EDUSAT yet to catch up with students

Thiruvananthapuram, July 9: The first network on EDUSAT for schools in the country - VICTERS (Virtual Class Technology on Edusat for Rural Schools) - which has created a new culture and pattern of teaching, is yet to prove beneficial to the student community.

Launched by President A P J Abdul Kalam on July 28 last year, VICTERS had demonstrated its success in imparting quality training to teachers across the state, but the student community will be deriving benefits only in the coming years, IT Schools Executive Director Biju Prabhakar told UNI.

The greatest challenge for the project is shortage of content material for the students.

''There is a shortage of content throughout the country. Content development is costly and also takes a very long time. Unless an effort is made for developing content, the programme is not going to prove beneficial,'' he said.

He also called for developing content repository in the country and said all states should interact with each other and share their resources and content.

Mr Prabhakar also stressed the need for more research and analysis in this field to ensure real benefit for the students.

The interactive network had demonstrated itself to be a success in imparting quality training to the teachers across the state but the second channel, a non-interactive one aimed at students, had only been launched on an experimental basis, Mr Prabhakar added.

One of the major achievements of VICTERS was empowerment of teachers which was good for enhancing teaching capacity besides providing an opportunity to them to interact directly with the experts in a particular field. ''Recently, about 600 teachers in different parts of the state were able to listen to the Regional Institute of English Faculty at the same time. There was very good response from the teachers, '' he pointed out.

As part of the interactive network, 88 Satellite Interactive Terminals (SIT) had been installed at different places. In just a year, it was demonstrated how the terminals could be effectively used for training school teachers and holding departmental conferences among others.

The SITs had been installed at 15 district centres, 20 Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Schools, 21 Directorate of Technical Education and Government Engineering Colleges, 19 Government Arts Colleges and 13 high schools in Lakshadweep.

There were also plans to network 400 other centres, including SITs in B Ed colleges, IITs and nursing colleges in the coming days, he said.

''It may be noted the teachers training programme in Kerala, like elsewhere, is a staggered process. The State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) trains a State Resource Group (SRG) which imparts training at the district level.

''Through VICTERS, the teachers could be directly trained by the SCERT, thus reducing the communication loss.'' About 22,000 teachers had been given training till March, 2006.

The Receive Only Terminals (ROT)-based multimedia classrooms had been set up at 516 places, including 400 government high schools and about a hundred in the very remote areas like Attapady and Kottachira.

There are proposals for making it available to all the schools in the coming days, he said.

Elaborating on the other advantages of VICTERS, Mr Prabhakaran said it had now become easy for conducting departmental conferences of the Directorate of Public Instruction. ''Earlier, the Deputy Directors of Education (DDE) were called for meetings at a central location and the Director never got the opportunity to interact and explain the different schemes to other key officials of the DDE office.

''After EDUSAT, the Director now directly interacts with them and gets the feedback,'' he said.

Moreover, institutions like the Kerala State Literacy Mission, State Open School and Continuing Education were also using the interactive network effectively and had regular programmes.

The Vegetable Promotion Board is using the facility to educate the Vocational Higher Secondary School teachers, students and also the beneficiaries. The Health Department has used its service for educating its doctors.

It has also proved to be helpful for students appearing for competitive examinations like Civil Services, IIT-JEE, CAT, TOEFL and Entrance Examinations, he said.

''EDUSERVE,'' an education server designed to be a one-stop-shop for all web-based academic activities of teachers and students would take three to four years to become a reality, he said and added once it became operational, schools in the state would have a repository of educational multimedia content material.

Each school would also be able to have its own website and students from one corner of the state would be able to interact with their peers at the other end.

Even while he makes a list of the achievements of the Interactive Network, he points out the system had not become beneficial to the students.

''The non-interactive channel launched recently is going to be a milestone in the education sector and is going to revolutionise the education sector.'' There would be links with the local cable network and programmes could be repeatedly transmitted to the students. ''Though the teacher may explain all the details of a subject, the non-interactive network would help the student to add up to what he had learned at the school.

The programmes are so designed that a topic is explained through visuals, animation and other means so that the student would be able to grasp the punch of the topic,'' Mr Prabhakar said.

''Though the original idea was to have interactive network for students, it is very difficult for networking each and every school.

Even if it happens, it would take years.

Moreover, if some schools are networked, then it would be discrimination,'' he said and added the non-interactive channel launched recently would help the student great deal.

Setting aside apprehension this would replace the teacher in the coming days, he said it was not a means to replace the teachers but it was just a tool for empowering them.

''According to the new pedagogy, a teacher's role is that of a facilitator who guides students and VICTERS is just a step in this direction,'' he said.

UNI