Using ICT tools to train teacher 'important': Academia
22 Apr 2013
In a symposium organized by India Education Review along with Hewlett-Packard in Jaipur, the attendees, said that information and communication technology (ICT) products are the need of the hour and they can help in bringing change in the way teaching and learning take place in education institutions of India.
To get a pulse of the response to the event, India Education Review interacted with some of the heads of institutions at the conference, titled 'A Symposium on Technology in Education'.
Prem Surana, Chairman, Deepshikha group of colleges was of the view that ICT has become an integral part of the education system in India. He said, “The transformation of education sector is not possible without use of ICT, we also need to give good training of ICT products to our teachers as they have to use it as with the use of technology he can teach the student in a better way. Because in some time the students will be less interested in attending the class, he or she would like to study at his or her own convenience. If we want the students to come to classroom and study then we need to make the teaching and learning interesting.
“We should have the content that is globally accepted, we should have the curriculum as per the demand of the market not what we are following for ages. We have not brought change in our curriculum for long and we can’t change it because we are affiliated to AICTE, universities which make it impossible for us to change the curriculum,” added Surana.
Kunal Sharma, HOD, Rajasthan Institute of Engineering and Technology opined, “We can use ICT products for improving the education sector in number of ways and for that we need latest technology and technology products and one of the important player is HP, we also need to look at an important aspects of cost of these products as it should be affordable to everyone. Teachers should be given proper training to use these products so that it can benefit both the teachers as well as the students.
“Till now as per my experience in Indian institutions we are using same technology for decades, there is none who could bring in new technology and teach. This is a very important reason that our students are not able to get job after their complete their education. Students just learn theories they do not have any practical knowledge. We should try and give the students more practical knowledge and this can only be made possible by use of latest ICT products,” he added.
Dr Aruna Chauhan, Meera Girls College talking about the adoption of ICT said, “Basically in India the adoption of Information and communication technology tools is little bit different as the students access and use them more for communication like emails, social networking. But, the most important part of ICT, it use for gaining knowledge and leaning is less.”
“People are using all sorts of ICT products whether it is laptop, tablets or even in mobile, students are using them throughout the day but they are using it mostly for communication and less for knowledge. Another area of concern is that students are just copy pasting content from the internet rather than learning and creating their own content,” Dr Chauhan added.
Vineeta Dadhich, Principal, Surendra Public school said that there is need to involve companies which provide good quality ICT products at affordable price. She said, “The role of technology is very important for the improvement if Indian higher education system with this I mean that everybody who is education should be familiar with latest technology. It can only be possible by involvement of various top level education companies like HP in schools and colleges.”
“There is need to bring down the cost of these products so that it is within reach of everybody. Either the government should do something to bring down the cost of ICT products or these companies should themselves work on bringing down the cost of their products,” said Dadhich.
Ranjan De, Dean- Academics at Arch Academy of Design was of the view that training teachers to use ICT products is equally important to adoption of technology. He said, “even if we bring technology to classroom we will not succeed because we are not training the people who would use the technology to teach. With government help, with private help we really need to address teacher education using technology. Starting from the K-12 system and making it go all the way up to the higher education only then it would work.”
“If we do not address teacher training on war footing it is not going to work. We are just going to talk and we will not be able to go where we want to go,” De added.
By IER Staff
