The new millennium has ushered into dramatic technologic revolution with technology, internet and computers impacting every walk of life. How can education remain isolated from this technology wave? Today’s kindergarteners will retire in the 2060’s. We have no idea how the world will look like after 10 years- not to speak of 60 years. Our students are facing many emerging issues, such as globalization of economy, global warming, population explosion, information explosion, poverty, growing digital divide etc. The key to such issues lies in management and harnessing of knowledge explosion associated with technology revolution. This is possible through a paradigm shift in our conventional education system. Knowledge has become synonymous with power and prosperity. The demand on today’s education is creation and application of knowledge – not merely acquisition of knowledge.
Education (cultivation of knowledge) and Informatics (capturing, storing, retrieving, interpreting and utilizing information and data) are different, yet highly related notions. They have common means to achieve their objectives as in the case of teaching, learning, e-learning, m-learning (mobile learning), virtual class rooms and virtual universities. The students of today are digital learners - they literally take in the world through the filters of computing devices: cell phones, handheld games / devices, PDA’s, lap tops / computers etc. The concept of school will change from physical building to centers with transparent and porous walls connecting students and teachers cutting across geographical and time barriers. The teacher’s primary role will be not merely that of a dispenser of information, but an orchestrator of learning.
Added to this, in the Indian context, is the problem of abysmally low higher education enrolment ratio. Government’s plan to raise this ratio from 12 % at present to 30 % by 2020 is a Herculean task and will need an “out of the box” approach.
Engendering the spirit of creativity in the field of education and to move with the times, Chitkara Institute of Engineering and Technology, Rajpura (Punjab) and Indo-US Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE) are organizing an International Conference on Education Informatics – EduMatics-2010 on 22 May, 2010.
Fest State:- Punjab
Fest City:- Chandigarh
Fest Date:- 22-23 May 2010
Website:- http://edumatics.chitkara.edu.in
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