IT for Change's blog

The Policy Planning Unit (PPU) of the Education Department, Government of Karnataka, in their continuing effort to create ‘Master Trainers on Public Software educational tools’, organised a 2 day workshop on November 19^th and 20^th with resource support from Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Azim Premji Foundation, infrastructure support from RV College of Engineering and faculty from IT for Change and RV Educational Consortium. The participants came from all parts of Karnataka and were exclusively high school science and mathematics teachers. These teachers will work with other teachers in their respective schools to build their capacities to use these tools in the regular teaching-learning processes in mathematics and science subjects.

Almost all computer programs in schools so far have focused primarily on teachers and students acquiring basic computer skills, and there is not much attention to ‘computer aided learning’. The teachers also have no opportunity to use these basic computer skills acquired and the training in many cases becomes redundant and irrelevant. The workshop premise is that by shifting the focus to training teachers to use ICT educational tools for teaching regular subjects , it will enable greater ownership and commitment of teachers to using new possibilities offered by ICTs and consequently to more effective use of the ICT tools in the schools.

ICT Tools

These ICT tools adopt a learner centered approach based on a theory of learning called constructivism, its core idea being that knowledge is actively constructed by the learner, building on her existing knowledge and it is not passively received from the teacher . The premise also is that by the teacher herself experiencing this pedagogical approach through use of these educational tools, she would be more amenable and able to adopt it while teaching in her classroom.

As the participants were science and mathematics high school teachers, the focus of the training was also on science and mathematics tools. Thus the tools selected were Geogebra, for mathematics, KSTARS and KtechLab and Kalzium for Science. Because of the strong subject knowledge the participant possessed, we were able to cover some advanced topics in the tools. The participants were required to an assessment which required them to select a topic from the syllabus that they teach, explain and demonstrate how they would use the ICT tool to aid in the teaching of the chosen topic. Finally they had to think of questions that they could ask students to enable critical thinking and constructively understand the topic.

The participants created very interesting lesson plans to teach specific topics of the syllabus as part of their assessment. They were able to integrate the textbook lesson well with the tools capabilities. What was very interesting was how they were able to go outside the scope of the material in the textbooks and ask students to observe certain phenomenon. For example, one of the teachers constructed a circum-circle of a triangle and through the interaction that is available in the tool demonstrated the relationship between the circum-centre(its position with respect to the triangle) and the type of triangle (acute, right-angled, obtuse). There were many such thought provoking lesson plans in all the tools.

In order to move beyond narrow ‘tool focus’ of ICTs, where techno-fascination is often a serious limitation and even danger of such programs, the program also had sessions on educational perspectives and the National Curriculum Framework 2005, where the potential of ICTs to support constructive teaching-learning approaches was discussed. ICT tools are often portrayed as self-learning tools that replace teachers. It was emphasised throughout the workshop that the tools would enable a child to learn only with appropriate facilitation by the teacher and hence the importance of the teacher’s role and her/his own ability to understand and use the tools. The program resources are available on www.KarnatakaEducation.org.in.

SMT Trainers

This workshop also gave opportunity for 5 master trainers that we had trained in August 2010 to train the teachers. The master trainers were able to take on many sessions of the training , especially learning how to use the tools. We were able to provide feedback that would enable them to train with much more confidence in their respective districts. These trainers were also able to learn some more advanced use of Geogebra in this workshop. As they had been using these tools since August, some of the trainers also had created their own lessons to use for the training sessions. One feedback for us is to keep emphasising the subject knowledge more than the technology per say because techno-fascination is still a danger that we must contend with – with the master trainers.

Feedback from Participants

The participants were enthusiastic about the possibilities of these tools in daily teaching learning processes. They have been added to the e-mail list pskarnataka@googlegroups.com to enable them to network, discuss these tools and also share their ideas, issues and solutions. Three of the participants explicitly talked about their experience understanding these tools. One of the mathematics teachers – Jnana Sangeetha said that “it was her dream come true”. She thought that the tool had a lot of potential to help her explain many of the abstract algebra equations with Geogebra. Two other teachers – Shivashankar R N and Narayana B S said that the interactive more enabled them to explore the concepts in different ways so they could take this learning back into the classrooms. Narayana B S said that he realised now why as a teacher he needs to learn how to use the computer and learn how to use these tools before exposing his students to it.

Overall, the learning and feedback was very encouraging and some of the participants have already called us after installing Ubuntu and the education packages in the school systems.

More photos of the workshop on http://picasaweb.google.com/103961979015213484120/ScienceAndMathsTeachersTrainingOnCAL?authkey=Gv1sRgCOLJ4IX2o7_FsAE

The Hindu May 26, 2010

Special Correspondent

KOCHI: Kerala is a role model for other States in implementing ICT-enabled (information and communication technology) education in schools using Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS), according to Rajen Vareda, moderator of U.N. Solution Exchange ICTD Community.

Kerala’s success in the field was due a host of factors such as the government’s resolve, teachers unions’ commitment, involvement of civil society and the general political consciousness. Other States could take lessons from Kerala’s experience, Mr. Vareda told a news conference called to announce an international conference on public sector software to be held here on May 27-29.

Meet

The conference on ‘Software for the public sector, with focus on public education,’ is organised by United National Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Solution Exchange ICTD Community, and Kerala Government’s IT@School.

