INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Of

ALL INDIA ASSOCIATION FOR EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
on
IMPROVING RURAL EDUCATION
on
10-12 OCTOBER 2005
at
ANGEL MATRICULATION HIGHER SECONDARY SCHOOL,
THIRUNINRAVUR, NEAR CHENNAI, TAMIL NADU

ABSTRACTS OF THE PAPERS

ICT and Its Influence on Rural Education

 

Talwar,M.S, Dept. of Education, Bangalore University, Bangalore

 

The present system of education in India, from the preschool stage to higher education, has been imported from the west in bits and pieces over the last 200 years.  The overall contexts of Indian society and the specialities of its varied segments have been ignored by this system, with the result that it has never been fully accepted by the people.  The climate, natural environment, types of settlements, their historical evolution and the resultant goals and occupations, and the life-views of these societies have always been poles apart.  This is the main cause of the continuing discord between education and society in India.  In the process of growing up the child is helped by the various stakeholders, parents, kin, neighbours and the community as a whole.  The school teacher, being an outsider, is not a participant in this process of incidental but fairly well organized learning.  For the rural child, therefore, the teacher in the formal school is a stranger and school is a place where it has no protection from parents, older siblings, or relations and neighbours.  School entry for the child is traumatic, an entry into insecurity, into a world of which the ways are quite different from what the child has experienced.  This is often the reason for non-enrolment of rural children and of a large dropout rate.  Not only the child but the parents also are distanced from the school, since it is only the teacher who is designated by the system to transmit education according to a state-prescribed curriculum.

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Improving Rural Education

 

Thirugnana Sambanthan.,G, H.O.D & Sr. Lecturer, DIET, Thirumoorthinagar, Dt. Coimbatore

 

Education is a process of human enlightenment and empowerment for the achievement of a better and higher quality of life.  A sound and effective system of education results in the unfolding of learner’s potentialities, enlargement of their competencies and transformation of their interests, attitudes and values.  Recognizing such an enormous potential of education, all progressive societies have committed themselves to the UEE (Universalisation of Elementary Education) with an explicit aim of providing ‘Quality Education for all’.

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ICT for Rural Education -Bridging Digital Divide in Rural Schools in India

 

Thirunavukkarasu, A, Sr. Lecturer, DIET, Chennai  & S. Manivel, Lecturer, DIET, Tirur

 

Mahatma Gandhi said that villages are the backbone of education in India. Any development plan conceived excluding villages would not result in the comprehensive development of the nation. Education, being the corner stone of the nation building process, it is absolutely necessary to give focus to the individual achievement of students in village schools. As MGT situation still persists in 18000 schools in Tamil Nadu, technology assisted self learning could perhaps supplement the teacher’s efforts to instruct children in schools. The need for bridging the digital divide between rural and urban schools and strategies to achieve the same are discussed in this paper.

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