: ICT ENABLED TEACHER AND TEACHING

Teacher Education in India

            Teacher education in India has followed a tradition of face-to-face interaction supplemented with lot of practical input by way of practicum. Minor changes – inclusions in and deletions from the curriculum have however been made from time to time. In the past couple of years, even the component of ICT by way of Computer Aided Learning and computer literacy has made its foray in the present B.Ed. curriculum of almost all Indian universities.

            E-Learning in teacher education has two facets to itself. One is of teaching the teachers about technology and training them in its use and the other is of training them through this technology.

The Shifting Role of Teacher Educators

            There is a need for the teacher educators to shift their role to improve the quality of the process of teacher education for preparing dynamic teachers through a frontline teacher education system. From seeing teacher educators as bearers of knowledge to be communicated to seeing themselves as stimulators of knowledge to be constructed and developed by pupils through the learning experience; from believers that pupils, though different, should be homogeneous to believers that pupils will remain different; from executors of teaching procedures recommended by others to designers and or adapters of such procedures, and from being isolated individuals in their classrooms to being co-workers collaborating in the improvement of teaching and learning. Teacher educators’ role will be shifted from teacher to knowledge workers, consultants and counselor. The time may come when students may come to teachers very rarely, which may create a downfall of face-to-face interaction had also been minimized in the in-service teacher education programmes offered by IGNOU. Teacher educators should internalize their changing role and to make themselves ready for this change. Even in accepting the changing role of the teacher educators, there is a need to be cautious to adopt according to the changing world, hence teacher educator have to empower themselves to do justice with the future students and to try hard to increase the quality of their teaching learning.

A classroom of the future
            A learner’s potential is flexible. It’s about a person’s knowledge, skills, attitudes, self image and abilities, as well as the opportunities they are given to practice, explore, develop and demonstrate these.
- We all have the ability to shine in some way, given the right opportunities, experiences and support.

- All parties involved in the life of young people need to be involved in and understand the learning process, to break through the glass ceiling of achievement, to significantly raise standards.

- Inspired people learn. If students see the point, understand what they are doing, get to make decisions about their learning and experience success, they will love their learning and become self-motivated.

- Our community has many limiting beliefs about what we can achieve. We need people to recognize these for what they are and take action to replace them with empowering beliefs.

- The teacher uses technology, such as a classroom management system, to take attendance automatically. Using tablet PCs in place of printed textbooks to conduct lessons and quizzes, he conducts a lively session. A task is assigned to the students to work on a worldwide research project on blood disorders.

- The students reach home. The Home Intelligence System living room is voice activated and AV devices are controlled by speech. The students proceed to work on their assignments at home, collaborating with their classmates through seamless video conferencing.