Trainning For Teachers And Educators
Teacher educators getting trained at an Intel Teach programme at the NGP College of Education in the city. The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) with an aim to integrate technology in education has come up with a programme to provide professional training in technology to all teacher educators. It has tied up with Intel in implementing the Intel Teach programme to educate those teaching B.Ed. students. Participating teachers receive extensive instruction and resources to promote effective technology use in the classrooms. They also learn to design new approaches to create assessment tools and align lessons with educational learning goals and standards. According to P.R. Sankari, Mentor of the programme, the training covers technology skills as well as pedagogic aspects associated with technology integrations. “It basically enables the teacher educators to use computers in their teaching-learning situation so that they are able to train future school teachers.
The programme that was launched in 2000 runs in 40 countries has trained more than 7.5 lakh teachers.”
After conducting similar training programmes in Chennai, Kanchipuram, Tirunelveli and Tuticorin, Ms. Sankari was here to conduct the same for the pre-service segment at the N.G.P. College of Education. Twenty-one candidates from various B. Ed. colleges in and around Coimbatore participated. These teacher educators would in turn share what they had learned with the rest of the faculty at their respective colleges.
Jayalakshmi Karuppanaswamy, principal of the college, said that though the programme was a useful one and offered free to the participants, there were few takers. “This is a very innovative programme. Use of computer and technology has become a must, especially for teachers. We decided to run it on our premises because we had the required infrastructure. We had asked for participation from all the education colleges here.”
Chandra Govindarajan, lecturer in Education Technology at Bharathi College of Education, said the training offered the latest and updated knowledge on the various communication systems. “This will be very useful when we are handling subjects like education technology for M. Ed. students. We learnt how to do and send projects via e-mail.”
Jayanthi Rajendran, a lecturer at the NGP College of Education, said that the training did not only underline the importance of communication, but also taught how it could be carried forward to the school level. What she enjoyed most was using the English alphabet keyboard to type Tamil words using the Kural font.
The other participants too had such fruitful experiences, which they were sure would be fit for application in their field of work. Augustus Richard, lecturer in PPG College of Education summed up thus: “Earlier all of us knew what a computer was. We were working on it without knowing the right procedure. Today we know how to work on it in a streamlined manner. We can do project works, send e-mails, write blogs, do presentations and reports. This will help us come out with projects as well as make assessment of the same.”
28.03.2008.
