To become technology-literate is one of the universal mandates of the 21st century. Although the basics of language and arithmetic remain the foundation upon which all professions and occupations are built, the lives of people in the new millennium have been radically disrupted by new information and communication technologies (ICT). The umbrella term ICT covers computers, the internet, telephones, television and radio, which have incrementally fascinated, seduced and hooked people worldwide and rendered those unfamiliar with ICT helpless. To survive in business, commerce, industry and the professions, people need to acquire working familiarity with the moving flux of its languages, tools and protocols.
To truly realise the full potential of ICT in education, teachers must transcend the realm of basic literacy, and move towards ICT ˜fluency™. This requires development of responsive agility to be able to utilise new-age technologies efficiently, if not optimally.
The first step is to create healthy learning spaces to demystify and ˜normalise™ the existence and awareness of ICT. This opens up two possibilities, viz, to teach ICT as a subject which requires familiarising students with computer systems and software, and to integrate ICT into knowledge transmission. Harnessing both these possibilities will provide young learners with the exposure needed to tap the wonderful new world of knowledge and learning opened up by ICT.
As with all new concepts, early exposure will pre-empt the inflexibility of minds jaded with age. Since new technologies are equalising, the term ˜learners™ encompasses all involved in the existing teaching-learning matrix ” students and teachers now transformed into facilitators. That is to say, at the beginning, everybody needs to learn the basics of ICT, including teachers.
However, what is particular to the latter group is the dual responsibility of keeping abreast with technology themselves, while also investing in acquiring or developing new pedagogies to engage in the two aforesaid ways of integrating ICT in their classrooms.
To ˜teach™ ICT to students in the Indian context, it™s advisable for schools to offer it as a separate subject in the weekly timetable. In these classes, students can be introduced to computer hardware and the basics of using office and applications software. Such introductory classes can also be stretched to enable students to explore the underlying principles of ICT hardware, software and applications ” the basics of an ICT literacy programme. In schools which introduce basic ICT learning classes, there™s also an opportunity for teachers to learn and teach the ˜hows™ and ˜whys™ behind hardware and software, and to develop the cognitive skills required for effective use of applications and programming, data gathering, mind-mapping, logical reasoning and algorithmic thinking. Rather than simply teaching-learning computer facts, figures and functions, a structured curriculum will develop students™ cross-disciplinary life skills facilitating their progress towards ICT fluency.
The second necessity is to integrate ICT into the teaching-learning process. For instance to teach class VII history,  rather than using the old chart paper and felt pens, picture ˜homework™ taking the form of a digital presentation incorporating text, audio and videos. Or consider a science class in which the teacher-facilitator wants to demonstrate how atoms become agitated and ˜move™. For a first-timer, this is hard to conceptualise within the confines of a school science lab. But with digitised, interactive, animated simulations, previously unperceivable phenomena can now be explained through observation.
To be sure, all instruction delivered through ICT is not novel. There have always been teachers able to stimulate students in ways other than chalk-and-talk pedagogies. Devices such as projectors (including overhead projectors for transparencies) have been available for decades, but it™s doubtful if they™ve been utilised effectively. With the advent of Smart classes and a host of flashy new educational technologies, anecdotal evidence suggests that the excitement is limited to their installation, without sufficient focus on how best to improve teaching-learning efficiency and outcomes. However, these technology inputs required teachers with a grasp of core concepts, lesson planning efficiency, and command of Smart technology.
In a report published in the Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education in 2009 which collates research conducted on the status of ICT-integration, author K.A. Bingimlas notes: œAfter teachers had attended professional development courses in ICT, they still didn™t know how to use ICT in their classrooms; instead they just knew how to run a computer and set up printers.
Therefore the challenge is to provide 21st century teachers appropriate training and professional development programmes to make them fluent in the utilisation of ICT in their classrooms. Indeed, it™s imperative that all involved in the teaching profession receive support in acquiring ICT-integration skill-sets, above and beyond the standard education degree or its equivalent.

(Rupesh Kumar Shah is CEO and co-founder of Mumbai-based InOpen Technologies)