digitalLEARNING April 2013

Asia’s premier Monthly Magazine on ICT in Education

volume 9

I issue 04 I April 2013 I ISSN 0973-4139 I ` 75

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Digital Classrooms

A New Chapter in Education digital LEARNING Jaya Bhardwaj Principal, Hansraj Public School, Panchkula

Dr Lilly George Managing Director Shalomhills International School, Gurgaon

Tajvir Singh IB Coordinator and Head IT Department, The Cathedral Vidya School, Lonavala

Vikram Seth Principal, Holy Heart Presidency School, Amritsar

Dr Rajesh Kumar Chandel Principal, Gyan Ganga International School, Jabalpur

world education summit 2013 23-24 April, 2013, Hotel Le Meridien, New Delhi http://wes.eletsonline.com

Contents

ISSN 0973-4139

volume 09 issue 04 April 2013

10 cover story

Digital Classrooms: The Linchpin of Education Pragya Gupta, Elets News Network (ENN)

28

50

58

Rita Kaul Principal, The Millennium School

Prof S Sadagopan Director, IIT-Bangalore

Brian Gonzalez Director Global Education Sales Programs, Intel Corporation

60 Nilaya Varma MD, Health & Public Service, Accenture India

special feature

34 Optical Technology Offers More Precise Touch

08 Launch of National Internet Registry (NIR)

Lalit Mohan, Director, iTouch Technologies Pvt Ltd

40 Technology Changes in the Classroom In search of

perspective

effective, flexible solutions

T V Joe Layng, PhD, Director of Learning Sciences, Mimio

52 Network Security with UTM Sunil Sharma, Vice President - India & SAARC, Cyberoam

65 Launch of Electronic Payment & Application System of Scholarships (e-Pass)

cover story 12

Making Learning Sustainable

Hansraj Public School, Panchkula

13

ICT Allows Educator to Pursue Reactive Teaching

Delhi Public School, Sonepat

14

ICT Encourages Out of Box Thinking

38 The Price War 53 Addressing the Education to Employment Challenge

quick chat 47 Srikanth B Iyer, the Chief Cperating Officer of Pearson Education Services

62 Sandeep Arya, MD, Amtrak Info System & Amtrak Group

industry speak 30 Ramya Chatterjee, Director (Sales and Marketing), Cybernetyx

Shalomhills International School, Gurgaon

48 Sudha Jagadish, CEO, DAX Networks

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ICT Brings Entire World into the Classroom

54 Union Budget 2013-14 Focuses on Job

The Cathedral Vidya School, Lonavala

20 New Generation Classrooms

Holy Heart Presidency School, Amritsar

24 Beyond Bookish Knowledge

Gyan Ganga International School, Jabalpur

26 Interactive, Absorbing and Engrossing Classrooms Sanskar School, Jaipur

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Creation and Skill Development

63 Manoj Chandra, Founder & CEO, AllSchoolStuff.com

event report 68 eOdisha Summit: Towards a Digital Economy

Asia’s premier Monthly Magazine on ICT in Education Volume

09

Issue 04

April 2013

President: Dr M P Narayanan Editor-in-Chief: Dr Ravi Gupta Group Editor: Anoop Verma

Partner publications

Advisory Board Prof Asha Kanwar, President, Commonwealth of Learning

Dr Jyrki Pulkkinen, Senior Adviser, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland

Dr Subhash Chandra Khuntia, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Govt of India

Prof V N Rajasekharan Pillai, Executive Vice President, Kerala State Council for Science, Technology and Environment

Prof S S Mantha, Chairman, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)

Prof Parvin Sinclair, Director, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT)

WEB DEVELOPMENT & IT INFRASTRUCTURE Team Lead – Web Development: Ishvinder Singh Executive – IT Infrastructure: Zuber Ahmed information management team Executive – Information Management: Khabirul Islam Finance & Operations Team General Manager – Finance: Ajit Kumar Legal Officer: Ramesh Prasad Verma Sr Manager – Events: Vicky Kalra Associate Manager – HR: Sushma Juyal Associate Manager – Accounts: Anubhav Rana

Editorial Team education Sr Correspondent: Pragya Gupta, Mohd Ujaley Correspondent: Rozelle Laha

Executive Officer – Accounts: Subhash Chandra Dimri

governance Manager – Partnerships & Alliances: Manjushree Reddy Assistant Editor: Rachita Jha Research Assistant: Sunil Kumar Correspondent: Nayana Singh

OUR UPCOMING EVENTS

Health Sr Correspondent: Sharmila Das Correspondent: Nikita Apraj Research Assistant: Shally Makin SALES & MARKETING TEAM: digital LEARNING National Sales Manager: Fahimul Haque, Mobile: +91 - 8860651632 Associate Manager – Business Development: Amit Kumar Pundhir, Mobile: +91 - 8860635835

April 23-24, 2013, Le Méridien, New Delhi

2nd Annual

Subscription & Circulation Team Sr Executive – Subscription: Gunjan Singh, Mobile: +91-8860635832 Design Team Shipra Rathoria: Assistant Art Director Team Lead – Graphic Design: Bishwajeet Kumar Singh Sr Graphic Designer: Om Prakash Thakur Sr Web Designer: Shyam Kishore Editorial & Marketing Correspondence digitalLearning - Stellar IT Park Office No: 7A/7B, 5th Floor, Annexe Building, C-25, Sector 62, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, Phone: +91-120-4812600 Fax: +91-120-4812660 Email: info@digitalLearning.in

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Owner, Publisher, Printer - Ravi Gupta, Printed at Vinayak Print Media, Sector - 10, Noida, UP and published from 710, Vasto Mahagun Manor, F-30, Sector - 50, Noida, UP Editor: Ravi Gupta © All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic and mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage or retrieval system, without publisher’s permission.

Steering e-Inclusive Economy May 9-10, 2013 - Taj President Vivanta, Mumbai

Knowledge Exchange

SRINAGAR May 23-25, 2013 - The Lalit Grand Palace, Srinagar

PSE Summit

Persuing Development of the Modern Indian Economy with a Human touch June 21, 2013 | Le Méridien, New Delhi

education.eletsonline.com | egov.eletsonline.com | ehealth.eletsonline.com Write in your reactions to Education news, interviews, features and articles. You can either comment on the individual webpage of a story, or drop us a mail: editorial@elets.in

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EDITORIAL

The Digital Path to Future Recently we had the former HRD Minister, Kapil Sibal, who is the current Minister of Communications and Information Technology, saying “I want public services to be delivered through Aakash. I want Aakash to be a platform for 1.2 billion people.” The initial versions of Aakash may have failed to elicit an enthusiastic response from the market, but the idea of low-cost tablets for education and other purposes has struck a chord with everyone. Kapil Sibal is right when he says that a affordable tablet like Aakash can also become a tool for providing public services in the nation.

Aakash is just one example of a digital tool that holds great promises for the future of education in the country. It can greatly facilitate the acquisition and absorption of knowledge. Today education entrepreneurs have come up with a whole range of such solutions that provide unprecedented opportunities to enhance educational systems. The idea of “Digital Classrooms” where education is delivered through digital platforms has caught the imagination of the education community. They pose as a good strategy for engaging the digital generation and improving individualised learning opportunities.

This issue of digitalLEARNING is focussed on the adoption of digital classrooms by the Indian institutions. We have interacted with a range of stakeholders to discover how the digital classrooms are re-orienting our school structures. We also take a look at the myriad challenges that the country faces as it tries to tailor its solutions around different institutions and their diverse learning needs. There are issues related to the training of the teachers in the digital technologies and there are also the budgetary constraints. But on the whole the industry is doing well, and thanks to such technologies today students have access to an array of better educational opportunities.

We have included a guide in this issue of digitalLEARNING to help our institutions make the right choice when it comes to installation of digital classroom solutions in their campus.

This issue digitalLEARNING is a special edition, as it is a part of a series of two issues – April and May 2013 that are going to be launched at the World Education Summit (WES), scheduled for 23-24 April 2013, at Le Méridien, New Delhi. This would be the third edition of the WES, which is now widely regarded as the world’s premier platform for knowledge exchange. So we hope to have you there at this year’s WES, where large numbers of education leaders from around the globe are expected to gather. The conferences, exhibition, workshops and the award ceremony at the WES will provide a wonderful opportunity to stakeholders in the field of education, all over the world, to create opportunities of progress at all levels, namely – global, national, and regional.

Dr Ravi Gupta Editor-in-Chief Ravi.Gupta@elets.in

digitalLEARNING / April 2013

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special feature irinn

Launch of National Internet Registry (NIR) On 7th March 2013, at 10.30 AM, Kapil Sibal, Minister for Communications and Information Technology, launched the portal of National Internet Registry (NIR) at a glittering ceremony held at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi. Speaking on the occasion Sibal said that launching of NIR will ease the allocation of IP addresses within the country

N

IXI was recognized by Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) in March 2012 to become the NIR for the country after successful demo of the indigenous software and systems developed for the allocation and management of Internet resources.

National Internet Registry (NIR) coordinates the allocation of Internet Protocol address with other Internet resource management function at a national level in the country.

APNIC is a regional Internet registry which coordinates the Internet Protocol address allocations and other Internet resource management is the Asia-Pacific region. NIR functions under the overall umbrella of Regional Internet Registry (RIR) which is Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) based in Brisbane, Australia.

The NIR has been named as Indian Registry for Internet Names and Numbers (IRINN). Collective efforts of NIXI and ISPAI have led to the formation of IRINN in the country. It is a major milestone towards setting up of Critical Internet Resource management function in the country. Setting up of NIR under NIXI will not only reduce cost in procuring IP address but will also facilitate faster access to information for cyber crime investigators and Government authorities.

Creation of NIR will help promote activities related to research, education and training covering the areas of Internet Resources and its proliferation.

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“NIR will facilitate the allocation of IP resources to large number of small and medium companies within the country. The services can be charged in local currency to avoid exchange losses. It will also facilitate local training and development, thereby providing local language support to the entities in India�

- Dr Govind, Senior Director, Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), Ministry of Communications & IT, and CEO, National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI)

Established in 2003, the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) is the neutral meeting point of the ISPs in India. Its main purpose is to facilitate exchange of domestic Internet traffic between the peering ISP members. This enables more efficient use of international bandwidth, saving foreign exchange. It also improves the Quality of Services for the customers of member ISPs, by avoiding multiple international hops and thus reducing latency.

Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), Government of India, has endorsed the operations of National Internet Registry (NIR) to National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI).

IRINN is a division functioning under NIXI and provides allocation and registration services of Internet Protocol addresses (IPv4 & IPv6) and Autonomous System numbers to its Affiliates .It is a not-for-profit, Affiliates based entity, with the primary goal of allocation of Internet resources to its Affiliates.

