TEL-Seminar-Report.compressed.pdf - ETMA, India

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Educational Technology and Management Academy

2 Round Table-cum-Short Seminar on Gen-Nxt ICT IN Education: Implications for Schools and Colleges


Technology Enabled Learning (TEL) is emerging

as the order of the day. It's a movement spreading

its wings all over the world. International and

bilateral agencies, financial institutions,

governments, academic institutions, IT Giants,

business houses and NGOs are investing their

intellectual and financial resources to make TEL more effective,

less expensive and larger user-base among learners of all ages.

The movement is catching up in India too. This seminar-cum-Round

Table brought together TEL leaders from Industries, Academic

Institutions, TEL Entrepreneurs, and users - principals and teachers

from academic institutions to explore present and future of TEL in

India.

I thank all the principals and teachers and TEL leaders who made

this a lively future looking event. I hope those who did not

participate will find this brief report useful.

Marmar Mukhopadhyay

Chairman ETMA

Preface

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21st century education is changing and will see a lot of change. At today’s rate of change, technology will experience 20,000years of growth this century. Blackboards, CDs, Desks, textbooks, report cards will all be obsolete. Many skills learnt today in schools will be obsolete by the time child grows/goes for a job.

The future is accelerating and education is about adapting to a changing world. A comprehensive shift in the way we think about education is to be made. How and what to be taught has to change as today’s students have a good mastery over typing; they use twitter, face book and text messaging instead of mailing; they are able to manage networks of hundreds of people; they are digital readers; they are publishing their creative work.

Thus the 21st century learning must –

be student centered and personalized

provide experiences and opportunities to apply knowledge

be accessible 24x7, anywhere and anytime

Because 21st century students will use a multitude of technologies to;

Access content,

Demonstrate mastery,

Publish their work,

Maintain portfolio of their skills, and

Interact with the world.

This shift can happen only through involvement, innovation, partnership and true dedication and leadership.

Moot questions are how would students prefer to learn? What shape would learning assessment take? How would students’ talents be identified and nurtured? How would a library look like? What will be the implications for teacher preparation? How would schools and colleges absorb the current and future shock and be resilient to the developments.

These were the issues for the short seminar cum round table for Experts and Heads of Schools.

Introduction



Instructional Video and Tutor Space

Dr. Manish Gupta

Instructional videos are set to be the next-

generation textbooks. Humans are efficient in non-

linearly skimming through a textbook to estimate

temporal flow of concepts. Textbooks also provide

a ‘table of content’ and a ‘glossary’ of key concepts

discussed in the book for easy and to-the-point

navigation. But, video content by its very nature is

very difficult to visualize and consume. On the other

hand, video lectures contain two extra features

beyond the lingual information: (a) paralingual

information: the tone and tempo of the spoken

content conveys information beyond the dictionary

meaning of the words (e.g., importance of the concepts, speaker’s attitude, etc.), and (b)

extralingual information: the visual gestures and references made by the speaker convey

the context in which the lingual information is being delivered. Xerox Research Center

India’s advanced multimedia analytics analyses the video content to automatically generate

a topic-based table of content and a list of key words that capture the important concepts

discussed in the video. The topics in the table of content and the keywords are hyperlinked

with the video for ease of navigation. The lingual, paralingual and extra-lingual information

is analysed to automatically generate video-pages analogous to the individual pages of a

multi-page text document. Extensive user studies establish the efficiency of table-of-

content, the representative nature of the auto-generated ‘glossary’ and the efficiency of the

proposed text-book-like video navigation.

The instructional navigation component is part of a broader cloud-based e-learning platform

called “TutorSpace” to facilitate pedagogically-driven personalized learning design and

delivery. TutorSpace provides capabilities for multi-source content aggregation and

personalization based on student characteristics. Other capabilities include online delivery

and grading of diagnostic tests and formative assessments, and social discussion forums to

facilitate peer-learning.

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Mobile Learning

Prof. M.M. Pant

The purpose of technology is to move away from lower levels of pedagogical attainment to the higher level which is also the main objective of education.