Guidelines to be set

To be attended by senior policymakers, educationists and software specialists from half a dozen South Asian countries as well as from across India, it will formulate a set of guidelines for the public-sector software (software developed for public service, especially for government, using FOSS).

Baby to open meet

The conference, to be chaired by UNESCO’s South Asia director Armoogum Parasuramen, will be opened by Education Minister M.A. Baby on Friday.

Anvar Sadath, executive director, IT@School, said the FOSS-based ICT software used in schools to teach maths, physical science and chemistry would be shared with the South Asian countries.

May 14-15 2010: Jaipur- ‘What is Free Software and why is it relevant to you?’
May 18-19 2010: Delhi- ‘What is Free Software and why is it relevant to you?’
May 27-29, 2010: Kochi, Kerala- Software in Public Sector, with focus on Public Education’

For more information, please go to the Public-Software Website

With about 10 days left for the deadline on pre-proposals for the Gender and Citizenship in the Information Society Program, we are rather hopeful that there will be in the next few days, a steady email flow of applications. Indeed, the past month after the launch of the Program has been exciting. We have had discussions with many organisations and scholars and feel rather affirmed by their interest in the Program. Having the Project advisors come on board was the first pat on the back; the issue of gender and citizenship in its indisputably organic link with the digital space that we all inhabit is an area that southern feminist scholarship needs to immediately look at.

We know that the global south is indeed a highly contested concept, but it certainly is a metaphor that fills much of the conceptual vacuum when we discuss the standpoint of women from developing countries whose social locations make them vulnerable and exploited even as we move on the space ships of post-modern global existence that are post-human in their digital avatars. For many women, the context of the emerging world may be far removed from the information society, in the lack of their personal access to gizmos and the Internet. But ignoring the more pervasive, rapid and complex developments of the social reality of our times that are created through technology and its intermixing with social processes, would amount to the proverbial head in the sand, as social change overtakes development vision and the strategic response necessary in defining social justice and gender equality agenda commensurate with our times. The women in Mysore district we work with may be illiterate, but their lives are embedded in the wider process of institutional changes that new information and communication architectures are crafting. It is not only the heavily romanticised mobile phone that seems to create new excitement in their lives. The changing contours of state transactions through e-governance, the changes to work organisation patterns and employment trends a few miles outside of their villages, their affair with peer to peer video related processes that we were responsible for engineering and its insidious impact on their identity and solidarity as poor women and the shot in the arm that these videos have given their creatively wicked tactics to educate men about gender equality.. are all part of what has been an evolutionary space of the digital world that they belong to.. whether or not they have even seen the computer or surfed the Internet.

So coming back to the proverbial ostrich, why do some of us feminists want to deny this domain of study – of the information society – as relevant to deeper feminist quests? Why is there a rather widespread trend to see technology as tools that enable or interfere with daily life and not as a semantic transformation that alters society and relationships? And if indeed some others among us do acknowledge that there is something here that is deep, why dont we see the obvious – the desperate need there is for theory building across many arenas of gender and development and perhaps, (and on this i have had some insightful conversation with Lisa McLaughlin, one of our advisors), for a grand theory of development, social change and the gender equality question.

Not that without development intervention we don’t see autonomous sparks of action catalysed by technology. Only today i saw an email about a book called SMS Uprising that documents how mobiles are alchemists of social protest . But the heart of the matter is that as they are, technological super-systems tend to consolidate power. Today, the flows of domination and of resistance are different – like the Himalayan tributaries that change course once in a while signalling something deeply disturbing. The smaller sub-systems, at our local levels are constantly having to respond to the whims and ways of the ‘network’ (if you have not read Castells, please do), which in its essence has seen a capitalist surge that is unprecedented and the birth of a surveillance and highly paranoid patriarchal state. This means, the spunky and inspiring women in Mysore who we work with are perhaps doing what they will with their mobiles and their limited access to computers through their NGO, but how they will be able to turn the tide – or as it is in this case, reign in the propensities of the network so that it works for them is the BIG question. Can the smaller sub-system and its members survive and how will they subvert the network’s tendencies to totalise?

This is therefore a moment of reckoning for southern feminist scholarship. How are we reinterpreting the categories that we so passionately employ in our analyses – democracy, livelihoods, sexuality, citizen rights, entitlements, subversion, institutional accountability, global governance, solidarity, voice, agency, participatory development etc.- to be alive to the change under our noses that is so profound ? Are we willing to look at the emerging public sphere, the idea of space, the notion of the collective, the meaning of autonomy and choice – in relation to the information society?

Well, this Program seems to create a space for this kind of exploration. I have learnt a lot form the conversations I have had with women friends in the past month from across Asia. From the cooption of citizenship in the version of citizen-journalism promoted by TV channels, the fanciful preoccupation of Gen X politicians with e-development and its mutants, the structured ignorance of male policy makers in many of our countries who are busy with discussions on broadband (as if it is about wires and not about communication); the convenient conversion of many a public good into private goods through the doors that markets in the digital space are adept at opening, the confounding contradictions in our societies that arises with the strategic use of digital spaces for coopting women into retrograde and fundamentalist action to the ballooning spaces controlled private interests that paradoxically concern the arena of ‘public’ interaction like Face Book and Google, and the active censorship of anything remotely concerning the word ’sex’ by some governments, the issues ready to be explored from the standpoint of gender and development are innumerable.

This Program hopes to be able to attract committed scholar activists who believe there is in this Program some potential for influencing feminist practice and social policy.