Language NCCA Home » Primary » Curriculum Areas » Language Introduction Language in the primary curriculum involves two subjects English and Gaeilge. Note: A new language curriculum is available for infants to second class and will be available for all other classes from 2018.

Copywriting

Copywriting is the act of writing text for the purpose of advertising or other forms of marketing. The product, called copy, is written content that aims to increase brand awareness and ultimately persuade a person or group to take a particular action.

Copywriters help create billboards, brochures, catalogs, jingle lyrics, magazine and newspaper advertisements, sales letters and other direct mail, scripts for television or radio commercials, taglines, white papers and other marketing communications.

They are generally known as website content writers if their work appears mostly on the Internet. A content writer helps create online advertisements, web pages, email newsletters, blog posts and social media.

Many copywriters are employed in advertising agencies, public relations firms, or copywriting agencies.

• Advertising agencies usually employ copywriters as part of a creative team in which they are partnered with art directors. The copywriter writes text or script for an advertisement, based largely on information obtained from the client. The art director is responsible for visual aspects of the advertisement and, particularly in the case of print work, may oversee production. Either member of the team can come up with the overall idea (typically referred to as the concept) and the process of collaboration often improves the work.
• Copywriting agencies combine copywriting with a range of editorial and associated services that may include positioning and messaging consulting, social media, search engine optimization, developmental editing, copy editing, proofreading, fact checking, layout and design. The clients are usually large corporations.

Copywriters also work in-house for retail chains, book publishers or other big firms which advertise frequently. They can also be employed to write advertorials for newspapers, magazines, broadcasters and cable providers.

Some copywriters work as independent contractors, doing freelance writing for a variety of clients. They may work at a client's office, a coworking office, a coffeehouse, or from home.

Copywriters are similar to technical writers and the careers may overlap. Broadly speaking, however, technical writing is dedicated to informing readers rather than persuading them. For example, a copywriter writes an advertisement to sell a car, while a technical writer writes the operator's manual explaining how to use it.

Book publishing

In book publishing, flap copy or jacket flap copy is the summary of a book which appears on the inside of a hardcover dust jacket; back cover copy is similar text, usually briefer, on the outside back cover; and catalog copy is a summary written for a publisher's catalog.

Internet

The Internet has expanded the range of copywriting opportunities to include landing pages and other web content, online advertisements, emails, blogs, social media and other forms of electronic communications.

The Internet has brought new opportunities for copywriters to learn their craft, do research and view others' work. Clients, copywriters and art directors can more readily find each other, making freelancing a viable job option.

Search engine optimization

Web copy may include among its objectives the achievement of higher rankings in search engines. Known as "organic" search engine optimization (SEO), this involves the strategic placement and repetition of keywords and keyword phrases on web pages, writing in a manner that human readers would consider normal.

Recitation

A recitation in a general sense is the act of reciting from memory, or a formal reading of verse or other writing before an audience.

In academia, recitation is a presentation made by a student to demonstrate knowledge of a subject or to provide instruction to others. In some academic institutions the term is used for a presentation by a teaching assistant or instructor, under the guidance of a senior faculty member, that supplements course materials. In recitations that supplement lectures, the leader will often review the lecture, expand on the concepts, and carry on a discussion with the students.

In its most basic form, a student would recite verbatim poems or essays of others, either to the teacher or tutor directly, or in front of a class or body of assembled students.

In classes involving mathematics and engineering, a recitation is often used as the vehicle to perform derivations or solve problems similar to those assigned to the students.

Scientific classes, such as biology, chemistry, and physics, often employ the use of recitation sections to help students clarify subject matter that was either not fully understood or inadequately addressed in the limited time of lecture. These recitation sections may be conducted by the professor or a student teaching assistant. These sections provide students with an opportunity to receive additional instruction on confusing subject matter or receive personal assistance with problems or questions assigned as homework in the lecture section. Some universities may require attendance at regularly scheduled recitation sections in addition to any required labs. Recitations may also provide students with additional opportunities for receiving grades for the lecture portion of the course. Despite mandatory attendance and additional time spent in the classroom, these sections usually do not count towards university credits required for graduation, but may significantly increase a student's ability to understand important concepts required to pass the course.

Recitations of holy texts are part of the cultural presentations of some religions. As Denny notes, "There is a vast bibliography of Qur'an recitation in Arabic and other languages by Muslim scholars." These religion recitations take the form of prayer, liturgy, and public performance.

