Changes

|Microsoft Windows

|Microsoft Windows

|-

|-

|'''Office Applications'''  

|'''Office Applications (text editing, numeric editing and presenting)'''  

|Open Office / LibreOffice

|Open Office / LibreOffice (text editor, spreadsheet, presentation, database, drawing tools)

|Microsoft Office

|Microsoft Office

|-

|-

|'''Email client'''  

|'''Email client'''  

  Resource - For more information on how teachers can use these tools, please refer to the [[Explore an application|on-line user manual]].

  Resource - For more information on how teachers can use these tools, please refer to the [[Explore an application|on-line user manual]].

            [[Category:A Professional Learning Community Approach for Teacher Development and OER creation - A toolkit]]

            [[Category:A Professional Learning Community Approach for Teacher Development and OER creation - A toolkit]]

=== Challenges ===

=== Challenges ===

ICT infrastructure tends to be relatively fragile. A blackboard, once installed in a classroom has an indefinite life. However a computer has a short life and can even fail earlier due to failure of any of its components. Electronic equipment is susceptible to failure and can be affected by electricity voltage fluctuations, dust, heat - these are quite common Indian conditions. However, departments seem to assume that ICT infrastructure has a long life, akin to blackboards! For instance, in the BOOT model of ICT programs, at the end of the BOOT period (typically five years), the vendor be handing over ICT infrastructure which would be either dysfunctional or in its last legs. It is extremely difficult for the school to continue the program after this BOOT period. Secondly, in the ICT program, once a school is provided ICT infrastructure, it is 'ticked off' as being 'provided for' in perpetuity. Whereas after 5 years or so, the devices provided would stop being functional and the school would require a new lot of computers.  

ICT infrastructure tends to be relatively fragile. A blackboard, once installed in a classroom has an indefinite life. However a computer has a short life and can even fail earlier due to failure of any of its components. Electronic equipment is susceptible to failure and can be affected by electricity voltage fluctuations, dust, heat - these are quite common Indian conditions. However, departments seem to assume that ICT infrastructure has a long life, akin to blackboards! For instance, in the BOOT model of ICT programs, at the end of the BOOT period (typically five years), the vendor be handing over ICT infrastructure which would be either dysfunctional or in its last legs. It is extremely difficult for the school to continue the program after this BOOT period. Secondly, in the ICT program, once a school is provided ICT infrastructure, it is 'ticked off' as being 'provided for' in perpetuity. Whereas after 5 years or so, the devices provided would stop being functional and the school would require a new lot of computers.  

Schools should be encouraged to tap into different sources for the renewal  

Schools should be encouraged to tap into different sources for the renewal of computers in their lab. In Kerala, teachers have been able to source a variety of funds, including from the panchayats, community, NGOs, CSR funds to support the renewal of their lab. Once the lab is seen by the school as its 'own asset', it can motivate some of the teachers to make efforts to maintain and enhance the infrastructure, independent of department support.

 

Maintenance support for ICT infrastructure can be difficult, specially in rural and remote areas. One of the most common complaints in past programs has been the delays in getting non-working devices repaired. One solution for this challenge is to build teacher capacities to maintain and configure hardware and software in the labs. Kerala has done this effectively. Kerala has also created 'mobile hardware health clinics' in which a group of teachers travel from school to school to check the infrastructure and repair non-working devices. Note that in most cases, 'repair' is nothing but 'replacing' the dysfunctional component, and not actually making it work. So if teachers are trained to isolate and identify non-working components that cause the computer to fail, and provided the spares, they could maintain the labs. In Assam and in Telangana, the department has trained  technical support personnel on maintenance of the hardware and software used in the schools, to create 'District Technology Support Groups' (DTSG) which will provide support to the teachers and the schools.