GNOU to establish 5 ICATT centres to train teachers

Updated on: Thursday, August 27, 2009

Hyderabad: Considering the need to train and equip teachers with appropriate technology, IGNOU has decided to set up five ICATT (Institute for Competency Advancement for Teachers through Technology) centres across the country, a top official said.

These institutions will be established in five places in North, East, West, South and North-East regions under Private-Public Partnership (PPP) schemes, IGNOU Vice Chancellor V N Rajasekharan Pillai told said.

'Our target is to train one lakh teachers from each centre in next three years, who will be accorded diplomas. Positively, by March 2010 all these five centres will be operational,' he said.

'The real challenge after the introduction of Right to Education Bill in this country is to train, re-train and provide continuous capacity building of teachers at all levels right from Kindergarten to the top-most levels,' Pillai said.

'We have millions of untrained teachers working in our schools and need more teachers. If only we can create systems and structures to provide quality teacher education, the realisation of the Right to Education will happen,' he said.

'To train teachers by making use of the conventional system would be humanly impossible, and therefore the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the new media can be effectively utilised in building teacher education capabilities,' Pillai, who is also Chairman of
the Distance Education Council, said.

There is a need for competency advancement of teachers through appropriate integration of technology and with this objective in mind, IGNOU has decided to establish these ICATT centres, which have been approved, he said.

IGNOU, one of the world's largest open and distant learning institutes will prepare the appropriate content, Pillai said.

'We will be looking at credible partners in the IT sector for providing the hardware and state governments for providing lands for setting up these institutes. For one centre we have appointed a person at Shillong, while in Patna the land has been allotted,' he said.

The percentage of teachers using technology is much less than the percentage of students using technology. It is the real fact and therefore we have to look at distribute mechanism by which teachers are to be trained, Pillai said.

Even for existing teachers after every five years the knowledge for concerned field becomes irrelevant, he said. It has to be looked into how the discipline-based (subject-based) ICT pedagogy, on how a teacher in Mathematics, Science or Sociology can improve his or her capabilities in teaching that subject with the help of ICT,' he pointed out.

Overall, purpose of ICT integration is to enhance quality of teaching learning process in the classroom as well as to enhance quantity of education delivery and that is where ICT for teacher education and competency advancement for teachers has to be utilised, the IGNOU Vice-Chancellor said.

GNOU to establish 5 ICATT centres to train teachers

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