Through videos, pictures and more, the online National Repository of Open Educational Resources promises to simplify both learning and teaching
Imagine an online library that’s as vast as the sky. It
has videos, audios, books and pictures open to all for free. Anyone can
contribute, critique, share, and adapt the content to suit their requirement.
Teachers can use it to make lessons livelier; students can easily understand
concepts they find complicated — all at the click of a mouse. That’s the
National Repository of Open Educational Resources (NROER) for you.
Going digital
An initiative of the Department of School Education and
Literacy, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India and the Central
Institute of Educational Technology, National Council of Educational Research
and Training, the repository “will endeavour to bring together all digital and
digitisable resources for the school system — for all classes, for all subjects
and in all languages”. It was launched at the recently held National Conference
on ICT (Information and Communications Technology) for School Education in New
Delhi.
So, what is the NROER all about? A quick look at the website will tell you that it’s the
best place to be if you’re a teacher and are looking at ways to take learning
beyond textbooks. According to Prof. Rajaram S. Sharma who is part of the core
NROER team, the repository hopes to take quality electronic content to schools
across the country. It aims to put technology to good use, since the Internet
is catching up in government schools.
Its homepage features links to the various resources in
the repository, namely videos, audios, interactive objects, images and
documents. By clicking on ‘videos’ you can browse the video files in the
library, under themes such as ‘Dance forms of India’, ‘Land & people’,
‘Sports’, ‘Himalayas’ and ‘Freedom Movement’, among others. There are also
videos on origami, multiplication and algebra.
NROER features over 300 videos of science toys made of
everyday objects by innovator Arvind Gupta — these include ‘Magic paper fan’,
‘Lighthouse generator’ and ‘Inertia pump’; audio clips about Gandhiji, Charles
Darwin, Galileo, Baba Amte; photographs from across the country, documents on
science concepts…
The repository is a collaborative platform, and anyone
who has an interesting concept can upload it. They will also be given credit
for the same, adds Rajaram. Of course, content uploaded may “require a little
editing” to ensure it is suitable to be presented to students.
Content in Indian languages
The best thing about NROER is that it will feature
content in Indian languages. Since their material has a Creative Commons
licence, anyone can adopt it. For instance, “put a Tamil script and subtitles
and share it with each other”, says Rajaram. Teachers can use it to “transform
the classroom” by incorporating the concepts in the teaching process. “A
volcano can be understood better if students watch a video of it and a slide
show containing 10 to 20 photos,” he says. Wouldn’t it be easier to talk about
the magnificence of sea waves to school children in a remote village in the
Nilgiris using a video, he asks. A teacher can start a lesson with it to take
children into the subject. This way, they can “give something more”.
Teachers can also comment on the resource they accessed,
giving an evaluation of it to others in the field, adds Rajaram. His team hopes
to take the repository to every nook and cranny of the country — through events
and training programmes. If things go as planned, NROER could be among the best
things that happened to our education system.
In a nutshell
NROER is a collection of videos, audios, interactive
objects, images and documents to help teachers and students. The resources are
organised into a semantic map of concepts. Anybody can access, edit, contribute
and share the content
No comments:
Post a Comment