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The CITIIS, under its Model & SMART Corporation Schools Project is working to make Chennai Schools the preferred schooling destination for the masses. Towards equipping the schooling eco-system for holistic transformation, several capacity building initiatives are being rolled out by the GCC Education department for their teachers across the K-12 segment.
The 21st century has heralded transition from conventional teacher-centric to neoteric student-centric model, where students are co-constructors of knowledge, while teachers are moderators and observers. Information & Communication Technology (ICT) is emerging as a powerful tool for this in education. Beyond being a repository for learning resources, its capabilities in remote learning, assessing student specific needs, flexibility to create learning material in various media forms, running analytics and such has made it important for educators to develop various digital competences. This requires a new set of skills & tools.
The objective of the ICT Training program is to ensure that use of technology in education is demystified, so that teachers are motivated to develop their eclectic digital skillset leading to adoption of ICT practices for enhancing Teaching Learning Effectiveness in Classrooms.
The ICT training program, commenced from February 26th, 2021 with Anna Institute of Management (AIM) – a nodal state govt training agency as the training partner . Being the foremost capacity building programs under the “Model & SMART Corporation Schools Project”, the training was jointly flagged off by Mr. G Prakash, IAS, Commissioner of GCC and Dr. V Irai Anbu IAS , Director AIM.
The program organised as a 3 full day workshop in batches across North, South & Central Chennai locations will cover 2,000 GCC teachers across middle, high & higher secondary schools. The workshop structure and content have been specifically designed to follow an interactive and highly practical hands-on approach, with every teacher having individual computers for the workshop. The training program has participants apply the ICT tools & develop instructions/ activities in their classroom context. Till date 600 teachers have completed their training and the program has been received well by the teachers. This training showed how inspiring teachers can integrate digital tools and various 21st-century skills such as creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and last but not least, digital literacy and digital citizenship of both students and teachers.
It has been rightly said, “Technology will never replace great teachers, but technology in the hands of great teachers is transformational."