Annual Report 2010-11 - The National Institute of Open Schooling

National Institute of Open Schooling
Lectures given by Educationists and Experts
from Abroad
Sugata Mitra’s New Experiments in Self-
Teaching
Prof. Sugata Mitra,
Professor of Educational
Technology at the School
of Education,
Communication and
Language Sciences at
Newcastle University, UK
delivered a lecture on his
Hole in the Wall experiment while he was the Chief
Scientist, Emeritus, at NIIT at NIOS on September
7, 2010. He is one of the most invited keynote
speakers on education in the world. He explained
how he tackled one of the greatest problems of
education – The best teachers and schools don’t exist
where they are needed most. In a series of real-life
experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy,
he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and
saw results that could revolutionize how we think
about teaching.
On December 13, 2010 A Talk on Use of Open
Distance Learning in Formal
Schooling System – A
Palestinian Experience by
Prof. Mohan Menon,
former Education Specialist,
School Development and
Commonwealth of Learning where he is responsible
for facilitating Commonwealth Governments and
institutions in focusing on the use of open and distance
education for professional development of teachers
and other education personnel. He highlighted the role
of formal schooling and open schooling as
complementary to each other rather than as two
separate systems. Quoting the Palestine experience
he focused on the role open and distance education
can play in bringing education to people living in areas
under difficult situations.
15.5 International Conferences
Attended by NIOS Officials
Dr. Sitansu S. Jena, Chairman, NIOS attended the
following International events:
a four day Programme of International
Workshop on Commonwealth of Learning:
Monitoring and Evaluation for Open Schools
Workshop on August 16-20, 2010 held in
Africa.
a four day Conference on Legitimization of
NIOS Programmes in Dubai from November
10 to 13, 2010
PCF 6 from November 24-28, 2010 at PCF
6 held in Kochi India. He chaired sessions and
participated in many important deliberations.
International Conference on Programmes for
the International Assessment of Adult
Competencies (PIAAC) AT OECD
Headquarters on January 25 th - 30 th , 2011.
Dr. Sushmita Mitra, Director (Student Support
Services) presented a paper titled ‘Can mobile
phones be used to improve the Quality of Learning in
Open Schooling’ on November 27, 2010 at PCF 6
held in Kochi India.
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