Kerala to formulate separate policy on ICT in education

KOCHI - Kerala Education Minister M.A. Baby Friday said the state government would come out with a separate policy on ICT (information and communications technologies) in education that would be relevant at the national and international levels.

He said this while inaugurating a two-day international conference on public sector software and FOSS (free and open source software), jointly organised by UNESCO and IT@School project of the Kerala government.

IT@School is the technology arm of the education department, set up to empower students by imparting ICT-enabled education.

“IT@ School is completing a decade of its existence and through ICT education, besides empowering the teachers, we ensure necessary infrastructure availability at schools along with support to the delivery channel. We facilitate the four modes of e-learning which are Direct, Online, Interactive and Broadcasting modes,” said Baby.

To facilitate ICT enabled education in classrooms, 20,000 classrooms have been electrified. By 2012, all the classrooms in the state would be electrified to facilitate ICT enabled education, said Baby.

“This is a good case of the ability of the government to be truly self-sufficient in terms of software infrastructure. UNESCO and government of Kerala can come together to upscale the model and its insights to schools in other states and in cluster countries of South Asia,” said Armoogum Parasuramed, director, UNESCO, South Asia.