The Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) has felicitated and issued certificates to 39 government school teachers and DIET faculty in Assam for completing the one-of-a-kind ICT and education course.
As a part of the Integrated Approach to Technology in Education (ITE) initiative by Tata Trusts, the course provides hands on experience of designing lessons integrating Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in curriculum and pedagogy. The certificate recipients, now called ‘master trainers’, have shown great commitment and already trained other 740 teachers in ITE, as part of the course assignment.
The course was of four months duration during which the teachers participated in F2F workshop, trained other teachers at district, practiced exemplary ITE lesson plans in their classroom, took two online tests, and continuously reflected on chat forums, moodle and made an electronic portfolio consolidating their learning.
The ceremony was attended by, Prof. S. Parasuraman, Director, Tata Institute of Social Sciences; R. C. Jain, Commissioner & Secretary, Govt. of Assam, Secondary Education Department; Prof. D. K. Srivastava, Deputy Director, TISS; and Krishna Baruah, OSD, RMSA, Assam; and Amina Charania, ITE-Lead, Tata Trusts and Course faculty and Associate Professor, CEI&AR, TISS.
The convocation ceremony celebrated the certificate recipients’ program completion, with six awards given for outstanding performance, best trainer and mentor, and most active online participant. NGO, volunteers, who completed the course, were also felicitated. The courses seeks to develop a deeper understanding of the role of technology in teaching and learning while critically evaluating value of ICT applications and programs in schools. Designed for in-service teachers in upper primary, and secondary government school teachers.
S Parasuraman, Director, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, said, “Today, I have seen the output of this initiative, where we have already reached four districts in the state of Assam and from now other parts of the North East. The certificate course was developed to support integrating teaching under ITE and that is what is being done. The Government of Assam is fully committed to make school education a grand success and we are joining them to make this possible.”
R.C. Jain, Commissioner & Secretary, Government of Assam, Secondary Education Department, said, “The concept of model school was started by the Government of India and that concept was brought to Assam and was re-designed in a different way with the help of Tata Trusts. The aim and objective of the program is to create good faculty and through them expand to more and more schools. For this, the teachers’ role is much more. We are providing them with a teaching system and a methodology that did not exist before. ICT based education is the only module that can make classrooms attractive.”