The learning device of today and tomorrow is the mobile phone. It can change the way we learn. It has the capability of making learning more accessible, equitable and flexible for students everywhere. It is the answer to some of the important challenges like

challenge of relevance

challenge of quality

challenge of access

challenge of cost

Mobiles can be used to access resources, connect with others, share information, create content and also can be used for effective administration and point of connection and communication between school and its stake holders. Another important advantage of mobiles is that it is having a camera. Through the mobiles, facial analytics of the students can be seen and with this a teacher can judge himself/herself about their reach to students. This type of analytics allows real time for interventions to be made.

There are various apps available on the smart phones and one of such apps is WhatsApp Messenger; is a cross-platform mobile messaging app which allows one to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS. There is no cost in messaging as it uses the same internet data plan that one uses for email and web browsing. In addition to basic messaging, WhatsApp users can create groups; send each other unlimited images, video and audio media messages. Because of these facilities WhatsApp can be used to run any type of course. It can be used for registering the participants for the course as well as sending audio and video lectures related to the course to the participants. It can also be used as discussion forums as part of the course.

Some of the technological advancements which are the talk of the day leading to virtual reality experience and which can lead to higher levels of creativity are

Google Cardboard(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cardboard)

Microsoft Hololens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Holographic)

Oculus Rift (https://www.oculus.com/rift/)



School Library of Digital Age

Dr. H.K. Kaul

DELNET has 5300 libraries in its network in India

and other parts of the world and it provides

access to nearly 2crores records of books,

journals, articles, e resources, full text e resources

etc. Majority of the higher education institutes of

our country and other five nations are the

members of this network. But the schools are yet

to enter this network seamless information.

In today’s age the schools can have virtual

reference library as multimedia based online

libraries are coming up from where thousands of

resources can be shared. Every school is not able

to get all the contents available as some are priced, library networks like DELNET can help

the schools in this respect through resource sharing.

With the use of technology, schools can create a knowledge centre on a particular theme, in

which there is specialization available in the school through getting content from different

parts of the world and making it available to the students of different schools. The schools

can also earn money out of it. This is called knowledge centre application.

With access to enormous information and use of technology one can create his own content

through Maker space which is a place where people come together to create with

technology.

With a deluge in the information growth leading to information load, today’s challenge is

how to cope up with this information. Automated machine translation is also growing,

helping the user to read information written in any language in their language. So, the new

challenge for the library professionals to control the quality of the content.

The role of the librarian has been changed now. Previously a librarian is to have the

knowledge of accession, issuing and receiving books from the users but now a library

professional should have subject and technology expertise, leadership quality and

multidisciplinary approach by which they can help users in searching quality content. A

library professional is more of an academic leader now who will facilitate the users (both

teacher and learner) in tailoring and curating information from a large resource.

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Combining ICT with Collaborative Learning

Prof. K. Srinivas

“A key to successful use of technology is use of Human ware”.

There are four types of learners-

One who lack resources and

reading materials

One who has basic reading

materials

One who has everything but

collaborative learning

environment is missing

One who are able to express

themselves through blog,

twitter etc.

Interest of these learners can be taken

care of through the use of technology.

Content is easily available; the challenge

is choosing the correct content and finding basic means of its delivery to the right people at

the right time. The role of the teacher in this respect should be that of a facilitator to help

the learners in choosing the relevant content.

Students are not to be taught everything, they need to explore things and learn themselves,

and teacher can only guide the students. Collaborative learning approach is to be adapted to

make learning and assessment a fun. For collaborative learning, open source learning

management system can be used both for on and off campus education. Through this

system, discussion forums can be created to encourage the learners to participate in it and

learn both from the teachers as well as the peers.



Education Transformation

Mr. Indranil Samaddar

Change is inevitable, however, we are

looking at dramatic changes, rather than

incremental change when we talk about

Educational institutions. It is undeniable

that education delivery is a “Business

model” in the social sector and will see

seismic changes due to the proliferation

of the internet, as in all other Business

models of our age (Banking, retail, travel..)

