DE Demonstration Workshop

A "Demonstration Workshop," was held on the 2nd of March, 2012, in the conference hall of the School and Mass Education Dept. The meeting was chaired by the Hon'ble Minister School and Mass Education. All the other senior departmental officials were present including the Principal Secretary. A lot of background work had gone into the preparation of this workshop and it did pay off. Nine teachers were selected from the 6 districts, were we are currently operational. These teachers were selected on the basis of their performance on the output indicators at the school level. All the selected teachers are members of the resource group and as such are leaders in effectively and appropriately integrating technology in teaching learning at the school level. I was delighted to watch an excellent presentation on the "Human Eye" prepared by one of the teachers. This was an example of an excellent teaching aid which was well designed and completely covering the topic from all angles. The most gratifying part was that the teacher was able to confidently and satisfactorily answer all the questions posed by the Minster and the Principal Secretary, related to the program and how the teachers and students were actually benefitting at the school level.

My entire presentation revolved around the core understanding - technology as a pedagogic tool and therefore integrating technology is a pedagogic decision. I hope I have driven home the point and only this can clarify the misconceptions surrounding "DE Program" whereby people label it as a computer aided learning program (CAL) and as such predicated on a grosser misunderstanding that it focuses only on teaching computer fundamentals covering MS Office suite. This is how partial truths begets total errors. On the contrary "DE" is an education program focusing on effective technology integration in teaching learning.

I tried my best to make the program stand right side up. The necessity was evident from the fact that people posed the wrong questions and at worst were at a loss when they saw the videos of classroom transactions - on whether to appreciate or critique as the videos mostly started with a normal classroom transaction, which was interspersed with technology use. People mostly expected to see the use of technology from the very outset.