In a bid to encourage teachers to adapt and use technology available to them, the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) has been conducting workshops on the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) for government schoolteachers across the State.
As many as 2,880 teachers from government schools have been trained so far as part of a project under the Tamil Nadu Innovation Initiative.
Free and easy
“Unlike propriety software, FOSS is free and easy to use and users can customise the software based on their needs. Interactive tools which the teachers can use to make their classrooms more interactive were picked and 64 master resource persons, which included teachers from schools and District Institutes of Education and Training across the State, were trained,” said Asir Julius, assistant professor, SCERT.
The master resource persons in turn, trained teachers in their respective districts through two-day workshops. From using the GeoGebra application to teach maths and the PhET application to teach scientific concepts through virtual simulations, teachers were introduced to several tools and applications.
To facilitate teachers to access the software, SCERT has also set up an online portal which functions as a learning management system.
A. Thyagarajan, a teacher who was a resource person for the initiative, said that many schools had at least one smart classroom now and more were being equipped with smart class kits.
