellectual and branded products to meet the changing needs of society through collaborations with industry, academic and professional fields in the search for solutions. An example of which would be the various international academic links and exchange programmes which number over a hundred. Also, on the list of academic initiatives is the Institute of Tropical & Infectious Diseases, which was jointly set up with the University of Manitoba.

Other combined initiatives with the National Defence College and the Kenya college of Communications Technology have also been set up.

Besides these, the University has not overlooked with the emergent need for information technologies and ICT, with the inclusion of a School for Computing and Infomatics, the only national-level computer science school in Kenya that also trains computer scientists at the postgraduate and research levels.

Recent developments world over have not left the University unaffected, as an outcome of the performance contract signed with the Government of Kenya, the University has started moving towards ISO certification, later this year. In order for the University to acquire certification, various training programmes have been launched, corresponding to the goals set in the performance contract, in the areas of: • Pedagogical training • Health and safety awareness • Customer service • Results-based management • ISO-certification training On the technological front, the University has increased it’s bandwidth and re-launched the University website (www.uonibi.ac.ke) with increased content available online. The University has invested heavily on ICT infrastructure. Many of the functions are now automated, more computer labs, processing of marks and transcripts is faster and information is readily available. Other efforts are also on to rework the student-to-PC ratios.

In conversation with Dr Ndunge D. Kyalo, Resident Lecturer Tell us a bit about the ICT programme(s) in the University.

The e-Learning division is in the same campus which houses the School of Continuing and Distance Education. Our e-Learning initiative is something that is intrinsic part of our University. We have some e-Learning platforms that were developed using ICTs. We have started developing, uploading a lot of material to enhance e-Learning.

What kind of learning materials are you developing?

People are being trained, making the learning materials converted into e-Content. We transform the written material into e-format. Currently the students are able to access a lot of materials there, for example, in our departments it is our target to have our material accessible as e-Content.

We might not have gone a long way in terms of distance learning, but at Digital Learning | Vol 4 Issue 2 February 2008

least our learning material is accessible online. Although we don’t do any teaching online, there are a lot of books and reference material available to the students online. A lot of people in the e-Learning department are researching ICTs in education, some of the research are even up to the PHD level.

Is there a separate ICT research unit?

It is part of our School of Computer Science division. ICT research is a definite component of our area of attention and work.

Are the teachers trained in the use of ICT? Teachers are being trained to adapt.

They are being trained to adapt and not just rely on the traditional methods of teaching, traditional methods of content.

They are being inducted into the system and this has been going on for some time now, with the idea of bridging

the gap between the university and eLearning.

What do you plan for future on the e-Learning initiatives?

It started in the year 2000 and since then it has been constantly doing about training people, changing contents in to the e-Learning mode, research and development. What we have in our distance learning front is still dependent on printed material. It is not completely in an online mode. But we are working towards an online model and are definitely keen on employing ICT in education in the future.

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News WORLD Distance Education via radio and TV programme to improve literacy The first distance learning video was produced by Educational Radio and Television ERTV and shown to representatives of the Italian government, UNESCO and MSPA. A large group participated in a presentation managed by Educational Radio Television (ERTV).

The Educational Radio and Television ERTV project, funded by the Italian Government, started in 2003 and has seen UNESCO support a range of reconstruction and training activities to help the Ministry of Education achieve its goal of providing education to Afghans in all parts of the country.

Given the mountainous landscape and the difficulties many people face in attaining an education, distance education via radio and TV programmes is seen as a key medium to improving literacy and providing access to information.

Cyberschoolbus launches new live video chat feature The United Nations Cyberschoolbus has added a new

feature called ‘live video chats’ that will allow teachers and students around the world to see and hear up to four guest speakers at a time and interact with them live from the comfort of their desktop or laptop computers.

US government to support education in Ghana

The UN Cyberschoolbus website aims to raise awareness about key issues such as international affairs, peace and security as well as bring together diverse communities of students and educators from around the world.

Within the website there are a number of activities and projects that teach students about global issues in an interactive, engaging and fun way.

BETT 2008 showcases talking pen Move the pen over a word, sentence or picture and the student hears the words spoken by a native speaker.

