Teachers lie at the core of any living society. They are important mediators of social change, social reconstruction and social rejuvenation. A teacher’s role is not only that of the leader of the children but of the guide to the entire community. Teachers being so vitally important for any society, the task of their preparation and education assumes equal importance.

Information and communication technology (ICT) has become, within a very short time, one of the basic building blocks of modern society. The incorporation of Information and Communication Technologies in education and training programmes has profound influence in teaching and teacher preparation. The student accesses knowledge and information through Internet, TV, satellite and cable network and digital media to synchronise learning mediated through these multiple delivery mechanisms.

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Globalisation is a qualitatively new phenomenon of multi-dimensional nature posing a variety of complex trends in the economic, social and cultural fabrics of all societies. It impacts on all conceivable facets of life, including education. Consequently, education services are naturally commercialised, privatised and capitalised. Education can be seen wearing a new face-‘modernised’ for a knowledge economy based on information technologies. Its values, preferences and tastes have certainly become different due to globalisation.

It is evident that the dawn of the new age in India has been characterised by unimaginable advances in knowledge, triggering major changes in the objectives, contents, and methods of higher education. The globalisation of the economy and its accompanying demands on the workforce requires a different education that enhances the ability of learners to access, assess, adopt, and apply knowledge, to think independently to exercise appropriate judgement and to collaborate with others to make sense of new situations. The objective of education is no longer simply to convey a body of knowledge, but to teach how to learn, problem-solve and synthesise the old with the new.

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