How do you teach a class of (mostly bored) students, regular dry subjects of the school curriculum, retain their interest enough for the forty-five minutes of the class hour and also stimulate them enough to ask questions? How do you initiate self-learning and peer learning in a group of pre-teenagers and early teenagers in urban slums or remote rural villages who cannot afford the basic necessities of life? How do you teach adult women and men who have left school in pre teens?

Today a host of ICT tools are doing just this. But then can it benefit education especially in countries where the limited resource could be better used for increasing the number of schools in rural areas than investing in expensive ICT infrastructure for select schools? Quite a large group of people seems to think it can!

The MDG goal 2 read as ‘Education is development…For nations it creates a dynamic workforce and well-informed citizens able to compete and cooperate globally - opening doors to economic and social prosperity’. Today the nations envision a knowledge society with well-informed digitally competent people. These nations are increasingly using ICTs to address the need to expand the scope of learning beyond formal instruction based education to knowledge construction that is in consonance with the need, priorities and aspirations of nation in a digital economy.

So what can ICT do for education? ICTs in education can stimulate innovation and creativity in all areas of pedagogy including new educational methods, techniques, and new contents. ICTs can be an effective tool for knowledge creation; expand the domain of learning and education and making education more learner and community centric. ICTs hold promise of revolutionising not only effective learning for school children but also educating the community deprived of the knowledge environment associated with formal education. This conviction has furthered the rise of a network of practitioners advocating for the integration of ICTs in education and learning and spearheading the growing global movement ‘ICTs in Education’.

A paradigm shift in education with emphasis on constructivist approaches are going hand-in hand with huge technological advancements and computing that are affecting the whole educational and learning arena.

The successes of the countless initiatives of technology education and application of educational technologies in learning have compelled the policy makers to take notice and support the movement. Government support has been extended through National ICT policies, IT education policies, computers in schools etc. A National Policy on ICT for Education is not far behind. Nevertheless, ‘ICT in Education’ to achieve the status of a nation-wide-movement in developing countries like India, require not just national policies but also the concerted efforts of practitioners and ample knowledge sharing among all groups involved in extending and integrating ICT in Education.

The Centre for Science Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) is organising a two day conference on ICT and Education on the 18-19 October 2005, that will provide a platform for interchange of views among experts, professionals, researchers and academicians on theoretical and practical aspects of ICT implementation in education. Digital Learning 2005, as the conference is titled will showcase ICT in Education initiatives, take stock and learn from practices from a variety of perspectives that will add value to education and training and drive and build digital competence in the knowledge society.

The theme of the two day conference is ‘ICT and Education: Challenges and Practices’ . The conference will discuss technology solutions that keep ICT integrated with education and debate whether the education problem of productivity-a balance between inputs (resources) and outputs (learning outcomes), has been achieved in the existing education process and to what extent these technologies been able to improve learning environment.

Mainstreaming ICT in teaching and learning by developing countries has mainly happened as introduction of computers in school curriculum. Even though in most developing countries (including India) computer literacy still remains the major rationale for ICT use in education, its overwhelming effect in bridging the digital divide, atleast for a section of the unreached cannot be ignored.

Along with initiatives where the private sector and civil society has taken the lead in introducing ICTs in learning, the conference will also showcase government initiatives to create a technically literate workforce, distance education programmes, education programme for the adult and other initiatives using ICT.

Even with Government support and insistence of using technology in education, many obstacles to implementation still exist. Digital Learning 2005 conference will analyse the challenges for e-Learning, strategies to fill the current gaps in practices, identify the factors and components that are essential for effective ICT integration in education, be it education content development, supporting policies or public–private partnerships. Education is central to long term well-being of the society and there is a need to consider the potential of all available technologies. Although technologies can be effective tools, it is better not to fall into the trap of what is commonly referred to “techno-centric thinking” and focus on ICTs benefit in improving the learning environment.

Digital Learning 2005 aims to debate and assess the potentials of ICTs and to define clear strategies for a global goal of improving learning and education.

Rumi Mallick, rumi@csdms.in
www.DL.csdms.in