A silent revolution is transforming school and collegiate education around the world. Social networking, web technology, mobile phones and internet gaming are rendering the time-tabled inflexibility of school education in particular, obsolete. With the convergence of information technology, wireless telephony and the internet, the era of ICT (information communication technologies) is here and its infusion into teaching-learning processes on a mass scale is inevitable.Though it is dangerous to predict the future of the internet, access to broadband connectivity, smart phones, portable computers, the information explosion and social networking in all its forms have begun to transform the way teachers teach, learners learn and education managers lead learning, says Ewan McIntosh, an alumnus of Strathclyde and Edinburgh universities who is widely acknowledged as an international authority on new media, social technologies and gaming for learning. Currently he is chief executive of ewanmcintosh.com — a UK-based ICT consultancy company which advises the British Council in India, UK and Scotland.
According to McIntosh, the global tech revolution will make it mandatory for school managements to accept ICT media such as mobiles, and the internet because the gap between academia and real life is closing in cyberspace. Therefore school managements need to embrace and promote ICT and teach students how to use it responsibly. This will require teachers to re-invent themselves and transform from mere instructors into education leaders, says McIntosh, also a columnist of The Guardian and BBC Learning.
ICT is relevant to all curriculums and can stimulate the creativity and spirit of teachers and students. It adds value and enriches the entire teaching-learning process, corroborates Dr. Baldev Singh, also a leading ICT learning guru. Both experts were recently in India to train teachers in a workshop organised by the British Council under UK-India Education and Research Initiative.
An alumnus of Punjab and St. Andrews (Scotland) universities, Kenya-born Singh knows what he is talking about, having won a National Teacher Award (2004) for innovation in education in Scotland and implementing ICT projects in Jordan, Namibia, Egypt and South Africa. ICT can address challenges in education which would have hitherto been impossible. Street children, school drop-outs, the illiterate and disadvantaged can resume learning by utilising ICT which can enable them to access everything from literature to communication tools and vocational programmes and learn at their own pace and convenience. I am very impressed by Indias Edusat project. It will make a huge difference in empowering youth wishing to re-enter the education system, says Singh.
Roll on the ICT revolution!
Autar Nehru (Delhi)