leader speak
Computers for Everyone The e-content or animations are helpful in getting attention of the students. It is very important that the content should be very attractive and visually rich
I
t is time for us to think differently. When it comes to computers, it is possible for us to have five times more from the same budget. The truth is that during the last 20 to 30 years there has been immense development in IT space, but the way we interact with our computers has not changed much. For instance, we had Wordstar 20 years back, now we have Microsoft Word. Lotus 123 has changed into Excel. A few things have changed, but the demands from the computers have not changed much. Computers have become extremely powerful machines. If a modern computer were to be transported 20 years back in time, it would serve as a data centre for an entire university. We do not
use the power of the computers to the maximum. We use just 5 percent of the capacity and the remaining 95% capacity is surplus. It goes waste. So the basic idea is really simple. A way has to be found to utilise the spare computer capacity. If 60 people sitting in a room wants to start a company, they could go ahead with buying 60 computers. But do we really need to buy 60 computers? Every computer has unused capacity. So can I buy 5 computers? This is what NComputing does. We buy 5 computers and split the power into 50 or we buy say 10 computers and split the power into 500. Everyone has his own computer. But the cost of computing goes dramatically down. The solution suggested here is very
Manish Sharma Vice President, APAC, NComputing
simple and can easily be applied to schools, colleges and universities in India and around the world.
Innovative Assessments Practices for Education Making new- age assessment tools available to all schools is a must
A
ssessment practices are now becoming an important aspect of education. The conventional assessment systems do not give the teacher the flexible mechanism of actually assessing themselves and altering their lesson plans. The assessment system should comprise a unique technology, which allows the teacher to assess each student on a regular basis. There should also be a reporting mechanism that will give an analysis and conclusion of the learning that has taken place. It should not be restricted to providing only numeric numbers or marks. The assessment should be on a daily basis and should also be shared with the parents so that the parents know what
their children have been doing in school, how much they have been taught and how much they have learnt. Mexus has come up with a unique assessment system which can be integrated inside the classroom without the help of any internet connectivity or wireless connection. It works locally in schools. When we talk about the masses, in India, majority of the population do not have an access to the electricity, internet connection, broadband and things like, iPad. So we thought of having a rather robust solution that can work even if there is no internet and there is paucity of devices. Assessments are crucial to the learning system, and the objective of educators should be to use it more
Nikhil Gupta AGM, Mexus Education effectively in order to ensure productive learning outcomes.
february / 2012 www.digitallearning.in
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