TE year1handbook/Year1 Unit1 Shift in perspective from existing curriculum

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

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.

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.

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.

It is hence essential that student teachers need to understand the nature of this phenomenon and its implications for education as well as for larger society, the shaping of which, in itself, is an important aim of the education system. It is also inevitable that the education system will adopt ICTs. Therefore the teacher-educator and student-teachers must be prepared by understanding the philosophical, socio-cultural and political implications, of ICTs in education. Since ICTs are also technologies, along with such understanding,  building basic skills for personal and  professional purposes is necessary.