Telangana ICT implementation

Draft Concept Note for the Workshop on Design, Planning and Development of e-content
Integration of ICT in school education, Telangana

Introduction

The objective of the state education department is to integrate technology into teaching and learning in sustained and meaningful ways. The department is focused on upgrading the school labs in 3000 schools by building a digital lab and through equipping the classrooms with digital resources. In this context, it is proposed:

1. to evolve a meaningful curriculum for students,
2. to develop appropriate school level teaching learning resources (including textbooks, handbooks and other materials for students and teachers) and
3. to implement teacher training and develop teacher materials for supporting the implementation of this curriculum.

The state has already created a core group of about 50 resource persons who will be training teachers at the district level in the development of resources using various educational tools for use in the digital classrooms. This district training will be conducted in the subjects of mathematics and science during the months of February – May. These teachers will be learning to access resources from the internet, create resources using various educational tools and share resources using online forums.

To build digital literacy and ICT integrated learning capabilities in the school system in a sustained way, the department is now also planning to develop a student curriculum for implementation in the schools. It is proposed to base this curriculum on the National ICT curriculum and develop project modules providing various opportunities for students to interact and create with ICT, thus providing meaningful learning possibilities.

An initial planning meeting was conducted on January 29, 2016 from which the following action points have emerged:

1. Formation of a core group that will create project based modules in line with the National ICT curriculum for student learning; accompanied by teacher training modules as well as resources for use in the digital classrooms.
2. Formation of a core group that will look at the content developed in the state and curate it to be made available in a repository accessible to all teachers.

It was also decided to have a design and planning workshop to develop the syllabus for the ICT implementation. This is a concept note for this design workshop.

Objectives of the workshop

1. To identify the core skills and competencies to be built for digital literacy which will also support the achievement of Telangana academic standards
2. To develop a syllabus for the students' learning, based on the National ICT curriculum, with a project based approach and identification of modules, to be developed as a textbook for students
3. To identify the areas for development of teacher materials which will support (i) the implementation of the syllabus and (ii) integration of ICT applications for teaching learning in classrooms, to be developed in the textbook and teacher handbook
4. To develop processes and benchmarks for review of teacher created materials and resources created during the teacher training workshops; this will provide a continuous, sustained model for development and publishing of resources
5. To develop a guideline for actual transaction and implementation of the syllabus in the schools

Proposed Agenda for the workshop

Day 1	Anchor	Session Details
11.00 – 11.30	SCERT	Introduction to the workshop Scope of the workshop and agenda
11.30 – 1.30	SCERT/ CIET/ ITfC	Presentation of ICT curriculum and proposed competencies and skills (CIET) year-wise building up of competencies show linkages with the core curricular subject areas Demonstration of project ideas for inclusion in syllabus (ITfC) Demonstration of a resource structure (developed in the workshop) with parameters for evaluation of resources (SCERT)
2.30 – 5.30	Facilitated by ITfC	Participants in groups develop outline of project modules (Group I) Participants in groups to develop outline of teacher modules to support the student ICT syllabus (Group II) Participants in group review resources developed in the teacher workshops (Group III) and compile for sharing with schools
Day 2	Anchor	Session Details
10.30 – 1.30	Facilitated by SCERT	Groups to present their work ideas for review
2.30 – 4.30	Sharing by ITfC	Implementation and timeplan Presentation of the wiki page for the textbook preparation with resources added and embedded Presentation of the wiki format for publishing the materials created by the Telangana teachers for continuous review and curation
4.30 – 5.30	SCERT	Time plan and methodology for completion of modules for text book Closing and next steps

Proposed syllabus

Syllabus and implementation structure

1. One school-wide ICT co-ordintor who will hold this course and co-ordinate
2. Subject teacher will integrate into their teaching; where applications are subject specific, the ICT co-ordinator and subject teacher must team teach
3. The integrated projects proposed being part of the FA - so 7 out of 28 FA can come from here
4. The FA are assessed by the subject teachers, marks will be in the ICT course
5. 3 periods a week

