Workshop on “ICT Integrated Teacher Education and Communities of Practice for Teacher Educators” for DIETs of Himachal Pradesh
Workshop on “ICT Integrated Teacher Education and Communities of Practice for Teacher Educators” for DIETs of Himachal Pradesh
New Delhi; 21/04/2015: Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), New Delhi in collaboration with Faculty of Education, Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Dharamshala organised three days workshop for the teacher educators from District Institute of Education and Training (DIETs) in Himachal Pradesh. This workshop is in furtherance of the CEMCA’s engagements in Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, and Madhya Pradesh towards 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 to create an environment of collaboration; and assist teacher educators to develop and use digital libraries/OERs through a critical perspectives on technology and its use in education.
The workshop started with inaugural session where Dr. Manoj Kumar Saxena, Dean, School of Education welcomed the chief guest Prof I V Mahlan, Dean, School of Mathematics, Computers and Information Sciences; Dr. Manas Ranjan Panigrahi, Programme officer, CEMCA; Resource Person Dr. Pankaj Khare, IGNOU and participants of the programme. Dr. Saxena outlined the need of organizing this workshop for teacher educators and briefly highlighted the objectives of the workshop. Dr Panigrahi in his remarks explained the concept and significance of Community of Practice (CoP) and hoped that with through such CoP platform we can bring all the teacher educators of India under one umbrella where they can share their expertise with each other. The resource person Dr. Pankaj Khare in his address insisted on whatever we learn we will practice with the use of technological devices. The chief guest of the session acknowledged the relevance of the theme and appreciated the CEMCA’s initiative for improvement in teacher education field. He reflected that in this hard pressed time when every person is in a way or other relying upon e-sources the major challenge is to filter the e-content which was also discussed later in the sessions. At the end of this session Dr. Navneet Sharma, Assistant Professor, School of Education proposed vote of thanks.
Over a period of three days the 27 teacher educators were provided training on various web tools; free educational software tools and components of basic computer literacy. They were introduced to the CoP platform for teacher educators and its features including access to resources, mailing groups etc. The workshop was facilitated by Dr. Pankaj Khare, IGNOU, New Delhi and Dr. Manas Ranjan Panigrahi, Programme Officer, CEMCA. Participants were exposed to the theoretical as well as the application part of the basics of the ICT. They were oriented and provided the hands-on-experience on Curriculum planning, Instructional design, Content delivery, Student Assessment; recent trends in online education, Using Social Media: Overview on Facebook, Twitter, Google applications, You Tube, Photosharing, Using Wikis and Blogs, Preparing teaching content: Using Audio/Podcasts/ Video/Vodcasts. A session on KOER and CoP was conducted over video conferencing by Mr. Gurumurthy from IT for Change (ITfC), Bengaluru. The session began with participants watching a video of STF- KOER programme and subsequently Guru came on video conference to discuss with participants about the CoP and KOER. The methodology of this session itself reinforced the value of digital methods of learning- through video and video conferencing.
During the valedictory session of the workshop Dr. Anu GS, Assistant Professor, School of Education welcomed the chief guest and dignitaries. A detailed report was presented by Ms. Renu Bhandari, Assistant Professor, School of Education. Prof. H.R. Sharma, DSW, Central University of Himachal Pradesh was the chief guest at the valedictory session who supported the need of ICT integrated training for teacher educators from primary school level onwards. Prof. H.R. Sharma distributed certificates to the participants. Dr. Manoj Kumar Saxena Dean School of Education & workshop convenor proposed vote of thanks.
