The State government wants to continue the Intelligent Global Hub for Digital Pedagogy (I-Hub), which was proposed to be set up in the city at TECH 2018, in keeping with its goal to promote Vizag as a digital technology hub, Director of UNESCO MGIEP Anantha Duraiappah has said.
The previous government had planned to allot land for the proposed I-Hub at Madhurawada in the city. The I-Hub was planned as a centre to train the world’s best minds in the field of neuron-science and psychology to understand the minds of students and how gaming technology could supplement it.
“Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy is keen on harnessing technology in education and I am confident that he will go ahead with the proposal to set up the I-Hub in Vizag. Though an MoU has not yet been signed in this regard, we are confident of a positive response from the Chief Minister, when we meet him in the New Year,” Prof Duraiappah told The Hindu on the sidelines of TECH 2019, here on Tuesday.
This was the second successive year that the Policy Forum on Digital Learning was held at TECH 2019. “UNESCO is an inter-governmental organisation and about a dozen countries, which participated in TECH 2018 had requested UNESCO MGIEP to draft guidelines on digital learning. The guidelines were released at a conference in Paris recently. Copies of the draft would be sent to the regional offices and it is for the respective governments to implement the same,” he said.
Prof. Duraiappah underlined the need to make students an integral part in the framing of education policies by understanding their emotions and feelings.
Dell was partnering with informal groups of countries, which were ready to adopt social and emotional learning. “Dell has trained a total of 85,928 teachers of 4,561 schools, apart from 1,33719 mothers and retraining of 32,039 teachers across the country as part of our Dell Aarambh programme,” senior vice-president of Dell EMC Krishnakumar P. said.
“We had surveyed 400 schools between 2010 and 2015 on how children were using technology in education. While the kids were tech-savvy, the biggest challenge was that there was no help from their mothers at home and teachers at school. We provided digital training to 85,000 teachers and 1,33,000 mothers and 1 million students between 2016 and 2019,” he said.
