Capacity Building of Special Teacher Educators of Odisha on ICT Integration in Teaching Learning for Differently Abled Children (Phase II), Odisha

New Delhi; 09/06/2016: Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), New Delhi in collaboration with Chetana College of Special Education, Bhubaneswar organised a 2^nd phase capacity building programme from 02-04 June, 2016 for the special teacher educators of Odisha. This is in line with the CEMCA engagements in India for building a strong Communities of Practice (CoP) for ICT integrated teacher education and intended to:  build and strengthen teacher educators’ capacities to integrate ICTs into teacher-education, focusing on their professional development; and leveraging the CoP platform create an environment of peer collaboration; and assist teacher educators to develop and use digital libraries/OERs on technology and its use in education. The programme is approved by Rehabilitation Council of India, New Delhi vide letter No. 7-16(29)/2016-RCI/2488 dated 25.5.2016 to provide CRE status to RCI registered professional/ Personals. A total of 30 special teacher educators (14 female and 16 male) having specialisation on Mental Retardation, Hearing Impairment, Visual Impairment, Clinical Psychology etc. from 12 special teacher education Institutions of Odisha and 25 of special educator working in the special and general school attended and received hands-on training.

In the inaugural session Mr. Binaya Bhusan Mohapatra, Asst. Professor of Special Education, Chetana College of Special Education formally welcome all guests, participants and state objectives and need of the programme. The meeting was presided by Shri Mrutyunjay Pani, General Secretary, Jewels international Chetana College by stated that the utility of ICT in current scenario and wished all the participants to complete the Programme in most successful mode and utilize the same in their respective organization. The Chief Guest of the Programme, Ms. Manasi Nimbhal, Director, Social Security and Empowerment of Persons with disabilities, Govt. of Odisha spoke out on special education, utility of ICT in special education and wished all the participants to complete the programme in most successful mode. Dr. Mythili, Deputy Director, Staff training and research institute of distance education, IGNOU, New Delhi told about the real benefits of day to day life by the help if ICT in different sectors. She also reflects about the success of the previous programme and linked to this phase. 

The workshop was facilitated by Ms. G Mythili, IGNOU. With her supervision, some master trainers who trained in the previous (October 2015) workshop get an opportunity to provide hands-on training in the workshop. technical session was started by Dr. Mythili as resource person with the interactions of first phase training programme which was hold on the month of October, 2015 with the topic Interactivity, Synchronous and Asynchronous Technologies; Online Tools for Teaching Learning, using Google group, Google map, Google calendar, Google drive, Google docs. She also focused on Learner centred environment due to special education, here she given several examples related to personalized learning like shopping through online with different brands available. After an interactive session, an elaboration on OER presented by Ms. Leena Sahoo, Master trainer from Chetana College of Special Education, Bhubaneswar and she explained about its implementation on teaching and learning. She briefly interacted with focus to Role of teachers, Knowledge resources, different technologies and platforms in relation to educational setup with active participation of participants. Further Dr. Mythili created groups and gave them task for a specific topic as per their like and told them to prepare that topic with the help of ICT. The participants were described their topic and told how they will link that with ICT by using Synchronous & Asynchronous technologies where the participants were given opportunities to prepare PowerPoint with different hypermedia components with full of enthusiastic. Milan Sarangi, Master trainer, Jagatbandhu Sikshya Niketan, Bolangir demonstrated how to make a power point presentation and how to input audio and video within the PPT. He described about the benefits of using PPT, OER relation to PowerPoint, Microsoft office, PowerPoint 2007, 2010 with hands-on for preparation of PPT by using different multimedia components like design, audio sources etc. Mrs. Sushree Sangita Sahoo, Master trainer from Chetana College of Special Education demonstrated that, how to Create blogs, & its Use, Purpose, Publish and RSS. Dr. Mythilli briefly discussed about Creation of website with domain name registration, Designer role & the role of Google to publish in website. In 3^rd Day, Dr. Manas Ranjan Panigrahi, Programme Officer Education, CEMCA explained about ICT integration in Teacher Education Institutions for the benefit of the children with disabilities at present. He briefly discussed about the challenges to implement ICT in the field of special education and the role of master trainer for their respective institutions. In the last session was started with the presentation of group activity by participants and feedbacks taken from participants about the work shop leads towards valedictory. Participants were exposed to theoretical as well as practical application of the different ICT tools through hands-on-experiences.

In the valedictory session, the participants expressed that the contents provided in the training was more helpful for them effectively use of ICT in teaching-learning. Dr. Ajay Mishra, President, Jewels International Chetana, Bhubaneswar, Odisha; Chief Guest of the occasion Dr Gouranga Charan Nanda, Professor & Head, Department of Education, Ravenshaw University; Special Invitee as Educationist Dr. Abhilash Nayak,  Director, RC- IGNOU, Bhubaneswar, Guest of Honour of the occasion Dr. Sudarsan Misra, Department of Education, Ravenshaw University; Dr. Manas Ranjan Panigrahi, Programme Officer education, CEMCA, New Delhi, were present in the valedictory session. The report of the workshop was presented by Mr. Binaya Bhusan Mohapatra, Principal, Chetana College of Special Education. Dr. Ajay Mishra appreciated the success of the ICT training Programme and assured the participants for further technical assistance and thanked all the participants, resource persons, Chetana College of Special Education and CEMCA for holding the training programme successfully.