India launches e-Knowledge portal
India has launched Sakshat, a one-stop education portal widening the access of learners to e-content on various disciplines and subjects. The online tool will help in spreading digital literacy and building knowledge connectivity among institutions of higher learning in the country.
New Delhi: India's one-stop education pilot project Sakshat went live nationwide on February 3 with the launch of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology.
An initiative of the country's Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), the project aims at realising the potential of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in teaching and learning process.
The Government of India had approved the Mission in the first week of this month. The Mission was launched at the Sri Venkateswara University in Tirupati by Minister of Human Resource Development Arjun Singh.
The project, a brain child of Department of Higher Education was launched on a trial basis two years back, on October 30, 2006, by the then President of India A P J Abdul Kalam.
Encouraged with the experience of the 'Sakshat' pilot project, a web based portal providing various services to the student community, the government had decided to formulate the centrally sponsored scheme National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology.
"The Mission aims at enhancing the capacity as well as efficiency of the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) system by the use of appropriate ICT tools to make the learning interesting and easy," the country's Higher Education Secretary R P Agrawal said.
According to him, the Mission aims at digitising learning and educational content and converting them into e-content to widen the access of the learners, by making it freely available to the student community at no cost.
"The proposed Mission broadly has the objective of ensuring connectivity of the learners to the world of knowledge in cyberspace and to 'convert' them into Netizens in order to enhance their self-learning skills," a statement issued by the MHRD said.
"This will help develop their capabilities for on-line problem solving and to work for creation of knowledge modules with right contents to address to the personalised needs of learners," the statement added.
The project will also help individuals get certification of competencies, acquired through formal or non-formal means, besides creating a database of the country's human resources.