. The new age customers are more

informed and look at a different outcome

from the traditional outcomes from their

education pursuits. Education today has

to be repurposed to deliver capability of

individuals to collaborate rather than differentiate themselves by bearing knowledge.

Transformation (A marked change in Form, Nature and Appearance) of Education

institutions is imminent, and needed for survival. Maintaining the relevance of a School that

caters to needs of the 21st Century learners cannot logically follow the model established

centuries back. Technology provides the schools the opportunity to transform from a Brick

and Mortar monolith to a Virtual, Collaborative, omnipresent and omnipotent enterprise.

The new model for education delivery also presents unprecedented opportunity to

education institutions to expand infinitely, cater to much larger customer base and

delivering quality with much limited deployment of critical resources (Teachers, content,

etc). The transformation of education requires courage, conviction and a change of mindset

of educators who may chose to create customer (learner) value on a continuum of time and

space, breaking down physical and mental boundaries of the traditional school format. A

School must be prepared to deliver what the student wants to “Learn” rather than what it

wants to “Teach” in the new model of education value creation.

Summary: We cannot hope to maintain the traditional School model and implement

technology in bits and pieces to become successful in this “Data” age. The model for

transformation should put technology first and then the rest of the components of a school

system, if it hopes to survive, not the other way around.

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OER in School System

Prof. Madhu Parhar

There is very much concern about the learners of 21st century who are growing and moving with the technology. The important questions in front of the teacher today are-

How do we prepare our learners for life in 21st century

How do we spice up our learning activities to get our learners think deeply and learn maximally

How do we maximize the learning experience

How do we develop/get learning resources

How do we support our learners best

The answer to these is OER. Transition from the popular textbook towards Open Educational Resources is needed. School leaders have to take initiative with regards to it. The advantage with OERs is that they are open and freely available. The various types of OERs which are available are

OER Repositories

OER Initiatives/Projects

Open Access Journals

Open Textbooks

OER Images

National Repository of Open Educational Resources (NROER) made by NCERT and another repository sponsored by Rajiv Gandhi Science and Technology Commission (RGSTC) opened in Maharashtra are two such repository where the various web based materials has been identified, downloaded and edited to make it suitable for Indian school system. Thus, teachers can be asked to visit these repositories and supplement the text books.

The various possible ways of using OERs are-

enhancing an existing unit by adding OER

improving existing materials by replacing it with OER

creating new part of materials by using or re-purposing OER

creating new courses by using, re-using and repurposing OER

using students to generate OER ; the students can be encouraged to generate their own OERs which can be shared among the group of schools.

Various MOOCs like Future learn, Coursera, Udacity, Edx and Khan Academy are playing an important role in improving the quality of education. Various MOOCs are coming up with courses for school level also and has various courses on professional development. The school leaders need to take initiative and ask their teachers to go for such professional development courses which are freely available to update themselves with the change in the technology.



ETMA’s TMDC (Teacher-Made Digital Contents for Flipped Classrooms and iBLD)

Prof. Marmar Mukhopadhyay

ETMA worked on ICT Integrated

Blended Learning Design (iBLD) for

several years involving more than 1200

teachers from both private and

government schools. Primary objective

was to develop an alternative

pedagogy for cultivating higher order

thinking among students.

The instructional strategy was to ‘cover

the syllabus’ (achieve lower order

cognition) at approximately 25% of the

time taken in the conventional format

to create enough time for the teacher to creatively engage students in activities. Digi-

Content fits the bill best for covering the course at a shorter time. From our engagement as

consultant and (experimental) producer of digi-contents, we discovered that the contents

covered, conventionally, in 3 to 4 periods can be contained in 10 to 12 minute video without

missing anything at all.

