Mumbai: In a first-of-itskind move, the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education will distribute free elearning CDs with English textbooks for students of class 10. While in the first year, from June 2012, CDs will be available only with English textbooks designed for second and third languages, the board plans to extend the facility to other subjects in future.
The audio-visual CDs will not only have content from the textbook, but will also have the pronunciations of words with their meanings. “They will be aimed at helping students who find it difficult to learn and comprehend English,” said board chairman Ujjwala Patil.
Patil said that officials are also working on making available similar CDs for other subjects.
“Many firms have approached us with proposals on learning technologies. However, all come at a price. We cannot incur a huge expense. So we are looking at cheaper options. Several schools do not have laboratory facilities. Students are unable to conduct experiments or even see them. We are trying to make these experiments in science subjects available to the students. We plan to compile a list of useful links in sciences and social sciences and put them on our website for students,” Patil said.
This is the first time the board is planning to make use of technology on such a scale. From June 2012, information and communications technology will be introduced from class 10 and later to higher classes. Under the curriculum, the board intends to teach students how to create e-mail IDs and to send mails.
The curriculum guides you to create blogs and make use of online tools or Wikipedia. “The teacher training programme for information and communications technology (ICT) will begin from December 15. Teachers will come to training centres once a week and will be practising in their schools for the rest of the week,” said the chairman. The Maharashtra government is also working out ways to provide computers to every school in the state.
Source Times of India 12 December 2011
