TN teachers to get resource centre

Chennai: With only Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) having such resource centres at present, the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), a wing of the School Education Department, has been entrusted to establish special cells.

A senior official from the School Education Department told DT Next that the resource centre will have language, science, mathematics, social science, research, and information and communication technology (ICT) cells.

He said the SCERT, which provides academic support to various stakeholders of school education, has constituted a committee comprising subject experts and members of the District Institute of Education and Training (DIET) to prepare a detailed plan to set up the resource centres.

Stating that the centres will have audio-visual packages in the specific subjects that develop the curiosity among the teachers, he said “the teachers and even students will visit the resource centre during State level training programmes and also throughout the year according to a schedule to be prepared by SCERT”.

Pointing out that the current resources available to teachers are low, he said the proposed centre will include facilities for “physical emulations”, “do and explore”, “discuss and learn”, “play and learn”, “experiential learning” and “animated learning”.

The official said the resource centre will also strengthen the capacity of teachers by providing cognitive support for all academic initiatives. “It will be an electronic depository and will provide a framework for coordination and convergence of all academic resources”, he added.

“The committee have deliberated on the materials to be procured for each cell and has visited institutions of excellence to gather inputs for establishing the resource centre”, he said adding that “even private school teachers from Class I to Class X could access the centre as per their school requirements.

The official said each cell in the resource centre will have experts and officials of SCERT to guide the teachers and students, who visit the centre, and provide them with required training besides getting feedback from them.