Further, our involvement in evaluation of off-the-self Indian digital content Commissioned

by UNESCO, and a consulting project with Gujarat Informatics Ltd, indicated that off-the-

self digital contents are generic and not specific to the textbook to be transacted; and

these lack pedagogical principles that are necessary to facilitate learning. ETMA’s iBLD

cannot be implemented with such generic digi-contents. Thus Digi-Content has to be

developed by the teacher – we call ‘Teacher Made Digi-Content (TMDC)’. ETMA decided to

experiment with TMDC that satisfies the criteria for iBLD.

ETMA incubates innovation in-house. ETMA picked up NCERT’s Textbook on EVS for grade V;

EVS, because many teachers understand this subject. NCERT textbook, because these are

pedagogically sound and cheapest and affordable by the students of ETMA’s experimental

school for rural students. ETMA created digital contents on few chapters.

ETMA reviewed these sample digi-contents with teachers of a high end school; and got loud

appreciation. ETMA tried one of the digi-content on a group of students in ETMA’s own

experimental school in Udang in iBLD mode comprising multi-mode viewing, collaborative

learning, internet search, elder-consultation and teacher mentoring and formative

assessment within the four periods. Result was all more than 80% students scored more

than 80%.

ETMA does not propose to produce such digi-contents; it’ll train teachers to create their

own digi-contents either for flipped classrooms, or for integrating into iBLD.

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Presentations by experts was followed by round table discussions among the heads of the institutions facilitated by experts. They discussed various issues and implication of technology in the institutions. Some of the concerns expressed at the round tables were:

Technology

Ethical use of social media.

Code of conduct in the use of technology for all stakeholders.

How to deploy mobiles.

Between messy condition and optimistic scenario

Pedagogy

Pedagogy for the use of technology is to be developed.

Students

Students not being creative as with technology they are more into cut and paste.

Learning maturity of child and readiness of the child for learning.

Positive usage of tools on the part of the students.

Teachers

Work load on the teachers.

Teachers not being so tech savvy and being much behind today’s child in terms of technology.

Proper understanding of tools like mobile, needs to be there especially for teachers.

Unlearning on the part of the teachers is required for adoption of the technology.

Parents

Education of parents is also an important factor as involvement of parents needs to be there.

Round Table Discussion



March of technology cannot be stopped; it need not be stopped. Concerns expressed by the principals are genuine. These are about ethics of use of social media; it is about competence of use of Internet for learning; about teacher preparedness for technology enabled learning (TEL), it’s about students’ maturity and efficient use of technology and open education resources (OER).

On the issue of ethics of use of social media, we need to understand that students use social media majorly outside the schools where parents and peers play vital roles. Need of the time is to find out the ways to make positive use of it. Penetration of Smart phones among students of progressive private schools is deep; and it’s a powerful tool of learning – both for delivery and interactivity. Real challenge is creating learning designs for engaging students in creative use of the smart phones. M-Learning (Mobile based education) is quite well established. ETMA, commissioned by USAID, recommended mobile based delivery for qualifying preservice education of teachers in Bihar.

In the beginning of this century, USA, UK, Australia and Canada appointed Commissions to explore and recommend use of Internet for Learning. Whole world is agog with OERs and MOOCs. India has dedicated repositories of educational software. For example, all NCERT textbooks are now available free on the Net. Even when they ‘’cut and paste’’, they explore resources, sieve for relevance and quality, retrieve, organize and then create documents. It’s a complex set of skills which the digital natives –the students – are quite comfortable with.

More serious issue is the contradictions or conflicts between technology practices within and outside school. This gap need to be bridged; this conflict need to be resolved for healthy and smart development of students.

Teachers generally are overworked – 6 to 7 periods a day compared to 16 to 18 periods a week for a college teacher leaving enough space for intellectual recharging. Technology needs to be augmented in the core area of school work – teaching and student assessment for reducing teacher workload. Teachers need to be trained and prepared for integrating technology in academic activities.

Young people who grew up with technology stay ahead of their elders in any profession. It will be unfair to single out teachers for this generational digital divide. Young teachers are more technology smart than their seniors. That’s the law of technology. The teacher training institutes are not technology savvy; they still operate within the traditional mode. Thus, a ‘trained teacher’’ comes with almost no exposure to technology Enabled Learning. Need is to take the issue of Technology Integration head on; and prepare teachers.

