In a first of its kindexperiment in the world, Union Minister of Human Resource Development Mr. KapilSibal today inaugurated the 10,000 teacher training programme conducted by IITBombay under the ‘Talk to a Teacher’ project of the National Mission onEducation through Information and Communication Technology (NME-ICT) of theMinistry of Human Resource Development. Training for 10,000 engineering collegeteachers from across the country is being conducted leveraging the broadbandnetwork and ICT tools.
This training programme is conducted through 168 remote centres located allacross India. The lectures in this course are delivered from IIT Bombay byProfessors of IIT Bombay and IIT Madras. Through the software A-VIEW,audio-video connectivity is provided between all the centres and IIT Bombay.The course consists of lectures, live interactions and lab sessions.
This method of synchronouseducation has been developed at IIT Bombay, under the leadership of Prof. D. B.Phatak. This method of education allows allows participation of a large numberof women teachers, who normally are unable to join contact programmes atdistant locations, owing to family commitments.
The Minister interactedwith the remote centres from Kanyakumari, Rajkot, Srinagar and Nagpur. Arepresentative of IIT Bombay symbolically presented an Aakash Tablet to theMinister. The Minister suggested that the IIT Bombay Director Prof. DevangKhakhar present Aakash devices to the Heads of a few institutions which hostthe remote centres of the 10,000 teacher training programme.
The Minister said that he was happy that theAakash project has picked up speed and is ready for release. Unlike othertablet devices, Aakash can also be used to create computer programs, in Python,C, C++ and Scilab, for example.
In addition to being acomputer, Aakash will also be an access device, in applications, such ase-governance. The Minister thanked IIT Bombay for doing a wonderful job portingmany useful software on to Aakash.