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digitalLEARNING / April 2013

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Cover Story digital CLASSROOMs

Digital Classrooms

The Linchpin of Education

of education crossing geographical barrier. The development in ICT tools in education is also ensuring the delivery of rich educational content to the students.

There are also new challenges that technology brings in its wake. Schools and higher education institutions have to deal with issues in universalisation of education, student retention, student engagement, assessment and evaluation, etc.

However, despite all the challenges, the ICTs are becoming much more acceptable in the education community.

Lack of Information, training, initial inertia scuppered the adoption of these tools. With effective training at the initial stage, technology introduction will help in closing the gap of the available facility and its usage. The market size of digital classroom is likely to touch almost one lakh classrooms soon with a high growth rate. This trend is expected to continue for the next coming years. Classroom films, programmed learning devices, computer-assisted instruction and, more recently, interactive technology have been adopted and integrated into the curriculum with varying degrees of success depending on the effectiveness and involvement of people implementing the change.

By Pragya Gupta, ENN

T

echnology is becoming an inseparable part of education. We are now standing at the cusp of a technological revolution in pedagogy. Technology is also serving as a means of boosting a school’s visibility and prestige. It can lead to student recruitment and retention. The modern digital classroom comprises of a range of innovative

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tools for making education more interactive and engaging. Technology led innovation is leading in education space.

Several studies highlight the impact that technology has made in making the classroom more engaging for students.

Tablets have a promising future in education: they are seen as a tool to address the lack of teachers and rising student dropout ratio while enhancing the reach

The issue of digitalLEARNING seeks to highlight interactive whiteboards, interactive projectors, tablets, and other audiovisual aids that are being extensively used in the modern classrooms for enriching teaching-learning experience. We have interacted with a range of stakeholders to get their views on the innovations happening in the education space...

Cover Story

digital cLASSROOMSa

Making Learning Sustainable Hansraj Public School, Panchkula

Principal: Jaya Bhardwaj Website: www.hansrajschool.org Number of Students: 1581 Jaya Bhardwaj

Number of faculty and staff: 71 ICT Tools in the school To make students understand the content in an interactive and innovative method, the school has deployed 30 Interactive Whiteboards, 34 projectors, and English labs. The school is using smart classroom solutions from Class Teacher.

The school have smart class where children weary from bookish knowledge, get an insight into the world of information beyond textual learning.

Education is not only about books, but It is also about asking questions all the time. Integrated into the curriculum, the smart class has been intro-

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duced in the school to make learning sustainable.

Engaged students With interactive tools in classrooms, students remain active throughout the day and ready to learn new things. The implementation is also leading to the higher academic standards. It has further increased the interest of students by making subjects much more interesting.

Teachers’ training For teachers’ capacity building and experience, the school has conducted

three-day teachers’ training programme. “We also keep updating our teachers with new technologies and innovations whenever, they are installed in school. We have received positive response from teachers and students,” says Jaya Bhardwaj.

Experience These tools are easy to handle, user friendly, have a backup facility, Software and are evaluation oriented. However, the school looks forward to more inbuilt content from solution providers.

digital ClassrOOM

COVER STORY

ICT Allows Educator to Pursue

Reactive Teaching Delhi Public School, Sonepat

process, deeming the work of educators much smoother, than just relying on bookish knowledge. The most important aspect of this learning method is the filtration and wiser selection of all available resources that students employ when they are engaged in this teaching module.

Teachers’ training

Principal: Ranjoo Mann Number of Students: 1600 Number of Faculty and Staff: 110

T

he school is using ICT solutions from E beam. The overall objective of deploying the solutions was to initiate a more technological and interactive approach to teaching. It allows the educator to pursue reactive teaching. It makes the visuals more effective means of retention than the methods deployed before.

The main factors for a successful implementation of these tools is the availability of basic technology, which allows such an access. Apart from material factors, it also requires the basic know how on the operational level to ensure wider usage of this tool as an important resource provider.

With a more interactive and interdisciplinary model in place, levels of academic involvement is much higher, and superior. With the usage of internet in class, deeper research method is instilled in students, and visual teaching makes the experience richer.

Benefits of these Deployments

Teaching and learning as a processes have now a higher level of inter dependence, wherein, an educator is able to initiate discussion among students through a visual medium.

Students have been engaging in selflearning through discussion and exploration. The connection between concepts and visualising them has greatly increased the efficiency of the learning

Educators are able to take reference and remark on all issues that may crop up in class.

This technology is overall very cost effective, easy to use, install, maintain, integrate and deploy. It allows an interdisciplinary approach for educators and students to explore their subject.

Evaluation of effect The evaluation of teaching in class is done to standardised processes in the school. The clearest way of evaluating this tool is noticed when the involvement of students in initiating discussion is seen.

Enhanced teaching and learning process

The training of teachers in using this tool did not take much time due to the nature of this software. It is easy to use, install, deploy, integrate and upgrade.

As it is a highly intuitive tool, educators find the usage of this tool much easier and rewarding than other methods.

Once trained the educators deployed these methods in their respective classrooms and get a better response as they are now able to retain the attention of students, through logical visual communication.

Students’ Feedback: The E beam teaching method used in class is a fun way to learn as an additional help. It facilitate deeper and relevant stories and anecdotes related to the subjects. It helps students understand concepts faster and put subjects in perspective. Students are also able to keep up with international standards of learning.

Teachers’ Feedback: This teaching module has allowed to unburden the greater load of research required for each subject. As it allows educators to access resources from other schools.

It help teacher to stay updated with the general teaching trend, and allows a more homogenous growth. It helps teachers retain attention of the students for a considerably longer period of time.

digitalLEARNING / april 2012

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Cover Story

digital CLASSROOM

ICT Encourages Out of Box Thinking Shalomhills International School, Gurgaon

Dr Lilly George

Managing Director Name: Dr Lilly George Website: www.shalomhills.com Number of Students: 2000 plus Number of faculty and staff: 200 plus ICT in the classroom The school is using interactive whiteboards, projectors, and virtual labs in all the classrooms. The school is using solutions from Edurite and ThinkLab.

Objective of deployment We believe in excellence in education through constant evolution and continuous innovations in the teaching-learning process. World is changing and evolving fast; the revo-

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lutionary changes in ICT sector in the 21st century have been unprecedented.

We at Shalom Hills believe in keeping pace with the needs of modern society and its changing face. The main aim of deploying ICT is to empower children and teachers to match up to the demands of modern society. Through technology supported classrooms, young scholars are introduced to a realm of opportunities wherein they can explore and study. We believe in

moving from traditional chalk and talk methods to breakthrough methods, which will give the winning edge to both our children and teachers.

Further it saves time as technology aided classrooms give quick solutions, simulated lectures, question banks on variety of topics. All our children and teachers are tech-savvy and comfortable in meeting the challenges of outside world. Through latest technology tools and gadgets, children can create

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different robots and study important concepts of Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

Benefits of these deployments Implementation has led to pronounced and heightened academic standards and has brought about 15-20 percent enhancement in the performance of students.

Weak and remedial students have also been benefitted from the implementation.

Teaching process and methodologies have become multi-sensory and more effective, leading to high academic standards in every grade.

Evaluation of effect Periodic evaluation of effect is done through class tests, bridge course, refresher courses, assessments, live projects, experiments, etc. Through feedback from students, parents and teachers we come to know how these ICT tools are helping in the teachinglearning process. Whenever possible, we also conduct refreshment course to empower teachers with technical know how and equip them with confidence to use ICT tools effectively. One such refresher training programme was organised with ThinkLabs on 2nd of March 2013. Further the children have applied all the knowledge gained through use of ICT tools in designing website of international level.

Students’ feedback: Greater involvement and participation in the learning process have been noticed. We have seen better focus and almost zero distractions; independent learning; multi-sensory, and visually appealing lessons/content. It also encouraged development of ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking and free and critical thinking.

Teachers’ feedback: Regular teacher enrichment seminars and workshops are conducted to train them in using all the latest tools of technology.

Linguistics/language sessions improve their communicative competencies.

Impact of Technology on Teaching and Learning  Higher quality lessons prepared through greater collaboration between teachers in planning and preparing resources

 Tailor made teaching, customised to students’ varied learning specifications and individual differences

 Improved technology enabled tracking of students’ performance, participation and progress

 Upswing in reading skills, group work and better comprehension of content

 Development of writing skills, improvement in the matrix of spelling, grammar as well as fluency in English

 Development of proactive, independent and active learning  Building of HOTS – Higher Order Thinking Skills  Increase in students’ levels of motivation, sense of self-confidence and self-sufficiency

 Student centric and more stimulating learning teaching process  In Computer Lab, the students learn to use the latest tools of technology and newest software programmes

 Erratic pronunciation is rectified and communicative competencies improved in the school’s Language Lab, which has special module wherein students can listen to an expert voice and record their own voice.

 In-depth learning of concepts in STEM ( Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in Robotics Lab

 Collaborative and broad based learning as students/teachers get opportunities to collaborate on assignments with people outside or inside school at city, national or international level

 Enhancement of technological literacy of the students; preparing them for a global careers

 Catering to Multiple intelligences of the students

Three-day exclusive training programme was organised for all the teachers by Edurite service provider.

What’s Next ICT proficiency will go to an advanced stage as children have learnt how to deploy tools like Adobe Photoshop,

Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Image Ready, Jquery. They are able to use them for their classroom work and various cyber competitions.

In the coming year(s), it will serve as a platform to springboard students to website designing competitions and international avenues.

digitalLEARNING / April 2013

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Cover COVER Story STORY

digital CLASSROOM

ICT Brings Entire World into the Classroom The Cathedral Vidya School, Lonavala

Principal: Meera Sain Website: www.cathedral-lonavala.org Number of Students: 250 Number of faculty and staff: 36

ICT in the classroom Interactive Whiteboard: We are using smartboards in most of the classrooms.

Our junior classes use the smart boards most. Students like to perform activities on these boards, as they are touch sensitive.

Interactive Projector: Projector

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Ă— Tajvir Singh, IB coordinator and Head IT department highlights the importance of ICT in the school

plays a very important role, especially in language classes. Speakers and projectors are used to enhance listening skills, which are very important in the study of any foreign language. Science teachers in the senior classes use projectors and a normal screen to simulate with realistic examples.

Laptop: All senior students and teachers are given individual laptops to use in the classroom. Students can use their laptops during free classes and prep time, which helps them to utilise their time to increase their productivity.

Smart Networking (Wi-Fi): Wi-Fi is the heart of school, as far as Internet

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digital CLASSROOM

usage is concerned. Students use the Internet for research, viewing simulations, checking the latest news and updates, updating their laptops, preparing presentations, and creating or modifying videos, etc.

Tools for teachers: We have Maths tools for Maths teachers, Vernier software for science teachers, blogs for all teachers.

The school has web portal for all students and teachers, and ManageBac, which is an online platform to manage assessment and deadlines.

The school has ICT solutions from HCL, Harcourt and Schand, Edulearn.