One of the world’s largest educational technology events, BETT 2008 took place in January 2008, at Olympia London and demonstrated the latest ideas for employing information and communication technology in learning.

Mantra Lingua, manufacturers of Talking Pen Francais feel, the pen can bridge the gap between traditional classroom language learning and the practice pupils may need to improve understanding and pronunciation.

Another innovation which has caught the eye of schools is online test results.

Cambridge Assessment and Harcourt Publishing are launching an online assessment programme which they believe will help pupils to make progress by providing instant feedback and lesson plans.

Attracting 700 educational suppliers and close to 30000 visitors, BETT brought together the global teaching and learning community for four days of innovations and inspirations. BETT is organised

by Emap Education, part of Emap Communications and Emap plc. and

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is sponsored by BESA (the British Educational Suppliers Association).

The Ghanaian Embassy in the United States announced that plans were afoot for the U.S government to help improve the Ghanaian educational system under the U.S President’s Special Initiative on Educational Programmes.

From May 7 to 9, the US State Department, in collaboration with Ghana’s Ministry of Communications, will hold a Telecommunication Conference in Accra, which was expected to attract experts of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) from West Africa and the rest of the world.

98% of Irish schools now have broadband Some 98% of Ireland’s primary and secondary schools now have broadband connectivity following an investment of €18m by telecoms companies and the Government in the Schools Broadband Access Programme, the Telecoms and Internet Federation (TIF).

The Schools Broadband Access Programme launched in 2004 is a joint approach between TIF and the Government to ensure that every primary and secondary school in the country has broadband. They jointly committed €18m to the rollout of broadband to all primary and secondary schools: €15m provided by five member companies of TIF and €3m from Government.

February 2008 | www.digitalLEARNING.in

Mark Your Calendar march The 2008 International Conference on e-Education 27 to 29 March 2008 Bangkok, Thailand http://www.e-case.org/e-Education2008/

Intl. Conference on Quality Enhancement in Educational Communication 29 to 30 March 2008 Tiruchirappalli Tamil Nadu, India http://bdu.ac.in

International Conference Of Educational Technology ICOET2008 3 to 5 March 2008 Muscat The Capital, Oman Website: http://www.icoet,.com

april Strategic Marketing for Higher Education Providers Conference & Workshop (Hong Kong Venue) 7 - 9 April, 2008 Causeway Bay Hong Kong www.conferences.com.sg/conf-em.htm

The International Conference on Technology, Communication and Education (i-TCE2008) 7 - 9 April, 2008 Kuwait http://www.i-tce.org

Blended Learning Conference 9 - 11 April, 2008 Sydney, NSW Australia www.liquidlearning.com.au

TCC 2008 Worldwide Online Conference 15 - 17 April, 2008 Online http://tcc.kcc.hawaii.edu

Digital Learning | Vol 3 Issue 5 May 2007

2nd International Computer & Instructional Technologies Symposium 16 - 18 April, 2008 Izmir, Turkey www.icits.org

Third International Conference on Interactive Mobile and Computer Aided Learning, IMCL2008 16 - 18 April, 2008 Amman, Jordan http://www.imcl-conference.org

International Conference on Open and Distance Education ICODE’08 25 - 27 April, 2008 Rome Italy http://wahss.org/

may Sloan-C International Symposium on Emerging Technology Applications for Online Learning 7 - 9 May, 2008 Carefree, Arizona United States

Call

for

Videos on

ICT

in Education

www.emergingonlinelearningtechnology.org

5th Global Conference: The Idea of education 8 - 10 May, 2008 Budapest, Hungary www.inter-disciplinary.net/ati/education/ioe/ioe5/cfp. html

TL2008 - Teaching and Learning 2008 26 - 28 May, 2008 Aveiro, Portugal

Send in your video documentation and we will host it on the Digital Learning web portal.

www.iask-web.org/tl08/tl2008.html

13th International Conference on Education 20 - 23 May, 2008 Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam, Brunei Darussalam www.ubd.edu.bn/news/conferences/webice08/ index.htm

Send in your videos to arunesh@digitallearning.in

*Hosting subject to selection and space.

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