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`Future belongs to technology-enabled education'

Staff Reporter

Teachers attend training programme over Edusat network

VIRTUAL TRAINING: G.L. Shekar, Special Officer, e-Learning Centre, Visveswaraya Technological University, Mysore, at a teleconferencing session at the PSG College of Arts and Science in the city on Tuesday. — Photo: S. Siva Saravanan

Coimbatore: Education enhanced through the use of technology will bring the expertise of the best teachers to a large numbers of students in the years to come, G.L. Shekar, Special Officer, e-Learning Centre, Visveswaraya Technological University (VTU), Mysore, said here on Tuesday.

"We cannot escape from technology, so the best thing is to adopt it like the mobile phone and the Internet. By doing so we are not replacing teachers, only supplementing them," he said, adding that there should be no distinction between "teachers" and "students", because both were learners.

Mr. Shekar was inaugurating a three-week virtual training programme for teachers, on using multimedia and developing electronic content. The Consortium of Educational Communication (CEC), New Delhi, an inter-university centre of the University Grants Commission (UGC), organised the programme in coordination with PSG College of Arts and Science.

He said that students in villages might not have access to good teachers but technology could help to overcome such issues by bringing outstanding lectures to thousands of learners in rural areas. If lessons could not be simultaneously beamed to students in remote locations, the material could be stored at a data centre from where learners could access video lessons through learning management systems. Distance learning could be enhanced through the use of multimedia and those who wanted lecture notes should be able to obtain them.

"India is the only country that has launched a satellite exclusively for educational purpose," he said, explaining how the Edusat network provided direct interaction through audio and video through the use of a satellite rather than a telephone. He said that the Visveswaraya Technological University that was affiliated to 122 engineering institutions was keen on augmenting its educational services to 42,000 students through the use of technology.

Besides offering examination revision service, technology-specific classes, soft skill lessons, campus recruitment programmes, full semester and supplementary programmes, the University invited industry leaders to interact with a large numbers of students over its studio network.

Students had access to preparatory material, archived content, live seminars, electronic learning content and interactive forums. "When we improve the productivity component of teachers, the quality of education goes up," he observed There would be both theoretical and practical sessions, including evaluation, as part of the training that would go on till April 27. The Consortium of Educational Communication (CEC) had chosen the college to conduct the programme because it possessed a satellite interactive terminal of Edusat, besides video conferencing facility. "It is a virtual world now," said G. D. Sharma, Director of the Consortium, in a videoconferencing session from New Delhi, to congratulate the participants.

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