Objective of deploying these ICT tools We being an IB School, our main purpose is to prepare our kids to be life-long learners and ethical digital citizens. In the present era, it is not possible to achieve these goals without using technology in all aspects of teaching and learning. Technology is an important tool for students as well as teachers to integrate into their day to day learning to improve learning outcomes, both inside and outside the class room. The ICT brings the entire world into the classroom.

Wise management Implementations definitely raise the bar for academic standards. As teachers, we are able to organise and manage our time more wisely. This technological change comes naturally to today’s students and they understand and utilise it better than us. So, if this awareness and willingness to use technology point students in the right direction, it will improve the performance of each child, no matter whether the child is weak or intelligent.

Evaluation of effect The evaluation of the use of ICT tools like smart boards, online content and e-learning shows thta it helps students to the great extent and saves a lot of time. Subject wise evaluation has also been done;

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which shows different results according to the needs of individual subjects. Feedback, and surveys have enabled us to gauge the success of ICT in education.

Enhancing teachinglearning process Collaborative learning creates an environment in which the teacher involves students of the same class or of different class in the same topics, performing activities and thinking about the activities they are performing. Thereby, the teachers reach out to students who

should revert to the traditional classroom.

The implementation of smart classrooms also makes our school a perfect blend of traditional teaching techniques with futuristic elements.

Teachers’ feedback Change is the first word when it comes to the impact of ICT on teachers. One needs to adapt to this new change to see the benefits of ICT. Second, in the matter of classroom engagement, which is very important to meet the daily objectives of your class.

The benefits of IT tools and their integration with teaching and learning helps in managing time well for students. The use of such tools helps students with critical thinking, and to balance their studies” may otherwise not be engaged. Collaborative learning encourages active student participation in the learning process, or in small-group learning, and gives a chance to passive students to work. Involving students in group work encourages and helps more passive students to learn from the group, because some students learn better through their friends.

Teachers’ training The school organise regular training of teachers to make them familiar with new ICT tools that will help them in class and outside class. Weekly meetings are conducted by the ICT department, and feedback is taken. Most of the teachers have good experience with such tools.

The Maths, Business, and Science teachers, especially, found it very helpful.

Students’ feedback Students love to use the smart classroom. This makes class more interactive, opening a whole new dimension to the entire class at once. However, if it takes 20 minutes of a 40-minute class for a teacher to start the board, there is a colossal waste of time, showing that we

We use IT in English class by having the students look up for public domain poetry and secondary sources, on the Internet, during class, for discussion.

The smartboards are extremely useful for studying and analysing grammar and poetry, especially when I can annotate the same on the board.

What’s next As Web3.0 is coming up, as far as the use of the Internet is concerned. I hope it will save students’ time in researching data and help teachers to find something organised on the Internet for their subjects. We expect that the innovation should be like the removal of school bags totally from school and the use of tablets in their place.

Cloud storage: It is going to be used soon by schools to keep data safe. It will help reduce global warming also. Every school should go for cloud storage for students. If we are planning for students space, we should use cloud storage.

Tablet: School bags should be removed and tablets should be given to students. It is time to be practical and learn. All books should be given in the form of e-books.

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Cover Story

digital CLASSROOM

New Generation

Classrooms Holy Heart Presidency School, Amritsar

Principal: Vikram Seth Website: www.holyheartschools.org Number of Students: 5000 Approx Number of faculty and staff: 300 Approx

H

oly Heart Presidency School, Amritsar, set-up in the year 2000, has all the facilities to raise the students according to the international standards.

Holy Heart Presidency is one of the few ICSE schools remarked as the best by the ICSE inspection team.

The school has deployed interactive classroom solution for providing better understanding of subjects, which provided better results and understanding of abstract topics. The school has deployed Educomp’s interactive classroom solutions.

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Implementation and evaluation The implementation of ICT solutions resulted in greater efficiency throughout the school. Teaching process has become more focused and tailored to students’ strengths and weaknesses. Students have also gained in understanding and analytical skills. Regular use of ICT across different curriculum subjects has resulted in better planning of every topic.

Evaluation of effect is monitored by assessing regular outcomes of students’ performance. It is observed that abstract topics, if taught using

ICT solutions, are understood better.

Improvement in teachinglearning process It has drastically changed teachinglearning process. Teachers have greater flexibility in carrying out their tasks.

Lesson planning has become easier as well as ‘designer’ depending upon teacher’s level of interest. Teachinglearning process has become more legible, more detailed and better presented.

Successful implementation Successful implementation of ICT tools

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digital CLASSROOM

“With the introduction of smart classroom we are able to make children visualise various topics which they earlier had to imagine only.

They are able to understand various concepts.

They are clearer about logics also and their feedback is also improved,” Ritu Nayyar, Geography Department. specifically depends upon willingness of school’s faculty and administration.

I have personally noticed that many teachers are still not willing to use ICT tools and prefer primitive methods of teaching. In our school regular screening is done and reports are generated to see that how much ICT tools have been used in teaching.

Vikram Seth

What’s next There is no end to innovation and expecting something from technology is pointless as technology has no limit and it will always surpass your expectations. The need of maintaining a balance between traditional method of teaching and use of technology will always be there.

Students’ Feedback: “The ICT tools have helped the students

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to comprehended their all the topics practically and by listening to it they are able to retain it more than its books. It has helped especially in understanding diagrams and various 3D structures of chemistry and physics. It also makes are pronunciation correct,” says Ketika Bhardwaj of Class XII “The ICT tools have helped us to gain knowledge both practically and theoretically. The concepts in chemistry and physics which we are not able to understand by simply listening to teachers are easily understood by us by seeing the pictures and videos related to them. Moreover by seeing the concepts we are able to retain them for longer time,” Jasmine Kaur, Class XII. “The ICT tools have helped students a lot in every subject in chemistry; it is useful in wording and 3D structures.

In physics it helps to think practically about machines and time saving,” ManreetKaur, Class XII.

Teachers’ feedback “The introduction of smart classes has brought clarity in the concepts being taught. The children enjoy and learn the topics. The teaching learning process has become more effective with the use of this technique,” Sonia, Incharge of Primary Wing.

“With the introduction of smart classroom, topics have become interesting and easy. It helps in saving time with its help topics have become easy.

Now students take more active participation in discussion,” says Varun, Maths Department.

Updates on ICT in Education The second phase of ICT@ schools project begins in Bihar The second phase of ICT@ schools project has been launched under the Bihar State Educational Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd (BSEIDC), which has awarded contracts to ILFS and Compucom (in two zones each), besides Pearson and Core Education in one zone each on BOT (built, operate and transfer) mode.

Assam to add 500 more smart classrooms in 2013 Assam State and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) will cover 500 more schools with computer and Internet this year in a bid to introduce a more interesting environment. SSA has already set up the infrastructure of smart classrooms in 2,000 out of 5,300 schools in the state.

CBSE launches official CBSE Channel on YouTube The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has become the first among in country to launch an official channel on YouTube, being called CBSE Channel.

The channel will feature videos posted by affiliated schools with the aim of giving them a wider audience and better branding opportunity.

21 schools in Odisha to get smart classrooms Odisha’s ST and SC development department will set up smart classrooms in all 21 of its schools across the state. According to the proposal, two classrooms in each school will be converted into smart classrooms.

The move will benefit more than 5,400 students in the 13 Ekalavya model residential schools besides another 2,400 higher secondary science students.

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K-12 Speak Cover Story

digital CLASSROOM

Beyond Bookish

Knowledge

Gyan Ganga International School, Jabalpur

Principal: Dr Rajesh Kumar Chandel Website: www.gyanganga.ac.in Number of Students: 800 Number of faculty and staff: 100

G

yan Ganga International School is using TeachNext Education and HCL solutions to make their classrooms

smarter.

Interactive Whiteboard: In the field of education a drastic change has occurred with the introduction of new technology in the form of Interactive Whiteboard, which has revolutionised the educational system in schools. Teaching methods are modified and teachers are delighted about the opportunities to enhance and evolve their lesson plans. The boards are working as an effective tool for teachers to preplan the lesson and makes it more exciting for the students. The impact on students’ behavior is also noteworthy and a vigorous change has been observed

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by teachers. The introduction of this technology has indeed helped to a great extent in reducing the stress in the work environment.

Interactive Projector: Interactive projectors make any surface in your classroom interactive, allow teachers to interact with their projected lesson plan practically anywhere in the classroom. By using a special interactive pen, they can draw point and click by touching the screen directly or away from the screen. This flexibility also allows teachers to interact with the entire screen no matter how large because the pen interacts from a distance or by touching the screen. Teacher’s height and reach are no longer barriers to the interactive workspace. Instead, we are having incredible flexibility and total control of the classroom. Interactive

projectors are the only solutions that allow interacting on-screen or from a distance.

Virtual Labs: The research at the school level has become more interactive with the introduction of new stream Virtual Labs, which has changed the concepts of experimentation for teachers as well as students.

Virtual labs help the student’s to cater their perception in four directions. It also supports in providing remote-access to labs in various disciplines of Science and Engineering. It encourages students to conduct various researches and experiments that would help them in learning basic and advanced concepts through remote experimentation. To provide a complete Learning Management System around the Virtual Labs where the students can avail the various tools for learning, including additional web-resources, videolectures, animated demonstrations and self evaluation. To share costly equipment and resources, which are otherwise available to limited number of users due to constraints of time and geographical distance.

education.eletsonline.com

Objective of deploying ICT

Rising academic standards

School acts as a building block for students to develop them as upright visionaries of tomorrow. Gyan Ganga International School is computerised digital school. The school is no longer a place for obtaining bookish knowledge; it has to focus on the wider-end.

Developing a child into a complete human being cannot be done only with teaching but it has to be done with interactive teaching, so that a lot can

With the implementation of ICT tools in school the academic standards has been raised, the classes have become more attentive, interactive and informative. With this up bringing there is a vast change in students, not only in studies but also in their personality. The communication skills of the students have grown and developed with the technology and a lot more has been inculcated into the student’s life with the change

Bring online virtual smart classes for science and maths so that students can not only learn in school but also can have practice session at their own places be picked up by a child consciously or subconsciously. This makes digital literacy accessible at the grassroot level, making students smarter and better equipped to face the challenges of tomorrow. The main objective behind deploying ICT tools in school is to meet up with the goal to train students who will be professionals in Information and Communication Technology in future to change the socio-economic state to tie with globalisation.

Benefits of these deployments In the ever changing world, upgradation is an important ingredient to achieve success. Innovation and development is an important aspect at GGIS. As the educational transformation is taking place and delivering-mechanism in education. ICT has made the classes more innovative and interactive. This has enabled information and knowledge to travel faster and further, sharing on a large scale, available justin-time information and knowledge for learning. The students have become bilateral, efficacious and compassionate towards learning process being followed in school.

in technology. We have seen change in school environment, developing synergy between a teacher and students, raising the understanding level of studies and overall personality development in students. So implementation is required in higher standard too.

