Sunita Joshi
Director, JIL Information Technology Ltd
Giving education a global perspective is a concern now, what do you have to say on this?
This is a competitive world. Therefore, the education system in any country should be able to develop skills and intellect of students to compete at global level. For this the use of latest technology is a must and there is an urgent need to integrate IT with education to fulfil this need.
Do you think that advanced application of IT enabled teaching-learning process will open the way of seamless access to it?
As far as the IT application in teaching learning is concerned, no doubt the pedagogy is getting transformed, and the learner is being facilitated by more advanced means of communication of information. Yet, this change is putting pressure on all too constantly acquire and apply new skills. Application of IT to the teaching learning process is disconnected with access to it. Access in our country with nearly two lac government secondary schools will continue to depend on investment by government in the area of technology and further it dependence on availability to the teachers.
According to you, what are the challenges being faced by the education sector currently in introducing ICT and online application as a whole?
The key issue is to ensure availability to the economically challenged section of our society. Internet penetration in India as per statistics available is 81,000,000 Internet users as of Nov/08, 7.0% per ITU and that of education is much below the internet penetration figures. Especially in India and countries where education still hasn’t reached all and where the basics facilities vis-
