Education has always been accorded an honoured place in the Indian society. The recommendations of the Education Commission (1964-66) marked a significant step in the history of education post-Independence. Since then there has been a considerable expansion in the educational facilities all over the country at all levels.
However, it is in the last few years that education has been the prime focus in India. The essential driver has been the shortage or lack of skilled workers in several sectors of the economy due to a weak higher education system. It is difficult to sustain the growth momentum of the country and maintain competitiveness unless problems with higher education are fixed. To address the issue, the Government of India has taken serious steps in the Eleventh Five Year Plan to increase opportunities in higher education.
India recognised the importance of ICT (interactive classroom technique) in education as early as 1984-85 when the Computer Literacy And Studies in Schools (CLASS) Project was initially introduced as a pilot with the introduction of BBC micro-computers. A total of 12,000 such computers were received and distributed to secondary and senior secondary schools through State governments. The project was subsequently adopted as a centrally-sponsored scheme during the 8th Plan (1993-98). The budget for this programme has been substantially increased in the last 10 years and implemented via the education departments of the State governments and the SSA (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan) chapters in States.
The new age teaching through interactive technology is an initiative by the government to incorporate interactive classroom technique in a teaching scenario. In recent years the blackboard has given way to the pairing of short throw projectors with interactive whiteboards, allowing the group interactivity of the blackboard to be merged with the content of the PC to form a powerful learning and teaching platform.
Interactive classrooms offer tremendous potential for improving the learning process. It is a complete technology-enabled classroom solution that revolutionises teaching and learning of subjects like mathematics, science, social sciences and English. It allows the teacher to not only make the teaching process interactive but also engaging by using visual means which enables them to create question papers and analyse students' performance. Furthermore, it gives the teacher the flexibility of bringing a virtual science lab right into the classroom. Lesson plans may be easily captured and shared online enhancing the interaction with students and engaging them with a visual component to the intellectual stimulus. This helps the students of higher classes to firstly get motivated, logically think, collate and learn with interest.
For engineering students, it ushers the desired potential to enrich and deepen skills, and helps them to research and document better. Seen on a larger canvas it helps to create economic viability for tomorrow's workers, contributes to radical changes in the learning sphere thus strengthening teaching, and provides opportunities for connection between the school and the world.
However, there is another side of the coin wherein access to ICT is still limited to many places in the country because of lack of physical infrastructure, economic constraints such as extreme poverty; lack of educational limitations such as illiteracy and lack of relevant content in the local language. Ensuring strategies to combat these obstacles will allow us to explore the true potential of ICT in near future.
The author is COO, Pearson Education Services