Evaluation of effects Evaluation has been done on the overall enhancement of the personality of a child. The student is actively making choices about how to generate, obtain, manipulate, or display information.

When students are using technology as a tool or a support for communicating with others, they are in an active role rather than the passive role of recipient of information transmitted by a teacher, textbook, or broadcast. The understanding of the subject and the concept they were learning, results in the experiments and the representation of models and many other aspects, which are helpful for evaluation but cannot be elucidated.

Experience with ICT tools Working with updated technology always lead to new learning with new outcomes which help teachers and students to make it possible to retain the learning’s for longer period of time.

Students’ feedback: Students were really excited about the smart classes and were filled with rejoice and rejuvenate their energy to have healthy interaction in the classroom more with new technology and advancement. The ICT tools were a great change they had in their education and learning with better understanding and retention of the concept consciously or sub consciously in their mind.

Teachers’ feedback: The use of old-fashioned chalkboards is being replaced by tech-infused lessons that get through to the new generation of students. As a teacher, it is very challenging to capture the attention of students who are increasingly distracted by cell phones, laptops and other devices of our modern age. Truthfully, engaging students in the learning process has become a challenge. Interactive whiteboards make the teacher’s job easier and more creative. They can now make the students pay attention in class and store, retrieve lessons quickly, connect to the Internet and bring the outside world into the classroom. The smart board is a touch sensitive screen connected to a computer. Using the interactive whiteboard, it becomes easy for us to create lessons or access thousands of pre-made lessons, write or draw on it, move images around, show video, do a PowerPoint presentation or surf the Internet. In many ways, this technology brings fun back into learning.

Expectations Our expectations from ICT are to bring something innovative that should not restrict itself to the boards but have a chance to elaborate with the requirements. Other new tools such as 3D virtual labs, language labs, phonetics labs, science labs, and evaluation tools, proper testing systems, which will help the education system to evaluate a child properly and to bring online virtual smart classes for science and math so that students can not only learn in school but also can have practice sessions at their own places.

digitalLEARNING / April 2013

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Cover Story

digital CLASSROOM

Interactive, Absorbing and Engrossing Classrooms Sanskar School, Jaipur Teachers’ training The teachers have undergone into various training sessions and are empowered to make the best use of technology. As a teacher it is surely considered an asset as it instantly helps a teacher to motivate the class by showing related modules, and creating their personalised modules as per the need of the class group.

Students’ feedback Director: Rhea Thahryamal Principal: Rama Datt Website: www.sanskarjaipur.com Number of students in the school: 2100 Approx Number of faculty and staff: 103

S

According to students, animations make concepts clear, machines/equipments are very well understood, grammar explained with practical examples, learning and drawing graphs is a fun. Clear diagrams and accurate labeling enhance the learning experience.

Teachers’ feedback Teachers find these tools excellent as they catch the students’ attention and makes learning interesting. However, it can be made better with more exercises and worksheets and can be changed and used as per the children’s needs.

anskar School, a Senior Secondary School set up in April 2002, is the parent body ofSri Sai Shiksha Sanstha. It has a deep commitment to the cause of education.

With the aim to help the students understand various topics with an impact on the child’s long term memory, the school has deployed interactive classroom solutions from TeachNext. These tools are helping in making the classroom study more interactive, absorbing, and engrossing.

visual impact is much stronger than only audio. Learning supported with technology offers benefits to children for long run.

Raising academic standards

Enhanced teachinglearning process

Expectations

A combination of teacher’s explanation along with watching the modules makes the teaching-learning process not only informal, but also informative and interactive.

We expect more coverage of grammar portion, more worksheets, exercises, and objective test, etc. Modules for subjects like Hindi, computer, French and Sanskrit should also be included.

The use of ICT based solutions in classrooms are creating a long lasting effect on the minds of the students as audio-

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Evaluation of effect The result is clearly evident in the child’s performance. Working on short questions, worksheets, summarisations in verbal and written manner, shows good retention of the topic.

Factors for successful implementation •

• • •

Modules - well explained, artistically well defined and diagrams and animations created great interest Sound effect does not let boredom enter Helps in better visualisation of topics Great memory tool

Cover Story

digital CLASSROOM

Bid Adieu to Chalk and Talk System The Millennium Schools

Principal: Rita Kaul Website: www.themillenniumschools.com

T

he Millennium School Noida blends the technology of the west and the values of the east. Bidding adieu to the chalk and talk system and welcoming the new trends in the teaching-learning process, it has made learning interesting, innovative and involving too.

ICT in the school All the Millennium schools across India have compulsory integration of technology. The effective communication process brought in by this integration has benefited teachers and students equally. The dynamic lesson plans have made the pupils responsible for their learning and at the same time it has resulted into independent progress and development of each and every student.

There is a need to equip children to face the challenges and emerge as winners in every sphere. The most effective tool is the innovative teaching pedagogy that involves the usage of technology in the classrooms and making it accessible to the students in the most effective way.

The interactive smartboards are the

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USP of our Millennium Learning System and these have made the teaching learning process extremely effective in clearing difficult and abstract concepts.

The smartclass modules are so interesting and it caters to total involvement of the learners. The students are actively involved in the classroom activities that take into consideration their learning styles as well as their overall development. Superficial learning rarely happens in a classroom where the entire process involves interaction.

Project based learning The Class Mate Personal Computers (CPMC) that are used by the students of class III upwards enable the learners to connect to the world and their peer group globally so that they can expand their learning beyond the classroom and class boards. International projects are taken up by the students and through this, innovative and creative thoughts are shared with their peer group globally.

Project based learning paves the way for the students to be tech savvy and

move along effortlessly in the evolving world of education.

Addressing different needs We also believe that technology can play an important role in creating an effective and adaptable learning environment for teaching pupils with special educational needs and creating inclusive class rooms. In the school, inclusion of IT has stimulated much interest amongst differently-abled children and they have shown remarkable improvement in getting their concepts cleared at various mental ages and stages.

Smartclass is also used as an ICT tool to reach out to the differentlyabled learners by making learning effective and interesting. The autistic and dyslexic children who resist pen and paper generally love to work with their CMPCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and children with attention deficit syndrome pay attention in a Smart Class.

It has been our belief that the students have a positive attitude towards learning new concepts and their learning potential increases day by day.

Quick Chat industry speak

digital classroom

Q& Cybernetyx Aspires to Become A

the Market Leader by 2015

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Interactive whitebaord of tomorrow would be an integrated product, which will play multiple roles by utilising the power of its software,â&#x20AC;? says Ramya Chatterjee, Director (Sales and Marketing), Cybernetyx Please share new innovations in Interactive classroom technologies for education.

The next generation interactive whiteboard is evolving beyond the traditional roles of a pen-shaped click-mouse. Today it is acting as a content gateway, a document camera, an evaluation system, a student response system and even as a host PC in the classroom.

Educational institutes have always valued optimising their investments. They are now waking up to the fact that spending money at all these devices separately and then struggling to make them work in unison does not work out so well in the end. The interactive whiteboard of tomorrow would be a single product, which will play all these roles in itself utilising the power of its powerful software, with no incremental purchases to be made by the client,

thus exponentially increasing the client satisfaction.

Interactive projectors are now gaining momentum in the segment. How do you see the future of Interactive Whiteboards?

Interactive projector is a wonderful concept. There were known drawbacks associated with physical IWB solutions (costs, logistics, maintenance, vulnerability, size and aspect-ratio limitations, etc), and also the portable ultrasoundbased devices (low performance, limited software, calibration issues, etc), and interactive projector concept came as a respite to all that.

However, current state of interactive projector solution lacks the strength of a robust, usable product. They are being served like a half-baked solution to the innocent customers.The reason is that the companies launching these solutions in the market are mostly projector companies with little or no exposure to IWB segment.

We believe that the market will rather evolve into a third category, which will be a central system/device which can collate with any projector or display and act as a host of devices as mentioned above. Cybernetyx has developed its latest generation EyeRIS and Uniboard devices fundamentally on this principle, and thus is getting the tremendous applause from the market.

What suggestions you would like to give to educators to enable them utilise full potential of boards?

The primary reason for this is that though we are in an era of smartphones

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education.eletsonline.com

and tablets with user-friendly apps and amazing user interfaces, interactive whiteboard software still keeps looking like this dated age-old software with drop-down menus and complicated functionality. Keeping this in mind, Cybernetyx has developed its EyeRIS IntelliSpace software suite essentially with an app-like interface, with the minimum learning curve for even a new user. For schools having existing old boards, one solution could be to upgrade the software to a new-age software like IntelliSpace, which will arouse the interest again from the teachers in using these solutions.

Also, Cybernetyx gives enough emphasis and makes a lot of investments on teacher training programmes in association with the schools / partners / ESPs. Cybernetyx also has teacher certification programme where our trainers do a hands-on training, review and certify the teachers upon successful completion of the training programme. We have started this initiative being a responsible IWB brand and received excellent feedback from the schools.

How do you support the integration of tablets with the existing resources?

We believe tablets would evolve more as a learning device than a teaching device. While it is wonderful as a multimedia replacement for the notebooks and a second screen for students, it is extremely difficult to do mainstream teaching and writing on a small 7-10 inches tablet for teachers. IWB will remain indispensable for a classroom.

Furthermore, the need of the hour is an IWB system, which can connect to all the student learning tablets, share data and facilitate two-way collaboration.

Cybernetyx EyeRIS Pro is one of the first solutions in the world to achieve this functionality. We are about the launch the products commercially in India soon.

Please share your plan for the Indian market?

Our Flagship product EyeRIS (Eye-like

Rapid Imaging System) is now accepted widely as standard in the interactive whiteboard solutions space for both K-12 and higher education. Currently, more than 12000 and 1100 schools/

higher secondary education institutions are powered by Cybernetyx products in India. In India we work closely with all major Education Service Providers (ESP) and education vertical

India would also be the epicenter of other ASEAN markets as well and currently, we have already started catering this market from our India operations Points to be considered while selecting interactive whiteboard solution: ROI: While buying an Interactive Whiteboard solution, one should consider the return on the purchase.

Ask yourself questions like, would I need to buy a document camera/ response system/evaluation system later separately? Is it retro fittable on existing whiteboards? Is it an integrated All-in-one solution?

Feature strength and user-friendliness of the software: The interactive software is the key for choosing any IWB solution. See if the software has highly useful features like writing performance, speed and smoothness, gesture recognition and multi-touch, cloud content access high-compression recording feature, compatibility with student response and evaluation systems and a relevant resource library.

Maintenance: In a high variance environment of Indian classrooms, deploying a membrane-based physical IWB solution may result in frequent downtimes, and high maintenance costs. Ask whether the board surface is electronics-free and robust? Is there a sensitive component like a reflective tape or an IR LED strip in the frame of the board which may be damaged? Do the pens have a battery which would need to be replaced?

