On the 21st of July IT for Change organised an interaction for around 50 student-teachers from Netherlands and around 20 of their counterparts from Bangalore. These student-teachers from The Netherlands were part of Edukans Education Experience Program where students exchange information and knowledge with students abroad. The Indian students were from a teacher training institute called Nottredam. These groups had interacted with each other in various other educational environments over the past 10 days. The agenda of the interaction with the TCoL team was to understand the project, the role of ICTs in Education and its possibilities for the future. The interaction started with an introduction to the project, which was followed by a short briefing on the National Curriculum Framework and its guiding principles regarding the aims of education, pedagogical practises and Social Dynamic and Concerns prevailing in the Indian Society (from an educational perspective) This was followed by a demonstration of the computer aided education tools that are being used in the TCoL programme. Mathematics tools such as Geogebra along with some English language and Geography tools were demonstrated, which was followed by a discussion on the usefulness and applicability of these tools. The students from Netherlands especially loved the Kgeography tool and had a good time figuring out their country's map and where all its districts lie. Overall, the students felt that the TCoL was indeed a unique project. One remarked saying that she was really happy that the project was concentrating on teachers and teacher's empowerment which is so essential to any education system. This event also opened up new possibilities that such a pilot project can offer to the current teachers. Our NCF 2005 is such a powerful book, which even a developed country like Netherlands cannot offer an alternative too. This batch of students were also impressed that we were using free and open source educational tools within the system as Netherlands still relies on proprietary formats for its ICTs based education. Thus, the interaction turned out to be a learning experience for both the student-teachers and the TCoL team. The session ended on a sing-song note with a chirpy “thank you” song and dance by the Dutch students which was aped by the Indian students as well! (A picture of this can be found below)