Recitation as a performing Art

Recitation is practiced as a performing art especially in Bangladesh and India. Nowadays it is a popular art form in Bengal. The reciters recite Bengali poems on stage and electronic media. Shambhu Mitra, Kazi Sabyasachi, Pradeep Ghosh, Partha Ghhosh, Gauri Ghosh, Utpal Kundu are great reciters from West Bengal. Reciters like Samiran Sanyal, Bratati Bandyopadhyay, Bijoylakshmi Burman, Pinaki Chattopadhyay to name a few, are contributing significantly in this field. There are many such organizations of recitation, with most located in Bangladesh.

It was often popular for a poet to recite his or her newly-created poetry to an audience. In the early twentieth century, recitation developed into an autonomous art form.

Audio Podcast

A podcast is an episodic series of digital media files which a user can set up so that new episodes are automatically downloaded via web syndication to the user's own local computer or portable media player.

The word arose as a portmanteau of "iPod" (a brand of media player) and "broadcast". Thus, the files distributed are typically in audio or video formats, but may sometimes include other file formats such as PDF or ePub.

The distributor of a podcast maintains a central list of the files on a server as a web feed that can be accessed through the Internet. The listener or viewer uses special client application software on a computer or media player, known as a podcatcher, which accesses this web feed, checks it for updates, and downloads any new files in the series. This process can be automated so that new files are downloaded automatically, which may seem to the user as though new episodes are broadcast or "pushed" to them. Files are stored locally on the user's device, ready for offline use. Podcasting contrasts with webcasting or streaming which do not allow for offline listening, although most podcasts may also be streamed on demand as an alternative to download. Many podcast players (apps as well as dedicated devices) allow listeners to adjust the playback speed.

Some have labeled podcasting as a converged medium bringing together audio, the web, and portable media players, as well as a disruptive technology that has caused some people in the radio business to reconsider established practices and preconceptions about audiences, consumption, production, and distribution. Podcasts are usually free of charge to listeners and can often be created for little to no cost, which sets them apart from the traditional model of "gate-kept" media and production tools.^[4] It is very much a horizontal media form: producers are consumers, consumers may become producers, and both can engage in conversations with each other.

odcasting, once an obscure method of spreading information, has become a recognized medium for distributing audio content, whether for corporate or personal use. Podcasts are similar to radio programs, but they are audio files. Listeners can play them at their convenience, using devices that have become more common than portable broadcast receivers.

The first application to make this process feasible was iPodderX, developed by August Trometer and Ray Slakinski.^[14] By 2007, audio podcasts were doing what was historically accomplished via radio broadcasts, which had been the source of radio talk shows and news programs since the 1930s.^[13] This shift occurred as a result of the evolution of internet capabilities along with increased consumer access to cheaper hardware and software for audio recording and editing.

In August 2004, Adam Curry launched his show Daily Source Code. It was a show focused on chronicling his everyday life, delivering news and discussions about the development of podcasting, as well as promoting new and emerging podcasts. Daily Source Code is believed to be the first podcast produced on a consistent basis. Curry published it in an attempt to gain traction in the development of what would come to be known as podcasting and as a means of testing the software outside of a lab setting. The name Daily Source Code was chosen in the hope that it would attract an audience with an interest in technology.^[

Daily Source Code started at a grassroots level of production and was initially directed at podcast developers. As its audience became interested in the format, these developers were inspired to create and produce their own projects and, as a result, they improved the code used to create podcasts. As more people learned how easy it was to produce podcasts, a community of pioneer podcasters quickly appeared.^[16] Despite a lack of a commonly accepted identifying name for the medium at the time of its creation, Daily Source Code is commonly believed to be the first podcast to be published online.

In June 2005, Apple released iTunes 4.9 which added formal support for podcasts, thus negating the need to use a separate program in order to download and transfer them to a mobile device. While this made access to podcasts more convenient and widespread, it also effectively ended advancement of podcatchers by independent developers. Additionally, Apple issued Cease and Desist orders to many podcast application developers and service providers for using the term "iPod" or "Pod" in their products' names

Language Curriculum

In education, a curriculum (/kəˈrɪkjᵿləm/; plural: curricula /kəˈrɪkjᵿlə/ or curriculums) is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view of the student's experiences in terms of the educator's or school's instructional goals. In a 2003 study Reys, Reys, Lapan, Holliday and Wasman refer to curriculum as a set of learning goals articulated across grades that outline the intended mathematics content and process goals at particular points in time throughout the K–12 school program. Curriculum may incorporate the planned interaction of pupils with instructional content, materials, resources, and processes for evaluating the attainment of educational objectives.