Way Forward

Xerox Research Centre India has developed one of the most advanced portals for TEL for engineering education. It presents a significant improvement over NPTEL under NMEICT.

ETMA offers two sets of carefully designed teacher empowerment programmes on TEL – (a) ICT Skills for Teachers and Digital Content Generation by Teachers; and (b) Multimedia Training on Student Assessment (CCE), and online courses for teachers.

Conclusion

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1. Ms. Anita Makkar, Director, HDFC Schools, Gurgaon (Former Member, ETMA Council)

2. Ms. Anuradha Mathur, Principal, SPS, Rajinder Nagar, New Delhi.

3. Ms. Aparna Erry, Principal, DAV Public School, Sec 14, Gurgaon

4. Mr. Arun Rao, iON, TCS, Bangalore

5. Ms. Deepa Gandhi, ICT Specialist, SWS, Gurgaon

6. Prof. Dharam Parkash, (Former Prof. CIET-NCERT), ETMA, Gurgaon

7. Ms. Mangala Gauri, IBM, New Delhi.

8. Ms. Gulroop, Vice-Principal, SPS, Gurgaon.

9. Dr. HK Kaul, Director, DELNET, New Delhi

10. Mr. Indranil Samaddar, Information Scientist, Kolkata

11. Dr. Indu Khetarpal, Principal, SPS, Rajindernagar, New Delhi (Member, ETMA Council)

12. Prof. Jaya Indiresan, (Former Prof. NIEPA), ETMA Council

13. Prof. K. Srinivas, NUEPA, New Delhi

14. Ms. Kamini Sharma, ICT Specialist, SNS, NOIDA

15. Ms. Lajwanti Yadav, Principal, DAV Public School, Sec 48, Gurgaon.

16. Prof. Madhu Parhar, Professor (STRIDE), IGNOU, New Delhi (Member, ETMA Council)

17. Dr. Manish Gupta, Vice-President, VP, Xerox Research Centre India, Bangalore

18. Prof. Marmar Mukhopadhyay, CM, ETMA Council, Gurgaon

19. Prof. MM Pant, CM, Planet Edu & Member ETMA Council, Gurgaon

20. Ms. Nirmal Yadav, Principal, CCA , Gurgaon

21. Dr. Om Deshmukh, Area Manager, Xerox Research Centre India, Bangalore.

22. Dr. Paushali Datta Pal, ETMA, Gurgaon.

23. Ms. Preeti Basil, Senior Consultant, TCS, New Delhi

24. Ms. Preeti Puri, Bluebells International, New Delhi.

25. Mr. Rajiv Banerjee, Media Specialist, Kolkata.

26. Mr. R. C. Shekhar, Director, Gyan Bharati Public School, Saket, New Delhi

27. Mr. Sabyasachi Panja, ETMA, Gurgaon

28. Ms. Rupa Chakravarty, Principal, Suncity World School, Gurgaon

29. Dr. Sangeeta Kaul, DELNET, New Delhi

30. Ms. Shashi Banerjee, Principal, Shiv Nadar School, NOIDA

31. Ms. Sharda Bhattacharya, ETMA, Gurgaon

32. Dr. Subhash Chandra Arya, LIC, Delhi University, Delhi

33. Ms. Vishakha Chitnis, Principal, Amity International School, Sector 43, Gurgaon

34. Ms. Yashmin Contractor, Principal, Summerfield School, Gurgaon & Chairperson, GPSC

Annexure - II

List of Participants (In alphabetical order)



Technology Enabled Learning (TEL) is emerging as the order of the day. There is no commonly acceptable definition of TEL. Any (or all) learning endeavours that get facilitated/enhanced with technology induction qualify for Technology Enabled (also called enhanced) Learning. Use of digital contents in classroom transaction in blended learning designs, online education, Mobile-based Learning, WhatsApp based learning, and MOOCs, etc. are the conglomerate of TEL.

