The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : No teachers? Telecast lectures live, says expert

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 04, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

No teachers? Telecast lectures live, says expert

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, MARCH 3. Using new technology, it is possible to bring at least one top-quality teacher in front of students every day, even when there are not enough teachers to go around, said Ashok Jhunjhunwala of the TeNet Group, Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Live telecasts of lectures combined with web-based materials, supplemented by live classes, could be the answer to the shortage of teachers faced across the country, he said, speaking at a two-day seminar on technology and higher education in India and Canada at the Centre for Canadian Studies, University of Madras, today.

"Every year 4,00,000 students enter engineering colleges. But in many engineering colleges, the teachers are last year's graduates," he said. V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai, vice-chairman of University Grants Commission (UGC) suggested that higher education institutions develop knowledge repositories of online and multimedia material which could be shared with other institutions.

Providing school education to 30 million children, who are currently out of school under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan programme, will require one million teachers, he said. But all our teacher education institutes put together cannot produce more than 2.5 lakh teachers in this time period.

The UGC is currently working on pilot projects to use college students with the right aptitude and attitude to make up for the shortage of teachers. Computers can enhance learning in schools, but only if children are allowed to play with computers as a tool. He suggested that children be introduced to computers in art class and later use them to cut, edit and play music and video in music class. "In Geography class, children can be introduced to digital maps with Geographical Information Systems and the idea of databases and spreadsheets." Presentation, word-processing, web design and animation should be taught next.

According to Prof. Jhunjhunwala, this is the kind of curriculum required, not the kind that begins computer class with "This is a CPU."

"You never teach a child to use a pencil by talking about the graphite in it, or teach him or her to use paper by talking about its composition," he said. "A computer is just another learning tool."

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