Although the need to learn foreign languages is older than human history itself, the origins of modern language education are in the study and teaching of Latin in the 17th century. Latin had for many centuries been the dominant language of education, commerce, religion, and government in much of the Western world, but it was displaced by French, Italian, and English by the end of the 16th century. John Amos Comenius was one of many people who tried to reverse this trend. He composed a complete course for learning Latin, covering the entire school curriculum, culminating in his Opera Didactica Omnia, 1657.

In this work, Comenius also outlined his theory of language acquisition. He is one of the first theorists to write systematically about how languages are learned and about pedagogical methodology for language acquisition. He held that language acquisition must be allied with sensation and experience. Teaching must be oral. The schoolroom should have models of things, and failing that, pictures of them. As a result, he also published the world's first illustrated children's book, Orbis Sensualium Pictus. The study of Latin diminished from the study of a living language to be used in the real world to a subject in the school curriculum. Such decline brought about a new justification for its study. It was then claimed that its study developed intellectual abilities, and the study of Latin grammar became an end in and of itself.

Language education may take place as a general school subject or in a specialized language school. There are many methods of teaching languages. Some have fallen into relative obscurity and others are widely used; still others have a small following, but offer useful insights.

While sometimes confused, the terms "approach", "method" and "technique" are hierarchical concepts.

An approach is a set of assumptions about the nature of language and language learning, but does not involve procedure or provide any details about how such assumptions should be implemented into the classroom setting. Such can be related to second language acquisition theory.

There are three principal "approaches":

1. The structural view treats language as a system of structurally related elements to code meaning (e.g. grammar).
2. The functional view sees language as a vehicle to express or accomplish a certain function, such as requesting something.
3. The interactive view sees language as a vehicle for the creation and maintenance of social relations, focusing on patterns of moves, acts, negotiation and interaction found in conversational exchanges. This approach has been fairly dominant since the 1980s.

Characteristics of a Good Evaluation Tool

Most evaluations require the use of a data collection tool—a survey or other data collection instrument. Evaluators either need to adopt or adapt tools “off the shelf” or create new ones. Either method can pose challenges: Tools that have been developed for one evaluation may not prove suitable for another, at least not without careful modification. At the same time, creating new tools requires expertise in measurement and instrument design.

Desirable Characteristics of Evaluation Tools

The evaluation tools serve a variety of uses.  Regardless of the type of tool used or  how the results of evaluation are to be used, all types of evaluation should possess certain characteristics.  The most important characteristics are - validity, reliability and usability.

  1. Validity

Validity is the degree to which an evaluation tool actually serves the purpose for which it is intended.  It refers to the extent to which a test measures what it is supposed to measure.  Although there are several kinds of validity, the three types commonly used are criterion, content and construct.

 2.Reliability

Reliability refers to the consistency of measurement, that is, how consistent are evaluation results from one measurement to another.  Reliability is concerned with the extent to which an evaluation test is consistent in measuring what it is intended to measure.  Whether the response of the respond dents would have been different if they were tested yesterday or next week? How would the result have varied if a different sample of equivalent items had been selected? These are the types of questions with which reliability is concerned.  If the measurements are not consistent over different occasions or over different samples of the same performance domain, the evaluator can have little  confidence in the results.

3.  Usability

While selecting evaluation tool / instrument, practical considerations need to be kept in mind. Generally, the tests are administered by teachers having very limited training. The time available for testing is also limited. The cost of testing is also taken into consideration. All these factors must be taken into account when selecting evaluation tools.

Online Examination

Online Examination
Online examination is an assessment that use network connection or internet in its process. Individuals and students must sign in on an assessment program or web link by entering their username and password. Then they choose the course that will be tested and the student start answering the questions that is shown on the screen. After they have finished the examination, the student taking the exam must click on a certain button that would require finishing the examination process. Even though this seems easy, online examination has its advantages and disadvantages as well.

Electronic assessment, also known as e-assessment, online assessment, computer assisted/mediated assessment and computer-based assessment, is the use of information technology in various forms of assessment such as educational assessment, health assessment, psychiatric assessment, and psychological assessment. This may utilize an online computer connected to a network. This definition embraces a wide range of student activity ranging from the use of a word processor to on-screen testing. Specific types of e-assessment include multiple choice, online/electronic submission, computerized adaptive testing and computerized classification testing.

