To get a background of the things that I am about to say here, please go to the following link
http://kshec.kerala.gov.in/Syllabi.htm
This is the restructured curriculum for undergraduate courses. The context of this restructuring is the new credit and semester system for undergraduate courses.
Now open course 13 (Informatics)
http://kshec.kerala.gov.in/downloads/Syllabi/COURSE13.pdf
Nice and informative course, isnt it ? I was thinking of writing a post in praise of this new initiative, and then I found a few interesting details in that document. check the module 2 as sample
Module II – KNOWLEDGE SKILLS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION
Data, information and knowledge, knowledge management- Internet access methods – Dial-up, DSL, Cable,ISDN,Wi-Fi - Internet as a knowledge repository, academic search techniques, creating cyber presence, case study of academic websites, open access initiatives, open access publishing models. Basic concepts of IPR, copyrights and patents, plagiarism, introduction to use of IT in teaching and learning, case study of educational software, academic services-INFLIBNET, NICNET, BRNET
And now check the first note on the course work.
The first 4 modules are to be dealt with a very generic manner only (and hence can be taught by non-specialist teachers).
Lets consider the example of a Sanskrit teacher as a non specialist teacher. How is he supposed to teach all these stuff ? Even most B-tech holders dont know anything about IPR and copyrights. The other modules are even worse. If a Sanskrit teacher can teach all this to a student, then I am pretty sure the student can learn all this on his own.
A dangerous notion exists in our society that every Tom, Dick and Harry can be a computer expert/teacher. I have seen people saying “Get a mechanical engineering degree and go for a 6 months NIIT course and you are computer engineer”.
I want to make this very clear, A Sanskrit or Arabic or any other non computer teacher is not eligible for teaching this course, not to even school students. Will you let me go an teach Malayalam to a graduate student just because I have 26 years of practical Malayalam Knowledge ?
Dig deeper into the syllabus and you will find certain keywords.
- Language computing tools in Indic languages
- Impact of IT on language
- Culture and localization issues
- Unicode, IT and regional languages
If you are familiar with the IT and software setup in Kerala, you can guess the origin of this syllabus by reading the keywords once again.
See these orders form higher education council
http://kshec.kerala.gov.in/notification190609.htm
It seems they are planning to run a five day program to teach informatics at IHRD. I dont know how many at IHRD knows about IPR , copyright etc. When I was a student at an IHRD institute we used pirated software. It will be nice to know how they pack the 90 hour content to 5 days.
Also, what skills you need to survive in a digital society ?
You must know how to operate a mobile phone, a computer and an ATM. On computer , you need some skills like browsing email and some word processing.
The rest of the stuff should go to specialist.
It seems, the present syllabus intends to make a lot of free software preachers. It is bound to fail.
Comment by Narimattom — July 20, 2009 @ 9:20 am
How long does a child have to go through generic education before he can start learning a skill that can be directly applied in the real world?
A Bachelor of commerce after 5 years of learning acounting wouldn’t be able to aptly interpret a real company accounts or balance sheet. So where do we learn all this??!! Isn’t 5 years enough ??!!
Comment by Jithin — July 20, 2009 @ 9:56 am
hi…i m one of the guinea pigs part of the BIG COMEDY…a 2nd year literature student wondering wat al this is about….
Comment by Ashley.......... — June 13, 2010 @ 4:44 pm