Education Ministry organizing webinars on different themes to mark Shikshak Parv

Smt Karwal emphasized that today’s connected world is driven by digital technology, so, the definition of literacy includes digital literacy, financial literacy, and other such life skills for ease of living.

Ministry of Education is organizing 9-days webinars on different themes as part of the celebration of Shikshak Parv during 5-17 September 2021. The theme for today's webinar was "Technology in Education: NDEAR". Smt Anita Karwal, Secretary, Department of School Education & Literacy, Ministry of Education and Shri Rajender Sethi, Deputy Director General (DDG), NIC graced the webinar.

Speaking on the occasion, Smt Anita Karwal said that the 8th of September was declared by UNESCO as International Literacy Day to remind the international community of the importance of literacy for individuals, communities and societies, and the need for intensified efforts towards more literate societies.

Smt Karwal then informed that the theme of World Literacy Day for the year 2021 is 'Literacy for a human-centred recovery: Narrowing the digital divide' and, today's webinar on National Digital Education Architecture (NDEAR) is organized on this date as it has strong linkage with achieving the goal of digital literacy. She said that NDEAR is a product based on the recommendation of NEP that aims to bring resilience in school education. She further said that Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has launched 5 major initiatives in the field of Education aimed towards implementation of NEP 2020 and during his address, the Prime Minister has highlighted the importance of NDEAR in education and compared it with the revolution UPI brought about in financial transactions in our country.

Smt Karwal emphasized that today's connected world is driven by digital technology, so, the definition of literacy includes digital literacy, financial literacy, and other such life skills for ease of living. She stressed that our aim should be to achieve 100% literacy of citizens.

During his introductory remarks, Shri Sethi gave a brief background about NDEAR. He said that the challenges in the Indian education system are varied, complex, and requires a diverse approach. Technology is known to be an enabler in achieving the goal of quality universal education, he added. He further said that the pandemic has shown that technological solutions are scalable and stakeholders – students, teachers, parents are able to adapt to technology in a short span of time. There is a need for a technology framework, architecture and an ecosystem approach to allow different stakeholders to participate in and create solutions in an exponential manner, to nurture our young to achieve their potential, he added.

Shri Rajnish Kumar, Director, Digital Education, Ministry of Education mentioned that the National Digital Education Architecture comes with a vision to create a unifying national digital infrastructure to energise and catalyse the education ecosystem. He highlighted that the NDEAR will pave the way to achieve learning outcomes by offering solutions to learners and teachers. He stressed that the Digital ecosystem of Education needs to take a long-term view of aspects like interoperability, data governance, data quality, data standards, security and privacy, besides promoting open innovation.

This was followed by a brief presentation by three teachers about their journey in the adoption of technology in education:

Dr Sanjay Kumar, GPS Kuftu Distt, Himachal Pradesh

Ms Pratima Singh, National ICT Awardee 2017, Head Teacher, Primary School Dhusah, Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh

Mr S. Simon Peter Paul, National ICT Awardee, PST GHS, Ariyarkuppam, Puducherry

The webinar ended with a formal vote of thanks to all the panellists, participants and viewers.

(With Inputs from PIB)