Workshop by KCG on NME-ICT and role of ICT in Higher Education

Knowledge Consortium of Gujarat (initiation of Department of Education, Govt. of Gujarat) organised one day workshop on 7^th June 2010 to orient university and college teachers towards National Mission of Education through Information and Communication Technology (NME-ICT) – a multi-crore project set in motion by Ministry of HRD, Govt. of India.

The resource persons were invited from IIM-A, IGNOU and Delhi University. I was pleased to be one of the resource persons among such an elite class of educationist. I made presentation on 'How some web 2.0 tools can be used in Continuous Internal Assessment and prepare ePortfolios of students, institutes and teachers'.



As I have to reach at Amhedabad Management Association, Ahmedabad before 9 am, I left Bhavnagar sharp at 6:20 am. The weather was cloudy and windy.
The mornings are normally very cool and breezy on the highway towards Ahmedabad. But this morning was gloomy and dark – reminded of the environment created by Shakespeare for the encounter of three witches with Macbeth and Banquo.

I feared not witches, but equally ill-omened rain and cyclone.
I drove Zen-Estilo at its highest speed. I cannot run it faster than 160 KMPH. The small cars have their limits.

I was not able to escape the cyclonic wind and torrent of rain. Soon I was amidst tumultuous outpouring of waters from the sky and tempestuous storm.




Fortunately, I did not confront any ill-incident and reached AMA safely and before time.



The AMA campus was fully drenched in rain and presumed a resemblance to newly wed bride. Each and every leaf of the trees, shrubs, bushes and grass were glowing with blissful glisten.



AMA is one of the most appropriate venues for such academic gatherings. They have fully equipped auditorium and have facilities to manage all the logistics required for seminar, conferences and workshops.

As I reached a bit early, I got chance to take snaps of the simple, sober and orderly kept auditorium.

I enjoyed sharing my experience of using some of the web tools for specific purpose like Continuous Internal Assessment and ePortfolio.
The gist of my presentation was to share an idea regarding internal assessment of students in semester system and use of ICT. With appropriate integration of Web tools (ICT), the teacher can make the classroom live, interactive and full of active participation from students.



It can open vistas of multiple communication channels in the (virtual) classroom which is normally one way communication (Teacher to Students) in traditional mode of teaching. It can also bring transparency to the internal assessment system as all the assignments, presentations and test records with comments of teachers are available of websites and accessible to everybody. All the students can see what their peers have done and parents can also tract the academic records of their students. This activity of taking learning on the web platform can lead into auto-generation of ePortfolios of not only students, but also of the teacher and the institute. It can be of great help to students when they are out in job market. It can be helpful to teachers in their self appraisals and to the institute, in academic evaluation by external agency like NAAC or ISO. The session ended with some inquisitive questions from the participants.