Service support infrastructure: Is the OEM directly present in India? Do they have pan-India service locations?

Do they provide onsite warranty?

focused channel partners. In India Cybernetyx has focused on providing its clients with industry-leading and costeffective ICT equipment and software solutions. We are in the process to grow our Indian operation exponentially. We have Pan-India presence in 300+ cities with 50+ billing locations through our national distributor(s) as well as channel partners and 260+ city presence for after sales service/ support / implementation infrastructure through our ASPs. Cybernetyx is customer-centric organisation; regular product updates and new product developments based on customer feedback are our strength and focus area. We have dedicated service help desk and customer care at Noida to enable our partners / customers for technical support, troubleshooting and enablement. We are currently expanding our team in Software Development, Operations, Sales, QA/QC and Implementation. We are in the process to take additional new offices in Noida and Bangalore to support our growing business in India.

Going forward, India would also be the epicenter of other ASEAN markets as well and currently, we have already started catering this market from our Indian operations. In a relatively short duration, our total deployments even outnumber the most established companies in this space and that is the biggest testimony to the strength of EyeRIS solutions. This is just a beginning. We aspire to become the market leader in the IWB space by 2015.

digitalLEARNING / April 2013

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product feature

Interactive Classrooms from Hitachi

H

itachi Limited, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with a turnover of US$ 120 billion (fiscal year ended March 31st, 2012), with approximately 3,60,000 employees worldwide, and having expertise across sectors like information systems, electronic devices, power and industrial systems, consumer products, materials, logistics and financial services.

A world-leader in digital learning and presentation technology, Hitachi offers advanced interactive whiteboards, cutting-edge LCD projectors and premium LCD and LED televisions. Hitachi’s innovative interactive whiteboards are marketed under the brand-name StarBoard,

inputs making the projectors more versatile.

Interactive Boards

installed and the teachers were trained

by Hitachi Experts who came from Tokyo, Singapore. Since then Hitachi has established a strong market for itself in the Indian education segment for all its products. Many major Government purchase for ICT education has been concluded by Hitachi. Hitachi Products have been always renowned for the qual-

Hitachi Offers StarBoard FX 79E, which is commonly used for classroom size of 30-50 students. For bigger Classrooms Hitachi offers FX 89WE, a bigger board of 89 inches diagonal size, makes viewing easier. Hitachi also offers these boards with two touch that helps two people to work on the board simultaneously. Like a competition/ problem solving / brainstorming session, etc.

Interactive Panels Hitachi T17SXL and Hitachi T19WXL gives the same advantages of Interactive

Hitachi StarBoard Software Hitachi’s Starboard Software which is a powerful tool supplied along with interactive products, which enables a host of user benefits like Ü Easy and Intuitive: Software tools are readily accessible through multiple menu options Ü Conference Feature: Collaborate and conference with Ü Multi-touch Gestures: Use your fist to scroll, two finÜ External Applications: Create toolbar shortcuts to

notes into text with the text pen on the board at the same time Ü Customizable interface

popular software applications Ü Google image integration: Drag and drop images in-

April 2013 / digitalLEARNING

gines directly into the software

Ü Simultaneous users: Up to two users can collaborate

gers to erase or zoom in and out

32

Ü Customisable search engines: Add up to 4 search enÜ Handwriting recognition: Instantly convert freehand

colleagues around the globe

and are renowned for their durability, ease of use and advanced proprietary software. Hitachi is also a world leader in the LCD projector space, including ultra and ultimate–short Throw projector technology, which virtually eliminates shadows.

Hitachi launched its new Dual Touch Interactive StarBoard FX 79E1. With the addition of this new product, Hitachi offers a whole gamut of hardware and software solutions for Education.

Hitachi has been pioneers in this field.

Hitachi has been the first to bring Interactive Solution to the Indian schools and launched the concept of interactive learning since 1997, the StarBoard was

stantly into StarBoard software

Ü Import MS Office files, make annotations

ity and these are backed by company trained, customer oriented local support also Hitachi offers both Hardware and software (for Hardware).

White boards, but can be used in auditoriums where the screen size is large and presenters cannot reach and write.

Projectors

Hitachi WT-1 interactive tablet gives the facility of writing on the board from where ever the students are seated.

Hitachi offers tools that are relevant for all areas of education, as today the level of comprehension is varying with individual member and the level of conceptualisation differs.

The recording of the classroom event helps for students who were absent for the class or even physically present and mentally absent also.

Hitachi offers projectors under various categories like Standard Throw, Short Throw, Ultra Short throw,and Interactive Projectors. We offer a wide range of Projectors, which can be used from a standard classroom to an auditorium with Brightness ranging from 2600 Lumens to 7000 Lumens. These Hitachi Projectors can be used both in a wired and non wired environment, All Hitachi Projectors accept multiple

Integration with Tablets

industry speak

digital CLASSROOM

Optical Technology Offers

More Precise Touch Lalit Mohan, Director, iTouch Technologies Pvt Ltd talks about new interactive technologies that are making stride in education... more schools are coming forward to adopt Interactive classrooms. Now, this adoption is not limited to A class cities, but small towns are also making their schools smart.

We have a big installation base in northern India in cities like Jammu, Patna, Lucknow, Delhi, Jalandhar and are rapidly expanding into West and Southern India.

We have a plan to increase our dealer base to 100 from 20 in 2013. Our clientele includes Jaypee, S Chand Harcourt, Apeejay, Don Bosco, etc.

Plans for the Indian market

Lalit Mohan

Innovations in the classroom technologies for schools and higher education institution The latest innovation in the whiteboard technologies is Optical Sensing Touch Technology. As compared to Electromagnetic (Surface based) and Infra red (perimeter based) technologies, Optical technology offers more precise touch, with higher accuracy. This technology is easy to maintain owing to lowest number of components.

Finger touch interactive whiteboards are going to be hugely popular owing to its ease of use and reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). On the other hand interactive projectors use a stylus or pen to operate. Bagless classrooms, based on tablets and Cloud for storage, is the future. Internet is flooded with affordable and free Android based educational apps for children. Teachers

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There is a huge demand of interactive whiteboards as the focus of the

We look forward to huge volumes in the coming year because of our capability to design and customise solutions as per the customerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s need can also download their subject content for their class.

Utilisation of IWBs The Indian schools are flooded with inferior quality Chinese boards. These boards are based on stylus or pen. At times these boards do not function or the stylus/pen runs out of battery, as a result the teachers are not able to use these boards efficiently.

Level of adoption With the decreasing cost of interactive hardware as well as software content,

classrooms is shifting from books to digital content and blackboards to interactive whiteboards. Being an Indian manufacturer, we look forward to huge volumes in the coming year because of our capability to design and customise solutions as per the customerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s need.

We are also coming up with All in One Integrated Interactive Whiteboard, which has inbuilt PC, Speaker, UPS, and Short Throw Projector.

Also, one of our products Kids Touch Table is being highly appreciated and we are coming up with bigger sized touch tables soon.

iTouch Technologies Private Limited Works : A-59 , Ist Floor , Badli Extension Delhi --110042 | Tel : 9873281800 Website i-touch.co.in email itouchinteractive@gmail.com Auth Distt. New Alfa Infotec Pvt. Ltd. 205, Saraswati House, 27 Nehru Place New Delhi 110019 email: Info@alfa-infotec.com For FREE Demo / Channel Partner Enquiry +91 11 41421984 , 8130396275,76

New Delhi Office United Nations Educational, ScientiďŹ c and Cultural Organization

Cluster Office for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka

Perspective

The Price War Sub-standard products from countries like China are affecting the Indian classroom technology hardware market. Vendors with good quality hardware and software are struggling to get into the right place due to the stiff competition from them in terms of price. The organised market leaders highlight the challenges in front of the Indian classroom technology hardware companies...

Users today know that unless and until a solution helps them achieve defined learning outcomes, it is a waste of time, energy and resources to invest on such technologies. Having said that, it is important to note that any industry will have vendors may offer sub-standard products. However, ultimately only those vendors survive who are able to address a specific customer need in the most efficient way without compromising on quality.

- Adil Jahangir, GM â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Marketing India/South Asia, SMART Technologies

The philosophy of Chinese traders is to dump low-grade unusable products in India in big numbers at brutally low price. There are few channel partners trying to promote sub-standard products considering it as a shortcut of making quick money. However, from long term perspective such products may not work. For price sensitive emerging market like India acceptability of low cost products are very high. However, compromising quality for price may not be prudent decision. It may be sensible to look for a cheapest solution amongst the best available, but it is definitely not wise trying to make-do with the best amongst the cheapest and regret the purchase later.

- Ramya Chatterjee, Director (Sales and Marketing), Cybernetyx

Chinese products are available at very low cost but fails in warranty and service as per institutions requirement. Even though local partners promise service, but they are helpless at one stage. Ultimately, it is the institution that suffers loss. It is difficult for an innovator company with quality consciousness to match the prices of sub-standard product manufacturers.

- Mohammed Ghouse, Regional Sales Manager (South & Western Asia), Luidia

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education.eletsonline.com

There is no doubt about an initial attraction towards the Chinese products are due to its low cost, but often buyers had to pay a hard price considering the after sales performance and service.

In case of projectors, there is a wide gap of what product promises on paper and the actual delivery. Some of the common problems are lamp fusing and diming, colour decay, lack of on-site service support resulting in an overall increase in the total cost of ownership of the projector is often seen in Chinese products. Durability is a big concern in Chinese products since most of the products are not able to sustain spikes in electricity and dusty environment of India.

- Rajeev Singh, Country Head & GM, BenQ India

Sub Standard products from china are luring the customers owing to their very cheap pricing, but the quality is such that it does not last ever for a couple of years. Also the downtime is higher, and it loses the interest of the user which totally defies the actual purpose of using the technology.

- Lalit Mohan, Director, iTouch Technologies Pvt Ltd

Sub Standard products defeat the purpose of having the product. Service, especially software upgradation, is a key to the product performance, which gets hampered in most of these boards.

Handshaking of the content with the Board content is another major issue. In many of these boards, the software does not allow you to open / run multiple applications like using board software, you would not be able to annotate on video file / flash file. After Sales Service is also a major set-back for these Chinese products as they do not look at a long term partner.

- Tarun Jain, Country Manager, Hitachi

digitalLEARNING / April 2013

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Special Feature

Technology Changes in the Classroom

In Search of Effective, flexible Solutions

By T V Joe Layng, PhD, Director of Learning Sciences, Mimio

T

oday’s classrooms are in transition. Technology of all sorts is making its way into the classroom and offering new ways to engage learners. The transition is not smooth, nor is it following a single path. Classroom technology was once limited to presentation via VCRs, filmstrips, and slide projectors. Today we find more interactive technology that uses LCD projectors, interactive whiteboards, notebook and desktop computers, and tablets such as the iPad.

