Tirupati, Feb 3 : Union Minister for Human Resource Development Arjun Singh will launch the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology here today.

D. Purandeswari, Minister of State for Higher Education will also grace the occasion.

Union Government had approved the Mission in the first week of last month.

The highlights of the components of the Mission will be exhibited during the launch ceremony.

The proposed Mission broadly has the objective of ensuring connectivity of the learners to the ''World of Knowledge'' in cyberspace and to make them ''Netizens'' in order to enhance their self-learning skills and develop their capabilities for on-line problem solving and to work for: creation of knowledge modules with right contents to address to the personalized needs of learners; certification of competencies of the learners, acquired through formal or non-formal means; and to develop and maintain the database having profile of human resources.

The Mission aims for building connectivity and knowledge network among and within institutions of higher learning in the country with a view to achieving critical mass of researchers in any given field.

It also aims to spread digital literacy for teacher empowerment and to make available e-knowledge contents, free of cost to Indians.

Several components of the Mission are connecting academic community to the world of knowledge in cyberspace; digital empowerment of the academic community; content generation and its management; national programme of technology enhanced learning; research for development of new ICT tools; human resources database and certification of skills. (ANI)