The Education Department has decided to establish an e-learning wing to develop e-content for ICT-enabled classrooms.This was announced at a meeting of the officers and scientists from Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) who called on the Minister for Education,Naeem Akhtar here today.Commissioner Secretary, Higher Education, Dr Asghar Hassan Samoon was also present at the meeting.The ISRO team included Mr Virender, Director, Development Education and Communication Unit (DECU) and Mr Murthy, Senior Scientist.The meeting was told that the Education Department has already covered 400 Higher Secondary Schools in the State with ICT-enabled classrooms to facilitate e-learning while other schools including the high schools are being covered in a phased manner to facilitate smooth launch of the programme. The Department is also planning to have full-fledged studios in all the schools with advanced technological facilities to record lectures for creation of e-content.
The ISRO team assured the Education Minister that the Organization will upgrade all the EDUSATs in J&K with latest technology and expand the facility, presently available in higher education sector only, to the school education sector as well. The Department of Education will sign MoU with ISRO in this regard.The ISRO team has been invited by the Education Department to make functional all the EDUSAT systems installed in various colleges of the State.Pertinently, GSAT-3, known as EDUSAT is meant for distant classroom education from school to higher education level. This was the first dedicated "Educational Satellite" that provides the country with satellite based two-way communication to classrooms for delivering educational materials.Earlier, the team visited various sites in the educational institutions where the EDUSATs are installed to take stock of their present condition. The team also visited the EDUSAT hub at Women’s College Gandhi Nagar here.The Minister asked the ISRO team to make all the EDUSATs in the State functional by March 2017 so that a comprehensive e-learning programme could be launched in the State. He said the specialist teachers would be deployed for designing the e-content for schools.