Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and killfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. Professor Grayson H. Walker of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga explains the strategy applied there to promote critical thinking is through the conference mode. This promotes inquiry, sharing, interaction, and reflection on one’s own work and helps improve the critical thinking. This resonates well with Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies’ objective of bringing practitioners face-to-face in events such as the recently held triple conferences in Delhi, of which the Digital Learning India 2006 was an important onference. Bringing together communities of practice in one platform, be it policy makers, school leaders, programme implementers, NGOs, private sector, development agencies or the individual researchers, to facilitate critical thinking. We are pleased to dedicate the October issue of Digital Learning magazine to report to you the process and the key discussion points that emerged at the conference. As always, making online and offline content available to practitioners in a concise form enables leaders, especially policy makers to draw the lessons and identify key recommendations for follow-up. Scaling up and the challenges that confront programmes initiated in a national scale draw most attention. Any programme to succeed must be vetted by the different stakeholders. What etter opportunity than a face-to-face forum of the communities of practice as facilitated by the Digital Learning team? The conference provided the perfect forum for sharing experiences, exchanging good practices and taking stock of the added value of using ICT in education and training, especially in the school sector. The discussions, workshops, and panel presentations made by experts and practitioners to share their views freely, while also taking feedback and lessons for improving their own projects, and providing networking pportunities to build new alliances made this conference a truly memorable one for over 700 participants. Digital Learning promises to build and nurture these communities at the national and Asian level, while making sure to invite international agencies and experts from the world over in upcoming annual events. We hope you enjoy this copy as much as we enjoyed putting this issue together.
