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CET coaching for rural students

By
digitalLEARNING Network
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Comat Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd., in collaboration with Vishwa Bharti Institute, has announced a programme that will provide online coaching for tackling the Common Entrance Test (CET) to students from rural areas. Comat Technologies, along with the Government of Karnataka, had taken up the citizen-centric project and set up over 800 tele-centres across the State. The initiative will be launched on January 21.

The training will be through Comat Technologies' “Nemmadi” tele-centres and district offices, which are equipped with VSAT connectivity. Vishwa Bharati's trainers will come to Comat's studio in Bangalore and the training programme will be telecast live through satellite using broadband connectivity across the “Nemmadi” centres and district offices.

R. Sriram, General Manager, Comat Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd., said that through this medium, 750 rural and semi-urban locations will have access to quality education. Comat Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd. is expecting to enrol around 1,500 to 2,000 students all over Karnataka.

To create awareness among students about the programme, the company is taking the help of self-help groups and local student bodies. The course will comprise 120 hours of online interactive training, practice tests, assignments and study material. The last date for registration is January 15.
For more details, call (080) 26540610, 94498 69311, 94498 69312, 94498 69313, 94498 69314.

Ghana needs open university

By
digitalLEARNING Network
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Dr. Osei Darkwa, Principal of the Ghana Telecom University College, announced moves to increase accessibility to tertiary education in Ghana, calling for an immediate establishment of an Open University. Speaking at the 59th Annual New Year School, an extra mural programme organised by the Institute of Adult Education of the University of Ghana, Legon, Dr Darkwa expressed concern about the numerous problems that  restricted admissions into the traditional universities. He underscored the need for a bold decision to create the  National Open University of Ghana (NOUG) that uses the ICT to connect Ghanaians who may be everywhere to teachers, students and the tools for learning. The NOUG would use a mix of technologies ranging from face to face, print, audio, video, and web based to deliver lectures to students who may be scattered all over the country.

Currently, the present traditional universities could accommodate only 30 per cent of all qualified applicants, and those from villages who want to learn must leave their communities and go to the cities, since small villages do not have access to tertiary institutions. In numerical terms, the proposed Open University of Ghana can be a mega-university enrolling over 100,000 students, its capacity limited only by the instructional capability of Ghana.

Landmark Success for Microsoft Project Shiksha

By
digitalLEARNING Network
-

Microsoft's Project Shiksha, run in partnership with states to accelerate IT literacy among government school teachers and students has created a unique milestone by training 2,00,000 teachers till date.

Launched in December 2003 by Microsoft Corporation Chairman Bill Gates, Project Shiksha had a target of reaching out to 80,000 teachers by December 2008, a period of five years. The target has already been surpassed by 250 per cent a year ahead of the deadline, a company statement said.

Microsoft India had signed MoUs with 10 states for 11 academies offering a spectrum of education resources, including tools, programmes and practices, The 11 IT academies span across Uttaranchal (Dehradun), Andhra Pradesh (Hyderabad), Karnataka (Gulbarga, Dharwad, Bangalore), Maharashtra (Pune, Nagpur, Aurangabad), Rajasthan (Jaipur), Tamil Nadu (Chennai) and Madhya Pradesh (Bhopal).

Unesco Launches ICT Competency Standards for Teachers

By
digitalLEARNING Network
-

UNESCO guidelines for teachers to use information and communication technology (ICT) to improve education were presented to Education Ministers from more than 100 countries, and to the press, at the Moving Young Minds Conference in London, in January.

The ICT Competency Standards for Teachers have been developed in cooperation with Cisco, Intel and Microsoft, as well as the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). They have been designed to help educational policy-makers and curriculum developers to  identify the skills teachers need to harness technology in the service of education.

The standards consist of three parts: a Policy Framework explaining the rationale, structure and approach of the project; a Competency Standards Modules' Structure, which crosses the components of educational reform with various policy approaches to generate a matrix of skill sets for teachers; and Implementation Guidelines providing a detailed syllabus of the specific skills to be acquired by teachers within each skill set or module.

