SEMINAR
Topic : IT@School
Submitted
to: Fr.Sony Sebastian
Submission
date : 6-9-18
Submitted
by : Ann Twincy Feriah
( 1st
year Natural science)
INTRODUCTION
My seminar is based on the topic about IT@School. I have taken this
topic because currently it has high relevance in the field of teaching and ineducation. I have included the details of the topic in
several sections . In the first section it is about the formation of IT@School,
in the second section it is about the functions. In the third section I have
included the aims of IT@School providing computer enabled education to all the
school children of the state. There are several aims based on this program.In
the fourth section, i have rolled out several programmes that comes under the
IT@School for the development of its own Operating system.IT@School can improve the technological development
either in teachers and she can make her pupils understand what she is
teaching in an easy way. IT @School which is now being used in all the
schools in the state for facilitating complete ICT enabled education in the state. For this
study I have referred some texts and collected information from several
websites such as Wikipedia , https://kerala.gov.in/it-school etc. I have also referred the notes that shown in
some guides and internet.
IT@SCHOOL
IT@SCHOOL
is a project under the Directorate of Public Instruction of the Government of
Kerala, which introduces Information Technology in High School Education for
qualitative improvement of the conventional teaching or learning system.IT@School was formed in 2001, as a Project under General Education
Department, to inculcate IT activities in Higher School sections in the State.
The first breakthrough of IT@School came
in 2005 when Information Technology was made a compulsory subject in Std 10.
The IT@School Project
under General Education Department was set-up to augment the IT education in
schools and also to enhance the quality of IT education towards a complete ICT
enabled educational system. The Project envisages enhancing the role of
Information Technology as a teaching aid for learning all subjects. IT@School
Project is termed as the Single largest simultaneous deployment of FOSS based
ICT education in the world.By effectively making use of the Centrally
sponsored ‘ICT at School ‘scheme, IT@School provided ICT infrastructure to 4071
schools during 2007-2012. In 2016, IT@School re-initiated the ICT intervention
in Lower Primary and Upper Primary sections, by launching exclusive ICT
Textbooks viz; Kalipetti and e@Vidya. As many as 1.50 Lakh teachers from Std 1
to 12 has been empowered with ICT skills, enabling them to transact their
subjects more effectively using ICT tools.
Headquartered in
Thiruvananthapuram, the Project has District Resource Centre’s in each
district. The project is the nodal agency for all e-Governance activities under
General Education Department and also the nodal agency for implementing EDUSAT
operations in the State, under which an educational channel viz. VICTERS is
functioning. The launch of EDUSAT operations and
broadband connectivity to schools commenced since then, the VICTERS channel
operated by IT@School was the first Complete Educational Channel in the
Country.
Programmes of IT@School
IT@School Project has rolled out several programmes
which included the development of its own Operating System - IT@School
GNU/Linux- which is now being used in all the schools in the state. Apart from
this, several educational software like Dr.Geo, Rasmol, K-Tech lab, Geogebra, Chemtool, Kalzium etc. are being
extensively customised by the Project in developing teacher friendly
applications for facilitating complete ICT enabled education in the state. The
project prepared interactive multimedia CDs, handbooks and training modules for
ICT, as well as text books for IT. All content developed by the project was per
the approach based on the National Curriculum Framework 2005. IT@School amply supplemented the State Government’s
Public Education Rejuvenation Mission with initiatives such as Samagra Content
Portal, Sampoorna School Management software and SchoolWiki which connects
15,000 schools for collaborative content development process. A major recent
highlight of IT@School was the ‘Hi School Kuttikootam’ programme under which
over 1 lakh students are being provided specialized trainings in 5 different
areas such as Animation, Cyber Safety, Hardware, Electronics and Malayalam
computing.
IT@School and Education
No curriculum can be effective without high-quality, ongoing professional
development. The old approach of after-school Technology training sessions does
not work. Such sessions demonstrated the features of software applications but rarelyshowed
how to use them in the classroom. There
is no way to escape the fact that today's classrooms must provide Technology
supporter learning opportunities for students. Teachers must be prepared to use
Technology in ways that encourage student engagement ultimately student
learning as measured in a variety of ways. IT@School is used appropriately that
can help students become active, independent learners with access to seemingly
unlimited information. The introduction of new technology into the teaching and
learning process initiates a change in power relationships. These Technologies
give students more control over there own learning.The
Project has remodelled conventional teaching methodologies in classrooms
through the use of IT. The project is being implemented in over 12,000
schools in the state of Kerala, and also in schools in Mahi, Lakshadweep and the Middle East which follow the state syllabus. An estimated 5 million students
and 200,000 teachers are now part of this project, which has a network of 160
"master trainers" and 5600 school IT co-ordinators state-wide, who
are school teachers themselves. The project also conducts specialized training
for visually challenged teachers in that state.[3] The project functions on a free software platform.
Aims
The
project IT@SCHOOL aims at providing computer enabled education to all the
school children of the state in a period of three years .The project is
implemented initially in the high schools of the state-both the Government and
private aided schools.
The important
aims of the program are :
(1) Introducing
IT into High School curriculum of the State.
(2) Information
Technology will be used as a powerful tool for improving the quality of
teaching and learning.
(3) Information
Technology will be taught as a curricular subject to ensure that basic
knowledge and skills are acquired by the students in a formal and systematic
manner.
CONCLUSION
I had written about the topic IT@School
in this seminar very briefly. By doing this activity I had understood about the
details of IT@School. From this I understood the formation, functions,
programmes, importance regarding education and teaching and mainly about the
aims of IT@School. Some websites and texts also helped me in doing this. In my
opinion IT@School has provided a great function for easy learning to students. These
technologies in education allow for much greater individualization of learning
where students are able to progress at their own speed to start learning when
they are motivated and stop when they are saturated. Moreover these
Technologies allow the instructor to individualize instruction without having
to make individual prescriptions for each student in each class during each
term.From this I understood that IT@School has provided easy learning softwares
for students. IT@School has played a major role in the education sector.
REFERENCES
·
Educational
technology text-to-speech V C Pandey- Isha Books Publication.
