Making govt school teacher computer literate can be paying too

K Anantha Kumar and his colleagues converge in a 220 sq ft room for an hour thrice a week to learn about MS Word, Power-Point, Excel, Internet, multimedia content, etc.

Kumar, a mathematics teacher with TPP Municipal School in Tirupati, says this training, which has been going on since the last few months is aimed at equipping government school teachers with IT, which they would then incorporate while teaching students.

“I teach from class VI to X. Before this training, most of us teachers were not much acquainted with computers. We plan to use this training to make presentations on syllabi and make lessons more interesting through multimedia. IT training for teachers is key if learning is to be made more enjoyable,” says Kumar.

Several government school teachers, like Kumar, are being coached in the basics of computers, as well as in using digital and multimedia content to make learning more appealing to students.

According to Snehalata Deshmukh, former vice-chancellor of Mumbai University, teachers need to know about the latest available tools to bring more quality to the system.

“Government schools often still rely only on the blackboard and chalk method of teaching, which can get boring for both students and teachers. We have to get trained to deliver learning more effectively,” says Kumar.

As part of their public-private partnership with state governments, education firms have started focusing heavily on training teachers in IT, along with developing IT infrastructure in schools.
With over a million government schools in the country, firms see huge opportunity in this area.

Professor David Johnson from the department of education, Oxford University, says in a large country like India, several stakeholders should participate in the teacher training process as the government alone cannot do much.

“Government mandates private sector to come in and provide infrastructure. This is the need of the hour,” says Sanjeev Mansotra, chairman and global CEO, Core Projects.

Soumya Kant, president, Edureach, a division of Educomp Solutions, says firms participate and execute these training assignments against the requirements of the state governments either through open tender/expression of interest.
The training provided to teachers often revolves around modern computer aids, digital content, LCDs, power-points, etc, says Susha John, director, Everonn Education.

The multimedia learning content helps in explaining concepts better and in encouraging students to participate in assessments, quiz and games, says Kumar.

Core is in the process of providing teacher training to 8,500 government schools in Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, Nagaland, etc. Everonn, on the other hand, has reached about 6,628 schools while Educomp is covering 16,000 schools.

John says such training cuts absenteeism both among teachers and students and helps improve the pass percentage.
“We have seen pass percentage in the board exam improve from 50-60% some years ago to 90-98% at present,” says John.