Which technology? No “right answer” There is no one “right answer” as to which technology will best engage students and improve outcomes. Teachers have a vision of what an engaged classroom looks like, and they strive to create that in their own classroom. Practices that make that vision more likely are more readily adopted, while those that don not are resisted. However, seeing our students engaged or feeling good about what we are doing may not be enough.

Some teachers may assume that more interaction is better than less, that collaboration is better than independent study, and that tackling problems and projects through discovery and inquiry improves classroom practice and produces more authentic learning. Technology purchases often follow such beliefs.

Effective, flexible products are key For the greatest return on their invest-

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T V Joe Layng

ment, schools must purchase products that support effective instructional practices and that are flexible with regards to technology usage. Essential to a successful outcome is that interactive learning activities have clear student accomplishments specified, that there is a way to measure those accomplishments, that the activity actually leads to those accomplishments, and that most, if not all, learners demonstrate the accomplishments. The goal must be to combine effective instructional practices with the changing technological landscape now open to teachers. Done well, one can inform and enhance the other. Done poorly, we may find there will not be the hoped-for return on our educational technology investment. When purchasing instructional products, schools need products that allow for maximal flexibility among and between technologies, and that actually produce real, standards-based outcomes important to teachers and students alike.

How much penetration each interactive technology has differs from school to school and from classroom to classroom, making curriculum choices even more difficult. Schools may have a computer lab, but no computers in the classroom. They may have interactive whiteboards, but no computer lab. They may have computers in the classroom, but no whiteboard. And they may have any or all or none of these, and have iPads or tablets.

Accordingly, the technologies may differ from classroom to classroom and may change over time. A school that once focused on interactive whiteboards may shift that focus to iPads. Or, we may see a shift from computer labs to notebooks used in class or at home.

It is at times a confusing and hardto-manage environment. Adding to this confusion is that none of this technology works without content. Applications are key to the effective use of technology.

Without good content, the technology is just metal, plastic, silicon, and glass.

Teachers may be asked to develop content, but with an average of fifty minutes of preparation time available per day, there is only so much that can be done.

In what, then, should schools invest—technology, content, or both?

What happens if schools invest heavily in applications for computer labs and then decide to shift to tablets? Or, what happens if a school likes the individualization afforded by computer applications, but wants the collaborative environment that can be provided by in-

A better way to learn.

Meet the new classroom. Mimio.

Better Interactive Solutions. Better Results.

Teaching is changing. Fast. Old-school techniques and tools are no longer up to the task. Today, an effective education provides students with true comprehension that they can apply to the challenges they face now and in the future.

Mimio has been a leader in educational technology for the past 18 years, providing affordable, easy-to-use, and effective solutions. Mimio technology empowers both educators and students in all forms of learning, to enable real understanding.

Whether it’s whole-group or small-group instruction, formative assessment, collaborative learning, or student-centered adaptive instruction, Mimio solutions help teachers put these strategies into action, easily and affordably.

Discover the new classroom—find your local Mimio Reseller: visit mimio.com/partner ©2013 Mimio, a Newell Rubbermaid company

Special Feature

teractive whiteboard activities? It is unlikely that an application purchased for one interactive environment will work in another, or that an application written for individualized instruction can be seamlessly integrated with a more social, collaborative classroom approach.

Schools are facing a real dilemma.

Where do they spend scarce technology and application dollars? And will any of these actually produce the learner outcomes schools are after?

What is needed during this transition are applications that can help schools reach their teaching and learning goals no matter what devices they may have, now or in the future. These should be research-based applications that either work across devices, or supply a similar outcome and work seamlessly with all their devices. Further, these applications should take advantage of the special properties of each type of interactive technology. For example, on a computer, highly adaptive, individualized learning can be provided that may not be available in a classroom.

Conversely, using an interactive whiteboard may provide important collaborative engagement that is not possible for a learner using a computer.

A model for effective use of technology for instruction Imagine a reading comprehension program that was designed to take advantage of a wide range of technology available in a classroom, including computers, interactive whiteboards, and perhaps tablets. A teacher might begin by assigning the first three lessons of the program to be completed online as homework (eg, Leon et al, 2011).

Learners could access the lessons using a notebook or iPad they have at home, or perhaps use a computer that may be located in a library or computer lab at school. The teacher could access reports that not only let her know if the work was done, but also describe the precise performance of each learner.

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The online application featuring continuous adaptation would catch and correct many of the errors made by the learner. The program would provide individualized correction based on the type of error that occurs. The teacher would know how many questions were answered correctly the first time, versus after a correction. Learners with many corrections would eventually answer correctly, but could be flagged as perhaps needing more attention. The teacher could then provide whole-classroom interactive whiteboard lessons that review and extend the material learned online.

Learners would be able to participate and verbalize the strategies they learn.

No interactive whiteboard? Teacher guides and learner response materials could be provided to help transfer and extend skills learned in the program.

The teacher may find that some of the learners do not have the basic decoding skills necessary for the lessons. A brief two-minute assessment administered to each learner might find that some need to begin in the second half of an online phonics program, while others need to begin earlier.

As the program proceeds, skills learned online become the basis of collaborative in-class activities. The activities extend beyond the multiple-choice, inquiry-based lessons provided online, and give learners the opportunity to construct open-ended answers to literal, inferential, derived vocabulary, and main idea questions. Material from a range of subjects might be included in the collaborations as the programs progress and the learners master increasingly complex reading tasks. We should see learners eagerly extend their new comprehension abilities to new areas.

Other teachers may focus on the whole-classroom lessons, and reserve online or iPad work for those learners who seem to be having trouble in class.

Yet others may rely on the online program and use the interactive classroom lessons for small-group instruction for targeted learners. And yet others may begin with the interactive whiteboard

lessons and subsequently rely more on the online lessons as a result of acquiring iPads for their classrooms. The options are many and the flexibility great. What all of these teachers want, however, is content that will help them achieve their classroom goals—no matter whattechnology is theirs to use, or how they choose to use it.

In summary, schools need to be able to take advantage of any or all instructional technology found in any combination that meets their needs. They might introduce iPads in one classroom, but have learners in other classrooms access the same lessons on a computer. If a classroom has no computers, but does have an interactive whiteboard, students should still be able to learn the same material. What’s more, teachers should be able to take advantage of each technology’s special features, such as wholegroup or small-group instruction using interactive whiteboards, individualized instruction using computers, or mobile learning using iPads.

What today’s schools require is a completely integrated solution, whether it be instruction provided by iPads or computers, accessible at school or in the home, or group interactive technology in the classroom. And all must work together to provide the best possible learning outcomes.

References Klahr, D & M Nigam (2004). The equivalence of learning paths in early science instruction: Effects of direct instruction and discovery learning. Psychological Science, 15, 661-667.

Leon, M, V Ford, H Shimizu, A Stretz, J Thompson, M Sota, JS Twyman, and TVJ. Layng (2011). Comprehension by design: Teaching young learners to comprehend what they read. Performance Improvement Journal, 50(10) 40–47.

Robbins, JK (2011). Problem solving, reasoning, and analytical thinking in a classroom environment. The Behavior Analyst Today, 12(1), 40-47.k

Industry Speak

digital classroom

3D Empowering Classrooms Rajeev Singh, Country Head and GM, BenQ India on technologies that brings innovations in the classroom There are newer innovations being discovered and embraced every day coming in projection technology. Short throw and ultra short throw projection is one of the biggest innovations overcoming the shadow and disruption that was a major drawback of traditional projectors and effective student teacher engagement.

There has been a shift of preference from SVGA resolution to XGA resolution. Another big innovation is the lamp free laser lamp offering upto 10,000 lamp hours with ultra high contrast ratio of 80K:1. Interactive and 3D technology has become solution oriented rather than product centric. It has been made affordable and easily available equally for content and end products so that educational institutions can afford to use this technology for providing a better learn-

Rajeev Singh

ing experience to their students. The 3D technology is also beneficial at all levels of education starting with elementary it goes up to the fields of medicine, engineering, architecture, etc.Interactive and 3D has empowered teachers and students with a life-like experience for learning.

With current generation technologies Interactive Projector is giving tough competition to Interactive Whiteboards, now the performance for both type of technology is matching. Interactive projectors have tremendous value over Interactive Whiteboards as with one single device you get complete solution, it makes the bulky and cost intensive Interactive Whiteboards a relic of past.

On the other hand Interactive Flat Panel (IFP) gives all the advantage of touch, large screen 65 inches and above and low maintenance and single device solution, which in turn is pressuring Interactive Flat panel from the top end.

Hence, we see that with convergence of technology Interactive Projector and Interactive Flat panel will replace the market of Interactive Whiteboards.

Ramping Tech Adoption in Classrooms

IT is a Tool to Benefit Teachers

Ganesh S, Business Development Manager, DLP Products, Texas Instrument

Abhilesh Guleria, Head, Multimedia Product group, NEC India Pvt. Ltd NEC

Penetration of multimedia has started augmenting classroom teaching a few years ago in India. In the country with more than five million classrooms, the level of adoption is very low. I am confident that appropriate technologies will get adopted in due course of time.

Classroom applications have been driving a lot of innovations in projectors. Some innovations from DLP technology-based projectors include 3D, LampFree, FilterFree, Interactivity, etc. Adopting technologies like 3D Projectors ensures that the classroom is ready for future 3D content. Technology adoption in India has been ramping up. Interactivity is getting more intuitive, with touch getting more affordable. Technology providers are constantly listening to feedback from classroom users to make the system more easy to use.

DLPâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interactive technology needs no calibration, ensuring easy set up. It can work away from the screen as well, thereby enabling the teacher to move in the classroom, but still interact with the display. In terms of content, interactive 3D stereoscopic content helps increase student engagement. DLP 3D Ready projectors with Stereoscopic content are proven to make an impact in the classroom with double digit gains in both student engagement and test scores as compared to using 2D tools alone.

From technology standpoint, we have a unique positioning in terms of legacy and domain expertise in IT, providing IT infrastructure and IT solutions, providing work centric solutions and also providing electronic display oriented solutions. It enables NEC to converge and leverage upon all these domain expertise to come out with products and delivery models that are relevant not only current scenario but also have a future potential. They are in line with the technology trends and give the best ROI and the Total Cost of Ownership benefits to the government; we can do that because we are operating in all these three spheres. Today we also need to understand the nexus of all the converged forces that is being coming up.

IT is a leveraging tool, so with the help of ICT in education the benefits to the teachers and students have increased.

In the education and training scenario, NEC looks at education as a complete vertical, which comprises of K-12, higher education, engineering and research institutes, management and higher technology institution and the entire gamut.

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digital classroom industry speak

One-size-fit-all Programme Cannot Succeed in Teachers Training New innovations The category of Interactive Displays for education space has seen several rapid changes in recent times. New technologies and formats are being rolled out. We have recently introduced another fully-integrated, touch enabled interactive projector called LightRaise 60Wi and pen based interactive projector. Interactive Flat Panels (IFPs) are also finding their place in the global markets. In India, Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) continues to transform the classrooms.

