The National Policy on Education 1986 emphasized: “The status of the teacher reflects the socio-cultural ethos of the society; it is said that no people can rise above the level of its teachers”. The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) has observed that teachers are the single most important element…
Gurumurthy Kasinathan
This paper discusses the background, strategies, outcomes, challenges and learnings of Kishori Chitrapata, a project of IT for Change that addresses the learning needs of out-of-school adolescent girls through innovative uses of ICTs such as video, radio and computing technology.
The…
The study of two large 'ICTs programmes in School Education' (IPSE) programmes of neighbouring Indian states reveals some interesting insights. The integrated model followed in Kerala's IT @ Schools programme, which focused on developing systemic in-house capabilities anchored around school teachers, has shown considerable success; in terms of…
IT for Change conducted an impact assessment of the University School Resource Network (USRN) project of the Regional Resource Centre for Elementary Education (RRCE), Central Institute of Education, University of Delhi and made recommendations for future direction of its work. The assessment was based on a series of interviews of the key actors…
IT for Change conducted a study on the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) programmes in schools in the Yadgir and Sedam blocks of Yadgir district (Karnataka, India). The research team visited around 30 schools to study the Computer Aided Learning Program (CALP), Mahiti Sindhu (MS), ICT @ Schools Phase 1…
ICT programmes in schools in India have largely failed to achieve their goals of positively impacting learning processes and outcomes in schools. Implemented usually through 'PPP' (Public Private Partnership) models, these programmes have been treated largely as silos. Schools and teachers have not seen computer learning as…
The 2008 report of the Global Information Society Watch surveys the national deployment of ICT infrastructure and its implications for development. It gives a detailed analysis of steps which need to be taken to improve ICT connectivity in rural areas. IT for Change wrote the chapter on India, which looks at the theme of access, focusing on the…
The article articulates the political contestations surrounding the governance of the Internet and explores how governments from the global South can challenge the dominant neo-liberal ideologies that shape the existing cornerstones of Internet governance.
Given that the Internet has…
In this piece written for the South Centre Bulletin (issue 5, December 2007), Parminder Jeet Singh and Gurumurthy Kasinathan highlight Internet governance issues that are important from a development perspective. The World Summit on Information Society was the first step towards debating issues of Internet governance and its…