IT should be a tool for education

The Association of Matriculation Schools And Their Managements in Tamil Nadu & Pondicherry (AMS) in association with NIIT@School convened a one-day seminar on `The importance and impact of computer technology in the new millennium era'. The seminar saw professionals from the field of IT speak on creating virtual schools replacing the conventional mode of education.

The seminar, which was targeted at the teachers and principals of schools within Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, saw nearly 800 participants. According to the speakers, since all school students would not take IT as their career, there should not be IT education in the schools but an exposure to a mixture of IT education and IT-enabled education. Today, the school students are under regular tension and pressure where they want to play, have fun, explore and create. To merge education and fun, interactive multimedia is the solution, said SN Uma, Head - Education Research & Technology, NIIT - K-12, who was speaking on the need for computer education for school children. Interactive multimedia will not have just text alone but will visually present what the students want through graphics, audio, animation and video. The virtual school constructed through IT will give greater scope for the students to interact with a wider audience and connect the parents, teachers and students together. They can access materials without sitting in the library, send their projects online, attend exams online etc.

Teachers too can attend discussion forums, communicate with the parents and post their assignments to students online. But to build a virtual school or a smart school requires overcoming constraints like funds for implementation, changing the mindset of the stakeholders, evaluate the technical competence and to know the right path. 

`Govt was good to higher secondary, but not for lower schools'

The Association of Matriculation Schools And Their Managements in Tamil Nadu & Pondicherry (AMS) is the first association of its kind formed in 1976 when the schools under University of Madras was taken over by the Department of Education. With thousand government-recognized schools as its members, AMS launched the first-of-its-kind programs to initiate IT education in schools. 

According to SK Venkattassala Pandian, General Secretary, AMS, the government has not given equal priority to computer as a subject. "It has not been made a compulsory subject in the school syllabus. We have requested the government to give importance to computer as a subject like any other subjects. At the higher secondary level computer subject is part of syllabus with equal status with rest of the subjects. It is at the schools where the government has failed. The government has to come forward both with the infrastructure and the implementation of the subject, since computer is the demand of the day."