Different types of online assessments contain elements of one or more of the following components, depending on the assessment's purpose: formative, diagnostic, or summative. Instant and detailed feedback may (or may not) be enabled.

The students who agree that online examination is good has many advantages. Online examination can make the student’s life easier because they don’t need any paper and pen to do the examination. Furthermore, online examination can be effective and efficient. The students don’t waste much time to answer the questions because they only click on the best answer that is provided. One other advantage of online examination is that we can know our scores just after the exam. Sometimes, instructors can be very busy on a given day and do not have any time to check the exams. Online examination can solve this problem. The instructor does not need to check all of the exams. Online examination can do...

Other Advantage
Can be easily accessed 24/7 over the open test period
Can be timed to allow Y minutes to answer X number of questions
Immediate test feedback when a test is submitted
Can take advantage of special media; video, audio, or pictures
Can contain a combination of True/False, multiple choice, and in some cases essay questions

Other Disadvantages:
Highly dependent on honor system; hard to catch cheating. A group of students can take turns
taking test first to share answers with others in the group raising their overall grade.
Hard or difficult to ask questions or contest answers
Can be slow responding due to connection speed (i.e., dial-up would limit the use of graphics or media files)

Grading System

Grading in education is the process of applying standardized measurements of varying levels of achievement in a course. Grades can be assigned as letters (generally A through F), as a range (for example 1 to 6), as a percentage of a total number of questions answered correctly, or as a number out of a possible total (for example out of 20 or 100).

In some countries, all grades from all current classes are averaged to create a grade point average (GPA) for the marking period. The GPA is calculated by taking the number of grade points a student earned in a given period of time of middle school through high school. GPAs are also calculated for undergraduate and graduate students in most universities. The GPA can be used by potential employers or educational institutions to assess and compare applicants. A cumulative grade point average is a calculation of the average of all of a student's total earned points divided by the possible amount of points. This grading system calculates for all of his or her complete education career. Grade point averages can be unweighted (where all classes with the same number of credits have equal influence on the GPA) or weighted (where some classes are given more influence than others).

Yale University historian George W. Pierson writes: "According to tradition the first grades issued at Yale (and possibly the first in the country) were given out in the year 1785, when President Ezra Stiles, after examining 58 Seniors, recorded in his diary that there were 'Twenty Optimi, sixteen second Optimi, twelve Inferiores (Boni), ten Pejores.'" Bob Marlin argues that the concept of grading students' work quantitatively was developed by a tutor named William Farish and first implemented by the University of Cambridge in 1792. Hoskin's assertion has been questioned by Christopher Stray, who finds the evidence for Farish as the inventor of the numerical mark to be unpersuasive. Stray's article elucidates the complex relationship between the mode of examination (testing), in this case oral or written, and the varying philosophies of education these modes imply, to both the teacher and student. As a technology, grading both shapes and reflects many fundamental areas of educational theory and practice. Over the past hundred years, various colleges, such as Evergreen State College and Hampshire College have begun to eschew grades. Ivy League university Brown University does not calculate grade-point averages, and all classes can be taken on a pass/fail basis. Additionally, several secondary schools have additionally decided to forgo grades. A notable example is Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn which was ranked by the Wall Street Journal as the number one high school in the country for having the highest percentage of graduating seniors enroll in Ivy League and several other highly selective colleges.

The issues of grading and reporting on student learning continue to challenge educators. However, more is known at the beginning of the twenty-first century than ever before about the complexities involved and how certain practices can influence teaching and learning. To develop grading and reporting practices that provide quality information about student learning requires clear thinking, careful planning, excellent communication skills, and an overriding concern for the well-being of students. Combining these skills with current knowledge on effective practice will surely result in more efficient and more effective grading and reporting practices.

Types of Evaluation- Formative and Summative

Evaluation is the process of examining a program or process to determine what's working, what's not, and why. It determines the value of learning and training programs and acts as blueprints for judgment and improvement. 

Evaluations are normally divided into two categories: formative and summative.

Formative

A formative evaluation (sometimes referred to as internal) is a method for judging the worth of a program while the program activities are forming (in progress). They can be conducted during any phase of the ADDIE process. This part of the evaluation focuses on the process.

