Department of Information and Public Relations

Press Release No. 390/10

MOBILE ART EXHIBITION INAUGURATION

Shillong, August 25, 2010: The two days Mobile Art Exhibition organized by the Department of Arts and Culture at Chutwakhu Social Club, Jowai was formally inaugurated on August 25, 2010 by the Deputy Commissioner Jaintia Hills District, Shri. T Dkhar amidst the presence of the Director of Arts and Culture, Smti. D. Syiem, government officials and school students.

In his inaugural address as the Chief Guest, Shri. T Dkhar, said that he was impressed to see students from different schools attending the exhibition adding that their active involvement will no doubt develop their talent in the field of arts and culture. He called upon the students to work hard and to keep on practicing in order to become professional painters and to succeed in life. He also lauded the efforts of the Department of Arts and Culture in providing a platform to local artist to develop their skills.

Press Release No. 391/10

SEMINAR ON TELE- EDUCATION FOR SCHOOLS OF NORTH EAST STATES HELD

Shillong August 26, 2010: A One Day Seminar on Tele Education for Schools of North East States was organized by the Education Department, Government of Meghalaya under the aegis of National Informatics Centre (NIC) Meghalaya along with Savant Education Group, New Delhi on 26th August 2010 at Yojana Bhavan Auditorium, Shillong. The seminar was conducted by Tanushree Singh, Head Operations, and Prof. Sushobhan Panda of the Savant Education Group, New Delhi.

The Seminar was attended by Shri F. R. Kharkongor, Secretary Education Department, Shri W. Synrem, OSD, Shri W. Khyllep, Director Higher and Technical Education, Shri U. K. Mishra, Director Science and Technology, North Eastern Council, government officials, principals, and students from various schools.

The Seminar was conducted in order to familiarize the Principals, Teachers and Technical Assistants of different schools with the methodology of conduct of the tutorials and detailed run down on connectivity to make the E-learning process a success through Virtual Classroom and also to create awareness to the school students the availability of learning through technologies by providing an opportunity to students to keep pace and bring parity with the entire Nation. Since the students cannot reach out to the accomplished faculty, the reverse has been made a reality by using this platform for the faculty to reach out to each student using advanced technologies which will have far reaching impact on the performance of the children.

It may be mentioned that the Tele Education Project for Schools in the North East Region was launched in the academic year 2009 – 2010 by the National Informatics Centre in collaboration with the Savant Education Group, New Delhi. The Savant Education Group, New Delhi was responsible for providing the content and running the programme on a daily basis and this visionary initiative has contribute immensely in delivering live quality teaching from renowned faculty of experts to students.

This direct interface uses the extensive Network of NIC to reach out to every school by using VPN/Broadband. The NIC has also provided IT hardware support inclusive of computers, online UPS, webcam, headphones etc. In this project, connectivity was provided to 5 schools in the State and altogether 62 schools across the North Eastern States in which nearly 2500 students have benefitted.

The Tele Education Project aims at filling up a major void of scarce availability of quality faculty in Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology. This project has been made possible with optimum utilization of Technologies for delivery of ICT enabled curriculum live tutorial content, in real time, right up to the classroom. The programme is highly interactive which provides the facility of 2 way audio, video, text chat and video conferencing allowing students to directly interact with the faculty during and even after class. A specially designed study material covering all science subjects is provided to each student along with comprehensive worksheet, assignments and Tests.

Having seen the dynamics and the potential of the programme it has been decided to continue the project for the academic year 2010-2011 with a vision of extending it to at least 100 schools. Live classes, on a regular basis will commence from 30 Aug 2010 where all connected Schools would be able to login to attend live sessions being beamed from Savant Studios at New Delhi.