− | Building digital skills in today's context of an increasingly information-based society has been acknowledged as an important focus area for education. The role of technology mediation in teacher education and school education have been underscored in several curriculum documents as well. The National ICT curriculum for school education is a response to this emergent need and has articulated a curriculum that builds in students and teachers, the skills of computing, creating, learning and collaborating using safe, ethical and legal means of ICT. | + | Building digital skills in today's context of an increasingly information-based society has been acknowledged as an important focus area for education. The role of technology mediation in teacher education and school education have been underscored in several curriculum documents as well. The National ICT curriculum for school education is a response to this emergent need and has articulated a curriculum that builds in students and teachers, the skills of computing, creating, learning and collaborating using safe, ethical and legal means of ICT. The ICT Mediation Paper has been drafted to be in line with the focus areas of the National ICT curriculum. |
− | Digital Information and Communication technologies (ICT) have become an important part of societal processes, including education. Teachers need to have a critical understanding of the role being played by ICT in education and larger social processes, as well as develop digital skills in integrating ICT into their professional development and teaching-learning processes. Hence the course is being offered as a part of teacher studies. | + | This course makes an important shift from the way traditionally ICT courses in Education have been taught, hitherto in Karnataka and other states. Traditionally ICT have been taught as a set of skills to work with a set of applications. These skills have also often been introduced in a stand alone manner without much reference to how these skills map to the underlying educational processes. This approach also assumes a tool-centric and very instrumentalist view of technology. |
| Historically, information and communication have been important factors in social processes and systems. We are now surrounded by networks created using digital ICTs, through which information flows constantly. Our notions of time and location are changing; the world seems to be becoming smaller and smaller where distance is no longer a barrier to commercial or social contact. If we live in Bengaluru, or other big cities, it is difficult to imagine being without all the networked infrastructure that plays a crucial part in our daily lives. Now, in villages too, many people are connected by mobile phones. This is seen by some as a shift from an 'industrial society' to an 'information society,' where information is seen as an important resource in itself. It is the digital format of resources that has caused such an explosion of information, the creation, storage and dissemination of information has become easier and cheaper. Increasingly, production and consumption of information is becoming increasingly important, from economic, social and cultural perspectives. These changes are also impacting the nature of learning and of education systems, in many positive and negative ways. | | Historically, information and communication have been important factors in social processes and systems. We are now surrounded by networks created using digital ICTs, through which information flows constantly. Our notions of time and location are changing; the world seems to be becoming smaller and smaller where distance is no longer a barrier to commercial or social contact. If we live in Bengaluru, or other big cities, it is difficult to imagine being without all the networked infrastructure that plays a crucial part in our daily lives. Now, in villages too, many people are connected by mobile phones. This is seen by some as a shift from an 'industrial society' to an 'information society,' where information is seen as an important resource in itself. It is the digital format of resources that has caused such an explosion of information, the creation, storage and dissemination of information has become easier and cheaper. Increasingly, production and consumption of information is becoming increasingly important, from economic, social and cultural perspectives. These changes are also impacting the nature of learning and of education systems, in many positive and negative ways. |