Thus, formative evaluations are basically done on the fly. They permit the designers, learners, instructors, and managers to monitor how well the instructional goals and objectives are being met. Its main purpose is to catch deficiencies ASAP so that the proper learning interventions can take place that allows the learners to master the required skills and knowledge.In addition, prototyping is used in formative evaluations to test a particular design aspect by using one or more iterations.

Summative

A summative evaluation (sometimes referred to as external) is a method of judging the worth of a program at the end of the program activities (summation). The focus is on the outcome.The various instruments used to collect the data are questionnaires, surveys, interviews, observations, and testing. The model or methodology used to gather the data should be a specified step-by-step procedure. It should be carefully designed and executed to ensure the data is accurate and valid.

Questionnaires are the least expensive procedure for external evaluations and can be used to collect large samples of graduate information. The questionnaires should be trialed (tested) before using to ensure the recipients understand their operation the way the designer intended. When designing questionnaires, keep in mind the most important feature is the guidance given for its completion. All instructions should be clearly stated . . . let nothing be taken for granted.

Right of Education Act- 2009

'The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act' or 'Right to Education Act also known as RTE', is an Act of the Parliament of India enacted on 4 August 2009, which describes the modalities of the importance of free and compulsory education for children between 6 and 14 in India under Article 21A of the Indian Constitution.India became one of 135 countries to make education a fundamental right of every child when the act came into force on 1 April 2010.The title of the RTE Act incorporates the words ‘free and compulsory’. ‘Free education’ means that no child, other than a child who has been admitted by his or her parents to a school which is not supported by the appropriate Government, shall be liable to pay any kind of fee or charges or expenses which may prevent him or her from pursuing and completing elementary education. ‘Compulsory education’ casts an obligation on the appropriate Government and local authorities to provide and ensure admission, attendance and completion of elementary education by all children in the 6-14 age group. With this, India has moved forward to a rights based framework that casts a legal obligation on the Central and State Governments to implement this fundamental child right as enshrined in the Article 21A of the Constitution, in accordance with the provisions of the RTE Act.

The RTE Act requires surveys that will monitor all neighbourhoods, identify children requiring education, and set up facilities for providing it. The World Bank education specialist for India, Sam Carlson, has observed: "The RTE Act is the first legislation in the world that puts the responsibility of ensuring enrolment, attendance and completion on the Government. It is the parents' responsibility to send the children to schools in the US and other countries."

 

The Right to Education of persons with disabilities until 18 years of age is laid down under a separate legislation - the Persons with Disabilities Act. A number of other provisions regarding improvement of school infrastructure, teacher-student ratio and faculty are made in the Act.

 

Education in the Indian constitution is a concurrent issue and both centre and states can legislate on the issue. The Act lays down specific responsibilities for the centre, state and local bodies for its implementation. The states have been clamouring that they lack financial capacity to deliver education of appropriate standard in all the schools needed for universal education. Thus it was clear that the central government (which collects most of the revenue) will be required to subsidise the states.

 

A committee set up to study the funds requirement and funding initially estimated that INR 1710 billion or 1.71 trillion (US$38.2 billion) across five years was required to implement the Act, and in April 2010 the central government agreed to sharing the funding for implementing the law in the ratio of 65 to 35 between the centre and the states, and a ratio of 90 to 10 for the north-eastern states. However, in mid 2010, this figure was upgraded to INR 2310 billion, and the center agreed to raise its share to 68%. There is some confusion on this, with other media reports stating that the centre's share of the implementation expenses would now be 70%. At that rate, most states may not need to increase their education budgets substantially.

 

A critical development in 2011 has been the decision taken in principle to extend the right to education till Class X (age 16) and into the preschool age range. The CABE committee is in the process of looking into the implications of making these changes.

 

The Ministry of HRD set up a high-level, 14-member National Advisory Council (NAC) for implementation of the Act. The members included Kiran Karnik, former president of NASSCOM; Krishna Kumar, former director of the NCERT; Mrinal Miri, former vice-chancellor of North-East Hill University; Yogendra Yadav – social scientist. India

Sajit Krishnan Kutty, Secretary of The Educators Assisting Children's Hopes (TEACH) India; Annie Namala, an activist and head of Centre for Social Equity and Inclusion; and Aboobacker Ahmad, vice-president of Muslim Education Society, Kerala.

