Now, technology will map children’s progress

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) seems to be in an overdrive to bring about significant changes in its educational system. After deciding to do away with homework in schools affiliated to it, the board has now decided to take the help of software technology solutions to map children’s progress in classroom.

The decision was announced by CBSE chairman Vineet Joshi at a recently concluded training programme for CBSE principals at Thiruvananthapuram.

The introduction of technology to map students’ progress is a part of CBSE’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) scheme, under its Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) policy.

According to a senior official of the CBSE, the board has tied up with leading IT companies, Cisco Systems, Microsoft Corporation Private Limited and Intel Corporation, to come up with software technology to gauge children’s progress.

“We have tied up with major IT companies to develop software technology solutions to assess students,” the official said, without divulging further details.

The software technologies would be unveiled at the final phase of the principals’ meeting at Thiruvananthapuram on October 6. Experts would also brief the principals about applications of the technologies, the official said.

The training programme was organised jointly by the CBSE and the International Confederation of Principals (ICP), a global organisation based in Australia. The confederation mostly undertakes training programmes for school principals on a pilot basis.

Principals from 170 CBSE Schools from across the country are being trained in Delhi and Thiruvananthapuram in phases as a part the CBSE’s CCE project. The training programme, which started on August 13, is currently in its final phase.

At the principals’ workshop, CBSE chairman Joshi also stressed that the entire aspect of introducing technology inside classrooms would be done after taking necessary feedback from parents.

“The idea of using technology is to make documentation of a child’s progress a hassle-free affair,” Chitra Sharma, vice-principal of Delhi Public School (DPS), South, Bangalore, told DNA. “Under the CCE scheme, documentation of children’s progress is a must. The use of technology will help teachers to keep detailed information and data on every child.”

“The entire documentation process will involve collection of data, analysis of data and further inferring the data,” Sharma, who attended the recent meeting of principals of the CBSE schools, said.

The CBSE has also instructed schools to establish in-house systems for data collection. The use of technology would help individual schools to continuously gather, analyse and review data of students, and keep tabs on their progress.