TE year2handbook/Year2 Unit1 Shift in perspective from existing curriculum

Shift in perspective from existing curriculum

This course is new. It has not been offered by the D.El.Ed. programme prior to the syllabus revision.

Historically, human beings have used different ways of organizing and presenting information, and communication. Language, script, print, mass media such as radio and television have been important information and communication technologies (ICT). Whenever a new ICT is introduced, we see significant changes not only to education and knowledge processes, but also to larger socio-cultural, political and economic structures and processes. In the last few decades, digital ICT are being widely used. In this note, ICT hereafter refers to digital ICT.

The agricultural revolution and industrial revolution created the agrarian and industrial societies respectively. The term information society is being used to describe the society today, in which socio-economic activities based on the production and consumption of information have become predominant. The digital revolution has made information creation, access, processing and sharing quicker and simpler.

To allow for different ways of creating learning experiences, the curriculum envisages the use of different applications and platforms available today, as well as on building a mindset that will continue to explore newer applications on an ongoing basis. This requires a technology environment that is free and open; this has also been recommended in the National ICT Policy and in the NCERT curriculum. The textbook has therefore introduced different digital processes predominantly through a wide variety of free and open source applications, (whereas ICT education has often been limited to the study of few proprietary software applications). Thus ability to work in the ICT environment, creating content, sharing and learning and focusing on educational and learning processes, are the key principles of this syllabus design, rather than on just learning specific applications.

The source book has been developed based on the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework where technology is not seen as a stand-alone, set of ICT applications but integrated within core academic processes relevant to school learning. Hence, the learning activities have been consciously described in terms of processes of learning, rather than as steps of using an application.

Collaborating and learning is another important aspect of ICT. The activities in the source book have been designed to allow for group work and adequate opportunities for peer learning. It is intended that different activities be taken up by different student groups to allow for a wide variety of creations; thus allowing for peer learning and sharing.