Technical Media Competence of Propsective Teachers

The 21^st century teaching and training demands the high end use of technology enabled tools to teach students the needed knowledge and skills essential for them to be equipped for today’s growing modern world. Hence, through a special teacher training program, a multifaceted impact can be brought about on student learning. This special training increases the technical media competence of the teachers in social media and as a result, they become proficient in handling the technological resources which includes all the virtual media platforms that serve helpful in student learning and hence in their professional development. The present study aims at studying the effectiveness of technical media competence of the prospective teachers, in employing social media for the efficient transaction of curriculum through innovative methods of teaching and training. By taking into consideration the nature of the problem under study, it was decided to adopt survey methods for collecting data. The population for the present study was the prospective teachers from different colleges of teacher education in Kerala. The tool developed was a competence scale for measuring the technical media competence in the effective usage of social media in teaching. The study revealed that the technology plays a major role in shaping the teaching and training techniques of the prospective teachers in the 21^st century. It also revealed that there are significant differences in the technical media competence of prospective teachers in using social media with respect to gender and type of management of the institution.