Seminar on ICT in education

BANGALORE:  In an attempt to facilitate better cooperation between state-level stakeholders, a seminar on Information and Communications Technology (ICT)  in Education for Sustainable Development was held on Tuesday. “The use of ICT in education is beneficial in the form of increase in enrolment and attendence- especially of girl children. However, maintenance of ICT infrastructure, power backup for schools, internet connectivity and the choice between open source and proprietary software are some of the challenges,” said DSERT director H S Rama Rao. Bangalore University Vice-Chancellor Dr N Prabhu Dev stated ICT has to be incorporated from primary stage. “I have observed that students grasp more from audio-visual presentations than conventional teaching. Focussing on ICT becomes vital as in the next 10 years, 30 per cent of economic growth and 40 per cent of jobs are expected from the IT sector,” he said. He further added that a state policy was necessary to improve broadband connectivity in the country. The seminar was jointly organised by TERI and Dell, to discuss the role of ICT in creating a model of sustainable development. Director  of the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre, V S Prakash,  said that ICT played a major role in disaster management. Citing an example of a flood situation in Gulbarga last year, he illustrated how timely prediction of the situation helped mitigate losses. “A monitoring system for natural hazards has been developed with coordinating centres at the Hobli and Gram Panchayat levels. This involved near real-time  reporting, generation, processing and dissemination  of information,” said  V S Prakash.