A Professional Learning Community Approach for Teacher Development and OER creation - A toolkit/Establishing ICT infrastructure
The ICT infrastructure component has three elements – technology infrastructure in schools, at state and district levels as well the availability of an offline resource repository in the schools for supporting activities in the digital lab. Infrastructure in the schools: Providing adequate infrastructure that will allow access to students and teachers to create and learn using ICT is necessary. Desktop computers or laptops1 are preferred hardware as these will support resources to be developed using many applications. Only FOSS applications should be used, in line with National ICT Policy and National ICT Curriculum of NCERT. State and district level labs: In addition to adequate infrastructure in the school, the state should provide for adequate infrastructure for training at the state and district level.Having district level labs (in the DIETs and CTEs) will also allow the state to structure and implement training programmes, based on the needs and requirements throughout the academic year.
Free and open technology architecture
The public ownership of ICT infrastructure and resources can enable universal access and equitable participation. Since the government school system is huge, its choice of free and open technologies could support the building of the ecosystem for free and open technologies as well. This is seen in the IT@Schools program of Kerala.
The ‘public’ nature of education aligns strongly with free and open ICT architectures. It is recommended by the National ICT Policy on education, 2012 that the ICT implementation in school education use free and open technologies, including FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) and OER (Open Educational Resources).
Unlike their proprietary equivalents, both FOSS and OER permit free use, re-use, revision and re-distribution, creating a sharing environment. Promoting FOSS and OER can help create a rich digital learning environment. It also reduces or avoids software piracy, which is an unethical and illegal but not uncommon practice. ICT resources that are free and open, can be freely accessed, shared, modified and re-distributed. The use of FOSS software applications is essential to support universal access to software. In addition, since FOSS allow modification by all, this allows possibilities for interactions between teacher communities and free software communities and helps teachers and learners move from being ‘consumers’ of ICT to participants in its creation, enrichment and sharing.
In the area of ICT, the ‘private’ often becomes ‘proprietary’ by which the owner of the ICT becomes the sole arbiter for its design and use, constraining and limiting the role of teachers, learners and the education system, with legal and technological constraints. Use of software that cannot be shared freely, constrains its distribution and use, limiting the digital environment. Use of copyright content, constrains its free sharing and modification / enrichment. This can become inimical to the larger role of education.