 

A report on the status of implementation of the Act was released by the Ministry of Human Resource Development on the one year anniversary of the Act. The report admits that 8.1 million children in the age group six-14 remain out of school and there’s a shortage of 508,000 teachers country-wide. A shadow report by the RTE Forum representing the leading education networks in the country, however, challenging the findings pointing out that several key legal commitments are falling behind the schedule. The Supreme Court of India has also intervened to demand implementation of the Act in the Northeast. It has also provided the legal basis for ensuring pay parity between teachers in government and government aided schools. Haryana Government has assigned the duties and responsibilities to Block Elementary Education Officers–cum–Block Resource Coordinators (BEEOs-cum-BRCs) for effective implementation and continuous monitoring of implementation of Right to Education Act in the State.

 

It has been pointed out that the RTE act is not new. Universal adult franchise in the act was opposed since most of the population was illiterate. Article 45 in the Constitution of India was set up as an act: The State shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years.

 

As that deadline was about to be passed many decades ago, the education minister at the time, MC Chagla, memorably said: "Our Constitution fathers did not intend that we just set up hovels, put students there, give untrained teachers, give them bad textbooks, no playgrounds, and say, we have complied with Article 45 and primary education is expanding... They meant that real education should be given to our children between the ages of 6 and 14" - (MC Chagla, 1964).

In the 1990s, the World Bank funded a number of measures to set up schools within easy reach of rural ommunities. This effort was consolidated in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan model in the 1990s. RTE takes the process further, and makes the enrolment of children in schools a state prerogative.

Futurology of Education

The pace of change is mandating that we produce a faster, smarter, better grade of human being. Current systems are preventing that from happening. Future education system will be unleashed with the advent of a standardized rapid courseware-builder and a single point global distribution system.

“Education is now the number one economic priority
in today’s global economy.” – John Naisbitt, Author of Megatrends

During the time of the ancient Greek civilization, several mathematicians became famous for their work. People like Archimedes, Pythagoras, Euclid, Hipparchus, Posidonius and Ptolemy all brought new elements of thinking to society, furthering the field of math, building on the earlier work of Babylonian and Egyptian mathematicians.

A few generations later the Romans became the dominant society on earth, and the one aspect of Roman society that was remarkably absent was the lack of Roman mathematicians. Rest assured, the scholarly members of Roman society came from a good gene pool and they were every bit as gifted and talented as the Greeks. But Roman society was being held hostage by its own systems. One of the primary culprits for the lack of Roman mathematicians was their numbering system – Roman numerals and its lack of numeric positioning.

While it’s easy for us today to look at Roman numerals and say that it was a pretty stupid numbering system, it was just one of many inferior numbering systems in ancient times. But the feature that made Roman numerals so bad was the fact that each number lacked specific numeric positioning and was in fact an equation, and this extra layer of complexity prevented people from doing higher math.

The pace of change mandates that we produce a faster, smarter, better grade of human being. Current systems are preventing that from happening. Future education systems will be unleashed with the advent of a standardized rapid courseware-builder and a single-point global distribution system.

Information is growing at exponential rates, and our ability to convert that information into useful knowledge and skills is being hampered by the lack of courseware. We refer to this phenomenon as a courseware vacuum. The primary reason we lack courseware is because we haven’t developed a quick and easy system for creating it.

Once a rapid courseware-builder has been created, and the general marketplace has put its stamp of approval on it, a series of standards will be developed.

With tools for producing courseware becoming widely available, people around the world will begin creating it, and we will see a courseware explosion similar to the dramatic rise of content on YouTube and iTunes.

As part of the rapidly developing courseware movement we will see education transition from:

• Teacher-centric to learning-centric
• Classroom-based teaching to anyplace, anytime learning
• Mandated courses to hyper-individualized learning
• A general population of consumers to a growing population of producers

Learning will become hyper-individualized with students learning what they want to learn, when they want to learn it. Most of today’s existing learning impediments will eventually go away.

As a result of this shift we will begin to see dramatic changes in society. The speed of learning will increase tenfold because of a combination of the following factors:

• Confidence-based learning will significantly increase learning speed and comprehension
• Learning what we want, when we want – shifting away from a prescribed course agenda to one that is hyper-individualized, self-selected, and scheduled whenever a student wishes to take it will dramatically change levels of motivation
• Technology improvements over time will continually improve the speed and comprehension of learning

The speed of learning will increase tenfold, and it is possible that the equivalent of our current K-12 education system will be compressed into as little as one year’s worth of learning.