The standards have been prepared keeping in mind the need to prepare students for work and life in the 21st century and therefore they address much more than ICT skills: they examine these skills in light of pedagogical developments, curriculum and school organisation and the needs of teachers wishing to improve their work and ability to collaborate with colleagues. While defining ICT and education skills that can be shared internationally, the standards harmonise views and vocabulary regarding the uses of ICTs in teacher education, thus facilitating the international sharing of experience in this field.

Uganda Education Ministry Promotes ICT in Schools

By
digitalLEARNING Network
-

The Ministry of Education and Sports is promoting the use of information Communication Technology (ICT) in all schools, to enhance the quality of teaching. In a paper on the theme 'An overview of ICT in the Ministry of Education and Sports' the Assistant Commissioner for Secondary Education, Nsumba Lyazi, said that the ministry also wants to have digitised curricula and resource centres and  have access to digitised teaching and learning materials aimed at promoting the use of ICT in all schools.

The Uganda Communication Commission is giving computers to eighty schools and tenders have been advertised for the suppliers. Another step being taken by the ministry is the establishment of a $2.5m (about sh4.2b) digital library for Makerere University that is to be opened soon. Other initiatives include the cyber school technology solution aimed at improving science teaching in secondary schools, with the first phase to cover 100 schools.

The ministry is also planning to establish a computing and information science centre at Makerere University that is to house 6,000 computers and the introduction of a computer science degree at Busitema University. The ministry wants all students to be able to use ICTs as part of their education and seeks to ensure that over the next decade, all institutions will be connected to the Internet and  teachers trained to impart ICT skills to students and use them as a pedagogical tool.

Teacher Gets Innovative to Reach Out to Students

By
digitalLEARNING Network
-

Suryaveer Singh, a geography teacher at SD Public School had started his own blog in order  to create an interest for the subject among his students. Now his students are not only enjoying his classes, but they are also performing better.
 
From videos on whale-watching in Kaikoura, New Zealand, to slide-shows on volcanoes and natural wonders, the blog is full of interesting visual tours. Students can talk to their teacher by simply posting their queries or comments on the blog.

He had started his blog in April 2007, following his example about 36 teachers from six schools

Computerisation Comes to South Campus

By
digitalLEARNING Network
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Computerisation has come to South Campus, Delhi University with the decision to make the documentation of administrative work fully computerised. The administrative work and teaching process will become paperless soon, promoting the use of networking within various departments.

Started two months back, this experiment aims to lessen the paper work and increase the efficiency. The computerised system will also ease the burden of staff members. To facilitate networking, the campus has also tied up with the computer centre in North Campus. The teachers in different departments will now be able to interact with each other via internet and other software.

Teachers would save commuting time and also help each other by sharing information through a web camera installed within the computer system. As South Campus is facing a faculty crunch, students can take e-lectures from those in the other campus. The campus also plans to develop a network wherein a few colleges can be linked via university computer networking and can deliver lectures to students.certain areas of the campus have also been made wi fi to enable students to access the internet anywhere in the campus. Even the hostels are a part of the campus' wi-fi zones.

SNDT (India) plans to launch

By
digitalLEARNING Network
-

SNDT Women University, Mumbai (India) has launched a new programme, called 'mobile education', which is aiming to provide access to higher education for those who stay in the remotest part of Maharastra.

The pilot project would be launched on January 23, 2008 and initially train the candidates for examinations like GRE, CAT and other common entrance tests. The University will collaborate with several industry representatives for the programme like Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL). The University has signed several Memorandum of Understandings (MoU) with SUN Microsystems for collaboration with IT and related services and with INTEL for partnership in educational technology. The University has also joined its hands with HP Labs as research partners, ATOM technologies as development partners, IPTL as propagation partners and ADC Krone as infrastructure support. HP Labs (Bangalore) will set up an edu-centre or promotion of e-learning in technology-based courses, while the Pay Phone Welfare Association (PPWA) will provide the students with payphones in the absence of mobiles. The edu-centre will help students in developing projects by giving them facility for capturing , storing and editing, using multimedia in educational processes made available over LAN to students on an on-demand basis. Once the piloted project is launched, SNDT will also conduct a data search as to which courses or tests students would like to be trained in, particularly in remote and tribal areas, and accordingly design them. The University will also have fee structure for different courses but not for those students who are economically not well off.

