Abstract:

Since we are living in the information age and the importance of the need for communication among people of different cultures is increasing day by day in the globalizing world, people need to learn the languages of different cultures, particularly English, which is the common language of this global communication. This need for learning English requires trained qualified teachers of English. A scan of those who are teaching English in schools of Bangladesh reveals that most of them are very limited in both English skills and teaching methodologies for English. This situation is exacerbated when one moves into the rural areas. Most of the teachers are staying far away from the teachers’ training colleges and also for different constraint like administrative, financial, time constraint and were also unable to receive any training due to family problems. So Distance Education has a great demand to them. ICT is an effective media of distance education. For many years, universities with a significant commitment to distance and open education institutions have been at the forefront of adopting new technologies to increase access to education and training opportunities. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is an umbrella term that includes all technologies for the manipulation and communication of information. Bangladesh Open University (BOU) is till now belonging to the second generation of distance education model but due to the enhancement of technology in Bangladesh, BOU can proceed further. The main purpose of this study is to identify a suitable technology for developing a virtual interactive teachers’ training program for the disadvantaged English teachers of Bangladesh. Respondents were selected through random sampling and data were analyzed using both descriptive statistics and quantitative themes. From the opinion of the secondary English teachers their access and acceptability on ICT was identified and also a need analysis was done. It is hoped that the result of this study will encourage the policy makers to implement new ODL approaches for the training of disadvantaged rural English teachers.

Keywords: