National Mission in Education through ICT to be Launched
Tuesday, August 5, 2008:
New Delhi: To bridge the digital divide and make India a knowledge based society in the near future, the central government of India would soon be launching a “ National Mission in Education through ICT”, a Press Information Bureau, Govt., of India report has recently stated. The information was revealed by D. Purandeswari, union Minister of State for HRD (Higher Education), while inaugurating 'e-India 2008' at Pragati Maidan. This mission would focus on sharing the benefits of ICT and distributing a very low cost and low power consuming access device, making available free bandwidth for education propose to every Indian. The Union HRD Ministry would also accelerate the network building process between institutions of higher education and also within these institutions.
The application of ICT would also help in the expansion of the distance and open learning mode. In her own words, “a new scheme namely ‘National Mission in Education through ICT’ would be launched, with the objective of providing connectivity to the learners to the ‘Knowledge World’ in cyberspace and to make them ‘Netizens’ in order to enhance their self-learning skills and develop their capabilities for online problem solving. The Mission would also work for creation of knowledge modules with right contents to address the personalized needs of learners. It aims for certification of competencies of the learners, acquired through formal or non-formal means, as also to develop and maintain the database having profile of human resources.”
It must here be noted that, Nicholas Nigroponte's idea of “One Laptop Per Child (OLPC” failed to impress New Delhi in 2001. The plan to make a simple $100 laptop was then rejected on the ground of lack of accountability. Therefore the Government's initiative to develop a low cost device is expected to be much cheaper.
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