Year	Strand of digital literacy	Levels of competency	Duration	Project Ideas	Subject integration
Year 1	Data representation and processing	Basic Reading, analysing data in different formats; reading graphs and pictures (eg., vegetation diversity charts, map of forest cover, photo essay as a sequence, only audio, only video) Understanding what data to collect to answer a proposed question, identifying data elements (can come from the previous description of data in various formats) Organizing given data sets and analyzing and representing data as graphs Working with spreadsheets to enter data, analyse and represent using graphs Querying data sets to get answers to questions (sort,count) Text entry (Indian languages) and processing Using mind maps to represent an idea with relationships, explore linkages	10 weeks Data - 1 week Spreadsheet - 2 weeks Text editing and text processing - 2 weeks Concept Mapping - 2 weeks Project completion - 3 weeks	Projects Some can be individual projects; some group projects Creation/ representation of an idea using multiple data formats - graphs, photos, numbers, text, audio, video, Make an infographic) Tabulate pre-existing data sets and make meaning / inferences from numeric data and represent as graphs - Data collection locally - heights of students and ages, income of parents, secondary data (like temperature, rainfall, etc) and graph; with simple analysis Making a report on age-wise height variation, income distibution in class, caste-breakup, regional distribution Thematic explorations for science (water, land use, forests, force) using concept maps	Mathematics History/ Social Science Science
Year 2	Data representation and processing	Intermediate Querying data sets to get answers to questions, conditional representation Data analysis using spreadheets (filters, pivots, percentiles Spreadsheet is not an output format Different forms of data visualizations Creating a communication output combining text, graphs, images in a text document - formatting, organizing, multi-page, multi-section, references, footnotes	10 weeks Spreadsheet - 3 weeks Text processing - 3 weeks Project completion - 3 weeks	Projects Vegetation mapping of the neighbourhood and making a multi-page documents with pictures, graphs, data and analysis (includes text, numeric data, images, graphs). Similar projects to be conceptualized Documentation of neighbourhood institutions (audio-visual narrative combined with text)	Mathematics History/ Social Science Science Languages
Year 1	Graphics	Basic Capturing/ creating Images to tell a story (use of a camera and downloading from camera to be learned incidentally) Editing existing images to combine with text Working with layered image editing tools	6 weeks Image capture for given ideas Creating in class using digital art tools Collaborative story making using created pictures Simple image editing (resizing, colour, hue, saturation)	Projects Photo essay of processes- election, flowering plants (not possible to do in a given year - must use secondary data) Picture stories Comic books (with pictures and minimal text)	History/ Social Science Science Languages
Year 1	Working with programming environmets	Basic Demonstration of computing environments where instructions generate outcomes – Geogebra, STEP, Turtle Art Identifying computing needs in any given process and documenting process Working in a logo based programming environment Using Geogebra to create sketches and puzzles	10 weeks Flowcharting tools to document processes - 2 weeks Working with Turtle logo - 4 weeks Play with Geogebra to learn to make puzzles, tangram shapes	Projects Mapping processes and identifying requirements and outcomes – school science day, sports day, etc – need for definitions, conditional processes, repetition, computation and outcome Writing code for given Turtle constructions Create Geogebra sketches for geometric concepts (determined by maths teachers)	Mathematics Languages

Formation of core groups for implementation

For this purpose, it is suggested that three core groups be formed:

Group I - To develop project modules for the student syllabus	5-8 members Resource persons trained in the teacher training workshops, representing all subject areas, a well as focusing on digital literacy Members of Swecha/ other organizations Facilitated by IT for Change, CIET
Group II – To develop teacher modules	3-5 members Resource persons trained in the teacher training workshops, representing all subject areas Facilitated by IT for Change, CIET
Group III – To review resources developed in the teacher workshops	5-8 members Members from SCERT (subject experts) Members from SIET/ CIET/ HBCSE (NROER) Resources persons from the teacher training workshops Member from IT for Change Facilitated by SCERT

Outcomes and outputs from the workshop

1. Formation of core groups tasked with content development for student textbook and teacher handbook
2. Development of the student ICT syllabus and definition of core competencies and skills
3. Development of a time plan for completion of student syllabus modules
4. Allocation of student project modules and teacher handbook topics to the sub-groups
5. Development of a guideline document for review and curation of resources on an ongoing basis
6. Project_ideas
7. ICTResources