The movement is catching up in India too. ETMA is a major brand name in TEL in India. ETMA is actively engaged in TEL since 2009. As an R&D Organization, ETMA has created its own niche among the leaders in TEL. ETMA’s research and innovations are situated to Indian context, especially school education. ETMA’s TEL Portfolio contains six items.

1. ICT skills for Teachers ICT skills are necessary for teachers to integrate technology in teaching learning and student assessment processes. The capacity building programmes comprise use of internet for learning, accessing and using OER for thematic transaction of curriculum, Web 2.0 tools and social networking tools. ETMA has conducted number of programmes (usually a 3-day module) and have trained large number of school teachers. 2. Content Generation by Teachers ETMA trains teachers on digital content generation. Major purpose is to help them develop digital content on the topic they teach in the classrooms; and release their creative energy. They learn content analysis; script writing, identifying quality and relevant visuals from open sources (OER) and creation of visuals (PPT slides, video clips), etc., voice recording, reviewing and finishing. Teachers developed digital contents in such ETMA workshops. 3. ICT Integrated Blended Learning Designs (iBLD) Third stage of TEL is integrating technology in learning designs. ETMA researched for more than five years, developed its own template of iBLD; identified 70+ learning tactics; developed detailed professionally validated training modules; and tried out with more than 1500 teachers from private schools, Kendriya Vidyalayas, State government schools (Gujarat and West Bengal). Digital content either from open sources or teacher made is an integral component of iBLD. 4. Multi-media Teacher Training Programme ETMA developed a 10 module multimedia teacher training programme on Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation of students. The programme comprises video, printed material, web references to standardized free online tests, e-tutorials, online tests for learning milestones. This has been recognized as 5-day equivalent face-to-face training by the CBSE. More than 4000 teachers have been successfully trained within the school. Online Programmes ETMA will soon offer online courses for teachers, students and parents. Some of the upcoming courses are on Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation, Technology Enabled Blended Learning, Soft skills for teachers and students, and Parenting. 5. Research on TEL. ETMA conducted research on ICT and TEL sponsored and commissioned by Microsoft, Intel and USAID. It is currently working on a sponsored research on TEL in eight South Asian Countries including countries in the Indian subcontinent. Such comparative studies create opportunities to learn from the best practices from different countries.

For more details: please write to [email protected]

Technology Enabled Learning An ETMA Portfolio on Inservice Teacher

Capacity Building

mailto:[email protected]

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Educational Technology and Management Academy (ETMA) is a non-government, non-profit Educational Trust registered in 1993. ETMA fraternity brings in together expertise from IITs, IIM and other leading Business Schools, Medical Institutions, Universities, National Institutions, leading Schools and Corporate Organizations.

Vision Pioneering research-based innovations for improving quality of education at all levels.

Mission To create a synergy between latest developments in science of education and leaning with culturally

embedded modern management.

Outreach Programme for Deprived Children a. Educating the 3rd Child. ETMA supports 38 brilliant but at-risk students due to severe poverty. ETMA

provides them monthly scholarships from higher secondary till they get a job. This is a Personal Social Responsibility (PSR) programme. ETMA’s 3rd Children have cracked IIT entrance, JEE, and other competitive examinations.

b. ETMA World School: India’s First High Quality Education facility for Deprived Rural Children established in village Udang (Howrah District). More than 100 students from nursery to grade IV receive education at a minimal cost. The school will be a K-12 School, to be affiliated to CBSE.

ETMA Profile

ETMA Activities



Educational Technology and Management Academy T-6/1701, Valley View Estate, Gwal Pahadi, Gurgaon-Faridabad Road, Gurgaon – 122001 (Haryana: India) Tele/fax: 01242588559, Website: www.etma-india.in E-mail: [email protected]

Members of ETMA Council

http://www.etma-india.in/

mailto:[email protected]

TEL-Seminar-Report.compressed.pdf - ETMA, India

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