In the future, we predict students entering the workforce will be ten times smarter than they are today.

Social Indices of National Development

Social indicators are defined as statistical measures that describe social trends and conditions impacting on human well-being. Generally, social indicators perform one or more of three functions:

• providing information for decision-making
• monitoring and evaluating policies
• and/or searching for a common good and deciding how to reach it

Examples of social indicators cover the full range of issues that matter for individual, community and societal well-being. Common examples include:

• Poverty rate
• Inequality rate
• Educational attainment
• Life expectancy
• Employment and unemployment rates
• Obesity rate
• Fertility rate
• Health expenditure
• Suicide rates
• Youth neither in employment, education nor training (NEET rate)
• Life satisfaction (objective and subjective)

Objective social indicators are statistics which represent social facts independent of personal evaluations and subjective social indicators measure of individual perceptions, self-reports and evaluations of social conditions. There is an emerging consensus amongst experts that social progress and human well-being should be measured by a combination of both objective and subjective indicators.

During the 1990s, the concept of human development was promoted as a complement to existing income-based approaches to international development. Rooted in the capabilities literature of Amartya Sen and adopted by the Human Development Reports of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the primary aim of the human development paradigm was to focus development thinking more upon the enhancement of people's freedoms, capabilities, and wellbeing. Specifically, the human development approach sought to achieve three goals: i) to make people the ends and not the means of development; ii) to refocus attention on what people can be or do rather than what they can produce; and iii) to ensure that development policies are aimed at improving people's quality of life, including their health, security, and overall flourishing

Human Rights Education

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. So stated Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. This is what the Indians have been preaching since times immemorial as it has become the immemorial customs of our nation .Human Rights are a fundamental value. There is a long Indian tradition of standing up for the weak against abuse by the strong. Upholding human rights values in every aspect is firmly in our tradition. The ”Great Mauryan emperor Ashoka the great renounced the path of violence after the massacre in the war of Kalinga ” The ”Great Moghul,” Akbar the Great granted religious minorities legal status in his realm, One of the most influential was Mahatma Gandhi’s movement to free his native India from British rule. It is the core of our Constitution and the heart of our national interest today. But the values that we stand for – freedom, human rights, the rule of law – are all universal values. Given the choice, people all over the world want them. But it is regretting that India who was once looked up by whole world as the pioneer of these values is now groveling in lowly dust of atrocities and human rights abuse. Human rights abuse is sadly a reality in Indian society, it is not just an affront to the values of tolerance, freedom and justice that underpin our society. It is also a tragic waste of human potential.

The Need for Human rights Education

The importance of human rights education hardly requires any over emphasis. It has a crucial role in preventing human rights violations from occurring.

The United Nations proclaimed that human rights education is “training, dissemination and information efforts aimed at the building of a universal culture of human rights through imparting knowledge and skills and the moulding of attitudes”. These efforts are designed to strengthen respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, facilitate the full development of human personality, sense of dignity, promote understanding, respect, gender equality and friendship to enable all persons to participate effectively in a free society, and further activities for maintenance of peace.

Human rights education, training and public information are, therefore, necessary and essential for the promotion and achievement of stable and harmonious relations among the communities and for fostering mutual understanding, tolerance and peace. Through the learning of human rights as a way of life, fundamental change could be brought about to eradicate poverty, ignorance, prejudices, and discrimination based on sex, caste, religion, and disability and other status amongst the people.

Human rights Education in India

It may be said that in India that the content of human rights education is not different to what was taught by way of religion, be it Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity or Islam. There is lot of truth in that statement. The quintessence of human rights is also the basic essence of all religions, Love, compassion, loving kindness are the same. However, while teaching religions we confined the obligations arising from these doctrines only to their followers. Human rights could bring in a universal aspect to moral and ethical education. And we in our divided societies are in great need of this On the other hand in the context of rapid secularization we could still retain a basic common ground for respect for each other. We could still be our brothers’ keepers and withstand value systems which only promote selfish ways of life.

Any education to be effective needs to be contextualized too. Thus it is not enough to teach abstract principles of human rights taken from United Nations’ documents or our Constitutions. Our historical context as nation as well as local contexts need to be reflected in human rights education. The contextualizing of human rights is essential for nurturing of peace. Creative reflections on local situations from a human rights perspective would help the schools greatly, to become the societies’ most important peace makers. Some say that we Indians should have less rights than people living in Western countries. They say, the human rights concepts are Western.