One of the most interesting global studies conducted by Filigree consulting commissioned by SMART reveals that personal devices add more value when used with Interactive Whiteboards than standalone.

Teachers’ capacity building Any change in technology is bound to

Chandan Sonowal, Managing Director, SMART Technologies emphasises on building teachers’ capacity on new interactive technologies… create a situation where users need to upgrade their skills. Teachers are used to of Chalk and Talk method of teach-

ing for a long period of time in their careers. With the adoption of Interactive Whiteboards, the need for upgrading the skills of teachers becomes an absolute must. It will be worthwhile to mention that a one-size-fit-all training programme cannot succeed in itself. Each user has a different level of comfort in using technology. Hence, a proper training and professional development programme is required.

Skills of the teachers have to be upgraded steadily over a period of time.

Having realised this, we at SMART India launched a programme called SMART Professional Development Programme for Teachers – India. Under this programme we have already reached out close to 1,000 teachers in nine cities and enrolled them into the progamme. The aim is to reach to atleast 5,000 teachers across India and upgrade their skills.

Hassle-free Classroom New innovations Luidia Inc has launched a new Wireless Plug n Play eBeam Edge Wireless, which allows to place a computer up to 50 meters from an interactive space. There are no USB cords to run or hide along the wall. Just plug in the eBeam power adapter to a nearby wall socket and connect the wireless adapter to an available USB port on PC.

Teachers training We offer direct training through online webinars for our users. We also conduct separate training for education and business users. Apart from these, there are online tutorials and videos available for them. School Management can also take steps to encourage the faculties such as conducting tests and offering rewards, etc.

Mohammed Ghouse, Regional Sales Manager (South & Western Asia), Luidia

Integration of tablets Tablets are becoming an integral part of interactive classrooms. We have found a way to integrate the tablets (iPad, iPhone or Android) with a powerful tool for classroom collaboration through our portal.

digitalLEARNING / april 2012

45

K-12 speak

Q& A

Redefining the Education System

We are in a world that needs education to be changed so that it responds in a way that provides what the world needs, opines Mark Parkinson, Executive Director and Head of School, Kunskapsskolan Eduventures, Gurgaon

Please tell us about the inception of Kunskapsskolan Schools.

The first Kunskapsskolan School was opened in Sweden in the year 2000. The concept was developed around the year 1998. In the span of about 12 years, we have graduated to about 37 schools in Sweden, three schools in the UK (on public-private partnership with the UK Government), and one in New York that was opened last year. We have seena a rapid growth. We have now opened the first one in India and will open more institutions.

Shri Ram Schools has about 4,300 students. The organisation is strong and disciplined in its set-ups, so it will continue to grow.

According to you, what challenges confront the education systems?

One of the challenges is the more success you have, the more hard real dynamic innovation gets. You can only do incremental innovation, but there is a

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need to go further, not just in India, but everywhere.

We are in a world that needs education to change so that it provides what the world needs. There are purists who say that education should have higher purposes like pure learning and learning for learningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sake. But we have to be realistic. We are in a country, which is at a critical development stage, which is either a massive resource or massive threat for tomorrow depending on how it is developed. We are in a situation where people are willing to do whatever it takes to get a better life for themselves and for their children.

Today, even in the most established schools, we do not get learning for

figures are even worse than that. Our education system does not have money and assets to waste. It has the responsibility to meet the aspirational needs of parents and their children. We will all be looking at a very good tomorrow if the education system gets it right. But if it gets it wrong, we could be looking at a very horrible tomorrow that is far worse than today. In worst scenarios, it has industrial, economic, social and political implications.

How is the Kunskapsskolan model different?

The Kunskapsskolan model breaks away from the industrialised one size fits all approach. Our students will not have textbooks. There will be a cloud-based learn-

Today, even in the most established schools, we only get factory-processed bodies of knowledge with little relevance to careers and life learningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sake. We only get factoryprocessed bodies of knowledge with little relevance to careers and life.

What, in your opinion, is the need of the hour for the education system?

Back in the year 2000, when we started to come out of the economic debt, people from different industries said that within three months after the debt, their speed of growth was restrained because they could not find talent. We have heard stories about only 25 percent of the engineering graduates being employable, but the

ing hub, and a separate curriculum team looking after the quality of material in the hub. For the 30 or more hours a teacher spends in the school per week, she may spend only 50 percent of the time faceto-face with the students. For the rest of the time, she is involved in other things.

In our model, the teacher does not need to do that. Instead, she can feed her creative ideas into the pool and the people in-charge of the curriculum will use them to refine the curriculum. In this way, the teachers can spend about 50 percent more of their time with the children.

QUICK CHAT education.eletsonline.com

Q& A

Version 3.3.0

of Pearson

British publishing and education company, Pearson, has completed its acquisition of TutorVista and acquired the remaining 20 percent equity in the Bangalore based online education services company. In 2011, Pearson acquired a majority stake in the then five-yearold TutorVista for Rs 577 crore, valuing it at around Rs 1,000 crore.

Srikanth B Iyer, the Chief Cperating Officer of Pearson Education Services has been named as the new CEO of TutorVista. He started his career with Wipro in 1993 but left soon enough to chase his entrepreneurial instincts. Iyer had co-founded Edurite, an education services company in 2000, which was later acquired

by TutorVista in 2007.In a quick chat with Dr Ravi Gupta, Iyer sheds light on his new role…

How do you see yourself evolving from Edurite to Pearson and now TutorVista?

Pearson is into its third phase and version 3.3.0. Co-founding Edurite was the first phase and I call it version 1.0. Then we acquired TutorVista in 2007. After these acquisitions, we saw rapid growth in five-six years and that was the second phase, version 2.0. Now we are Pearson’s 100 percent owned entity, which is our third phase, version 3.0, where we have to recommit overselves to Pearson’s larger goals and objective and align our business interest to them.

Please shed light on product portfolio of TutorVista and how it has evolved in the last five-six years in India?

Currently, there are two large baskets of products and services. One of them is direct delivery basket in which we offer direct delivery of educational services and directly touch the end-users. We have Tutorvista.com, an online one- to- one tutoring model,in which we have around 20,000 registered users as of today. Then we have the Pearson Schools business in which have engaged more than 35 schools and 25,000 children across India. We also have our Pearson Learning Centre business, where we offer test preparation training for IIT, CET, etc. We have 70 of these learning centres in Karnataka and Kerala touching around 20,000 students year on year. That is our direct delivery basket.

The other basket is called Pearson Inside, which is the menu of services offered to other schools both government and private. Currently, we have Textbooks, Digiclass which is an interactive classroom solution, Tablet based product MX touch, etc, under this basket. My current focus is on growing these two arSrikanth B Iyer eas of the business.

digitalLEARNING / April 2013

47

Industry Speak

Q& DAX Aims to make A

Students Job-ready

Dax Network, networking and surveillance company, has launched a programme for network engineers aimed at enhancing the skills of young employed engineers and to make the final year students job-ready. Sudha Jagadish, CEO, DAX Networks tells about the plans to address skilled manpower crunch for the networking industry by having tie ups with various educational institutions. In conversation with Pragya Gupta, ENN

Please share the genesis of DAX Network?

Being in the networking industry for more than 25 years and in the networking space, we trust that we have enough knowledge and expertise ranging over many years now. Our contribution to the industry is specialised in the networking space.

Do you think there is enough skilled workforce available in your industry?

Yes, there is not much skilled workforce available these days. There is a huge demand for skilled workforce. We find more of this with the system integrators where actually work has to be done, we find that knowledge is missing. There are vacancies all over but they are not able to find the right candidate. We do have jobs, but it is difficult to find the right people. We are doing this in two phases. For the last two years now, we have gone into IT surveillance, which works traditionally on security but is now going into other areas also like marketing. Its scope is widening now. With thefts and other tragedies happening every day, the demand for IT surveillance across the industry has risen rapidly. We are primarily into education of networking and IT surveillance to the industry partners and also to the educational institutions. We feel that a practical knowledge imparted to the students will help them to be placed better versus some other candidate.

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about the subject. Though on the technical front, we would prefer to have a person who is already educated and trained.

Sudha Jagadish Our education module is not purely theoritical; it gives a lot of insight on realistic case studies that we have handled, and what was your need and what the customer or anyone else would look for. It provides the entire insight for a person to design a solution and also gets a hands-on experience on technical details. It makes the candidate a fulfilled person, gives an insight into the kinds of needs existing in the industry.

What kind of skills do you look for in an engineering student while hiring?

When we hire a fresher, we only look for an attitude to learn and basic knowledge

Please share your tie ups with educational institutions.

There is two-fold strategy that we are taking in education: one is through the system integration community. The system integrators have network engineers or installers. We offer courses to them. We also have tie ups with engineering colleges and they sponsor their students to attend this course. The primary objective for colleges doing this is that they feel their candidate will be positioned better.

We are actively looking for more tie ups. We also have approached Educomp and trying to have a tie-up with them in imparting education. Right now, our tieup with them is only for the hardware solutions that we provide. However, we look forward to more tie ups.

Please share your plans for the education vertical?

Education is one of our primary verticals. The business comes from the government projects and tenders. All the institutions including government schools and colleges are part of the tender.

We provide our hardware solutions to schools and we have more than a lakh schools networked through our products. We have just launched the education line by itself and will be taking it forward actively.

academia xxxxxx speak

Q& A

A Research

Oriented Institute Prof S Sadagopan provides a succinct overview of the educational, research and social activities that the IIIT, Bangalore is involved in. In conversation with Aparajita Gupta

Please provide us with an overview of the courses that are being offered at the IIIT. What are the ways by which the institute ensures that the courses that are being taught are in line with the needs of the industry?

We are primarily a post graduate institution. We offer two-year M Tech, MS by research, which is two to three years and PhD programmes, which are between three to seven years. In addition to this, we teach IM Tech, which is for student who have passed XII Standard. We ensure that what we teach to our students is relevant to the industry. It is done more by our colleagues who have worked in the industry. Many of them have one to ten years of experience in the industry.

As we are a post graduate institution we aim to make our students ready to take on the industry not only in near future, but for the next several years to come.

They should be able to sustain the industrial needs. We are not a finishing school, we only expect to make them tech-ready for the next several years.

The IIIT is also involved in doing research work. Prof GNS Prasanna has been granted a US Patent. Please throw light on this.

Prof Prasanna was a product of MIT and he also received gold medal at IIT Kanpur.

Everyone knows chess. Normally people say chess is an intelligent manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s game.

What Prasanna has done, suppose one has reached the tail end of the game, where one is doing check mate, now from that point can you take back all its coins

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Prof S Sadagopan

back to the original position? That is inverse chess, that is, you start at the last position and then use normal rules of the games to get back to the starting position.