Maintaining Quality And Equity By Inexpensive Technology : Douglas Bell, Education Advisor Education Development Centre (EDC) Bangalore, India

By
digitalLEARNING Network
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Please share some of the initiatives EDC has implemented in the primary education sector in India?
We are very good at reaching to the disadvantaged population,  particularly in the government schools and specially to the girls. We try to reach to different class levels and lower castes, trying to bring equity between them in the classrooms. We work within the government school system using the existing Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme to help implement our programme, conduct teacher training and also using ICTs as a way to reach more people and scale up specifically interactive radio instruction and addresses math science and English in the lower primary from class I to V.

Would you like to throw more light on Interactive Radio Instruction? What is the idea behind it. Why did you choose radio as the medium for instruction and not other more commonly used communication channels, such as web, television or any of the currently existing moods of delivery?
IRI is an activity based instruction that guides the teachers and the students in the classroom. It provides basically in-service training to the teachers and on how to conduct good activity based learning.

We are present in every primary school in the entire state of Karnataka with IRI. Whether or not every school turns on the radio is questionable, but millions and millions of children in primary schools across the state are participating in the programme. We are able to scale up and able to keep quality intact by using this rather inexpensive technology called interactive radio instruction.

We have other models like the video based instruction thats also uses a very good interactive pedagogy as well as group teaching learning software, which is one computer classroom software. This is also an efficient use of resource, because it only requires one computer and address a large group of students, about 20

Its Matter Of Who We Partner With – Interactive Technology Reaching New Markets : Jaemes Shanley, Director, Marketing, mimio

By
digitalLEARNING Network
-

Please give a general overview of what you are doing globally. What is the current global market size of your product in the educational sector and what market share mimio has?
mimio is present in 47 countries. The largest market we have is in the USA, and have particular success in Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Japan, Turkey, Hungary, Russia, and in the major European countries.

The market share also varies from country to country. In the USA, we have a market share of about 10%. We are a relatively newcomer in the interactive Whiteboard segment until 2004. Our focus was on the market for capturing Whiteboard notes, primarily is the white board digitiser. 2004 onwards, we started focusing more on classroom interactive Whiteboard.

How do you see the Indian market for your product? What hinders you in penetrating the education market with mimio Whiteboard?
There exists two bottoms – one is awareness and the other is cost. Interactive Whiteboard related to available budget for education are expensive, which is a very big part of the reason and a significant component of our success.

Fundamentally, we can enable more classrooms equipped with interactive Whiteboard technology virtually than any other product. This has been a key to our success in any part of the world, from the USA to New Zealand, where mimio is the largest interactive Whiteboard solution. Because it can be integrated into the classrooms simply as attaching a Whiteboard that already exist and you have the whole functionality of the classroom  interactive Whiteboard without the shipping cost, without the installation cost and at a much lower absolute cost. This is a huge factor that we are looking for every market. As we are relatively newcomer, the challenge for us is to create awareness. The key is the partnership, its the matter of who we partner with  in India, is going to make a difference. In every country we have been successful and the credit goes to our local partners.

What operational training is required for using this tool and what materials should a teacher come prepared in a classrooms equipped with mimio?
In every school system we have different educational standards. From our perspective, an interactive Whiteboard should provide the tool that allows a teacher to interactively present and teach to the standard of the locality. One of the things that goes on is the competitive war between Whiteboard companies claiming we have hundreds of lesson plans. To tell the truth, thats a war that no one can win, because the computations are infinite in India. There are so many languages, so much difference. We provide some content of the course material, but we can not provide them all as an original material source. We can provide tools that will allow the teacher to utilise any kind of digitally made material, like animations and video, still images, graphics, etc. We can make the teacher to use any online material. 

In many schools these smart interactive boards are sitting idle not being used, because either the teachers are being transferred to other schools or are retired and the new teacher is not adequately trained. Training is essential which again is needed to be continuous as technology is constantly evolving. We provide video CD enabler to set up the system, ongoing, unlimited, and no cost basis online training to any teacher who has Internet connection. We link up with them from anywhere in the world.  We also have trainers who are actually educators, who will do the next phase of training. 

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