SCERT video conferencing hub in city for state blocks

“ We will be sending a detailed proposal in this regard to the school education department. We have also prepared a budget of Rs 3,83,000 for the project. The main centre of the facility will remain in the Pune campus of the SCERT,” said Salunkhe.

“A lot of changes have been taking place in school education,especially after the passing of the Right to Education (RTE) bill. SCERT will be doing a lot of training activities over the next few months. We thought we should use the technology to a great extent for this purpose and came up with this idea,” he said.

“With the video conferencing facility in place,the experts can address all 373 blocks at once. We can even conduct a whole training programme through the facility. Presently,the teachers or centre heads have to come to Pune for training,which consumes a lot of time and money. It will be better if we could use this technology instead,” he said.

He also said that the SCERT is in the process of making a VCD on the evaluation system to be followed by schools as per the provisions of RTE. “We are in the process of developing this VCD with the help of Balchitravani. The VCD will be interactive and will be distributed to 5,000 centres in the state. Heads of these centres will in turn arrange shows of this VCD for 1,05,000 primary teachers in the state,” he said.

The SCERT has also printed a information booklet for teachers,containing detailed information on the RTE and the new evaluation system to be followed in classes 1 to 8 from this academic year. “We will also distribute these booklets to teachers,” said Salunkhe.