Obviously, it is more demanding than playing chess in the normal way. It has multiple uses, one is it has novice value.

The second thing is playing inverse chess will enhance the mental ability of people.

If chess is a treadmill, inverse chess is a super-treadmill!

Tell us about the other research that is being done at IIIT. A team of student researchers led by one of our professors, Prof Debabrata Das, have made key contributions to next generation wireless standards. We all use the

education.eletsonline.com

phones, and as we make the phones compatible with more features, one of the problems is the battery life. Now the question is, how do we get the same service, with much smaller amount of battery usage? They have found out ways by which at least five percent energy can be saved and battery life can be increased. And if we can do it for billion of handsets, it will make a huge difference. I would also like to point out that we have put up three 15 kilowatt solar panels. This is purely for research purpose. You generate solar power and connect to the main electricity grid, so that the excess solar power, which is not been consumed is passed on to the main grid. The electricity companies buy this and give certain discounts. One of the main problems in this, is you need control circuit, which connects the solar panels to the main grid. This thing must be done with sophistication. The main function of control circuit is synchronization. We are trying to make this control circuit with sophisticated electronics, so that the synchronising is done smoothly and more efficiently.

CEEMS – Centre for Electronics & Embedded Systems, has led to the creation of several award winning projects. Tell us about these projects.

We have two electronics laboratories – one is Centre for Electronics & Embedded Systems (CEEMS) and the other one is Next Generation Wireless Technology.

I will give you the example of an awardwinning project called ‘Intel embedded challenge’. All the malls have this parking problem, when you enter the mall you have to go to the parking and search for a free slot. What the students did was, they used a fairly low priced technology. They did experiment with it in one of the parking lots in Bangalore.

The idea is to place a small electronic circuitry in the parking lots of the malls.

When you enter the parking lot, a slot will be assigned to you and you will get an SMS (you have to register with the system first) and after you have parked it locks your number. So that you do

not have to remember where you have parked, it is already been sent through SMS to you. And when you take your car out, it will send you an SMS saying you are taking out your car. This type of technology has been used somewhere else also. But that is fairly expensive and many of them need a gadget in the car.

But in a country like India, you cannot expect people to install another gadget.

The only assumption over here is, everybody has a cell phone. This does not

something and putting it in the cloud and similarly the other two are also doing the same thing. Finally, the master comes in the scenario and from it he is picking up what he likes and finally he is producing the product. At this time it is little farfetched to produce a Hollywood or a Bollywood number. What is immediately possible is using for college functions. At present, Kolabia is used for fun. Luckily Kolabia is working with some Bombay-based artists. Kolabia

Playing inverse chess will enhance the mental ability of people. If chess

is a treadmill then inverse chess is a super-treadmill need a high-end cell phone. A normal cell phone which can receive SMS is good enough for this. This project was developed by CEEMS.

provides with lot of tools. Kolabia is a tool with which people can collaboratively create music and in some point of time, even to sell music.

The IIIT is also engaged in incubating nine companies, one of which, Kolabia, has done some interesting stuff in the collaborative music creation space. Please provide us an overview of this project.

Kolabia is run by one of our students, who graduated about two-and-a-half years ago. Today you can collaboratively create a word document. It is called collaborative document generation.

What Kolabia does is, can we do the same thing with music? In music the flow is very genuine. Each person puts their music in any channel and finally, the composer decides which one to use and which one not to use and finally the whole thing gets the shape. This is how music is produced. Now that we are all staying in the internet age, what Kolabia says is can we create music over the internet? May be one artist is sitting at Singapore, the second one at San Francisco and another is Bangalore. All of them have access to internet and in internet there are various devices easily available. Then the artist A is creating

The IIITs have been initiating quite a few projects to promote green and environment friendly ideas. Recently the institute has commissioned 3 solar panels.

What is your experience with these solar panels?

We look at green from three points of view. One is physical green – every inch of the campus is either greenery or buildings or water resource. The second one is from energy point of view and we use natural light as much as possible, so that in most part of the campus, in the day time, we do not need electricity. For cooling also there is sufficient natural air. Three years from now, we are planning that our campus be quite a bit green and completely powered by solar.

The third thing where we wanted to look at green energy is ecological form.

Instead of putting the sewage water in the drains, we try to treat it and recycle it. We need a lot of water to maintain the greenery in the large lawns inside our campus, instead of using the clean water we use the treated water. We feel it as our social responsibility.

digitalLEARNING / April 2013

51

Special Feature

Network Security with UTM Unified Threat Management (UTM) is a comprehensive solution that has gained widespread popularity as a primary network security solution for organisations.

By Sunil Sharma, Vice President - India & SAARC, Cyberoam

U

online activities, which is not possible with IP-address based solutions.

This way, Cyberoam prevents students, faculty and administration from accessing inappropriate matter online and protects them while they are online. Cyberoam provides continuous monitoring through centralised management to build a pattern of usage and adjust policies accordingly to offer long-term safe internet practices.

Cyberoam’s content filtering carries predefined CIPA (Children’s Internet Protection Act) templates that include categories like adult content, drugs, violence, computer security and more, allowing institutions to implement Cyberoam CIPA policies immediately on deployment.

TM is the evolution of the traditional firewall into an all-inclusive security product able to perform multiple security functions within one single appliance - network firewalling, network intrusion prevention and gateway antivirus, content filtering, data leak prevention, and on-appliance reporting. Tech-savvy institutions with large networks are well-versed with the security issues that create nuisance on dayto-day basis. Addressing the security issues, there are many institutions in India and abroad that has installed Cyberoam UTM solution.

Need for network security While the Internet facilitates speedy communication and easy access to information, it can also be the conduit for a variety of malevolent attacks on the networks of educational institutions through intentional or unintentional access to inappropriate resources. A popular research across the industry suggests that students in educational institutes spend a considerable amount of time in non-productive Internet activities in absence of a strong comprehensive network security solution.

According to a Cyberoam survey, for an assumed corpus, which includes both revenues and funding, it was found that almost 35 percent of the corpus was lost due to indiscriminate surfing, spam incidences, virus, network intrusion, and downtime. Indiscriminate surfing claimed a major portion at a whopping 14 percent. Others that caused major financial losses included spam at 12 percent, virus at five percent, network intrusion around nine percent and downtime one percent.

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April 2013 / digitalLEARNING

Effective monitoring

Sunil Sharma This was highly indicative of the surfing pattern of the students and the institute staff.

Cyberoam UTM protection Cyberoam’s extensive website database and highly granular identity-based policies protect students from accessing inappropriate content by blocking or filtering web access based on work profiles.

In educational institutions and libraries where multiple students and faculty access the Internet over shared machines, Cyberoam UTM protection identifies student activity by the user name instantly, enabling institutions to easily monitor

Cyberoam installations have helped curb the Internet misuse while providing insights into usage patterns of users. The faculty, administration and others constantly share the machine with the students and in many cases indulge in non-productive surfing like – cricket score, bill payment, online banking and shopping. Especially when security solutions stop short of identifying the actual user and traces threat only till IP address, the students are put to blame, which is not the correct picture.

Cyberoam has been installed in reputed educational organisations with long standing credentials in the field.

More than 45 percent of educational institutes using network security solutions use Cyberoam. Reputed universities like IIT Gandhinagar, Symbiosis, Delhi University, AIIMS, Mumbai University are some of our esteemed clientele in education segment.

Industry Speak

perspective

eCommerce

Addressing the Education

to Employment Challenge

By Sonya Hooja

I

n a survey conducted by Ernst & Young, only 25 percent of Indian professionals are considered employable by multinationals and this difficulty of Indian employers to fill job vacancies has increased to 67 percent in 2012 (compared with 16 percent in 2011). There is a dire need for professionals with practical understanding and adequate skills to make the required contribution to the industry.

It is widely held that knowledge, skills, and resourcefulness of people are critical

Sonya Hooja

to sustain development, economic, and social activity in a knowledge society.

Given the current high-paced growth and dynamic investment climate in India, the demand for knowledge workers with high levels of technical and soft skills will only increase. Expansion is taking place across sectors: banking and financial services (BFSI), retail, manufacturing, pharma, SMBs, outsourcing/offshoring companies, service. Over the past fifteen years, India has produced 1.6 million professionals and faces the uphill task of producing another 0.8 million in the next two years.

Statistics show that in spite of having the largest youth population in the world, India has a glaring shortage of qualified professionals. In any industry, it takes over three months to find the right candidate. It is ironical that in a country where a million students graduate every year, they are unable to find suitable employment.

Education has become very general and broad based which is why students may have a good overview but are not specialists. On an average, the curriculum is refreshed only once in every 5-10 years but the industry is extremely dynamic.

Being caught in the increasingly interconnected and competitive environment, institutions are under pressure to provide

more industry-relevant education to increase the employability quotient for the students.

Universities and educational institutions have been unable to update their curriculum in tune with the high speed changes taking place in the world of finance and technology. Hence, the students churned out are not equipped to meet the current industry requirements and often companies have to incur additional expenses (time and monetary) to train new hires. Besides this, the industries also evaluate competencies ranging soft skills, team building, overall attitude, and values.

Traditional model teacher/trainer and content/tool centric education has proven to be inadequate to meet the growing job requirements in the 21st century. Educational institutes need to focus more on practical education, based in strong, relevant case studies and market-driven curriculum.

Vocational and private institutes need to bridge the gap between academia and the industry by providing knowledge and skill sets which are essential in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s competitive working environment.

They must provide industry relevant programmes that would offer successful specialised careers to Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s youth and at the same time give corporates and the broader industry a source of sustainable talent.

Hence, the overall focus of education is changing where students and colleges are gradually realising that general education does not cut it today and there is a huge need for specialised knowledge.

(The author is Co-founder & Director of Imarticus Learning)

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digitalLEARNING / April 2013

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Industry Speak

Budget

Union Budget 2013-14 Focuses on Job Creation and Skill Development Finance Minister, P Chidambaram has announced Union Budget 2013-14, which has received mixed reactions from industry and academia. Here are some highlights of what education received from the budget 2013-14…

Budget Highlights for Education Sector • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

`1 lakh crore allotted for enhancing skills of youth India to get its first all-women’s bank Allocation of `65867 crore to education ministry, up 17 percent Tax Free Bonds – Will allow some organisations to raise funds strictly based on need Budget 2013 allocated Rs 65,867 crore to the HRD ministry Allocation of 100 crores to AMU, BHU, TISS-Guwahati and INTACH Allocation of `1000 crore to extend skills of youth Group insurance schemes to be available for teachers, nurses Integrated Child Development’s funds enhanced by 11.7 Govt announces `2,000-cr fund for scientific innovations Grant of `100 crore each for institutions of excellence, says FM Clarity on tax issues related to R&D centres in IT soon FM gives `100 crore to Tata Institute of Social Science, Guwahati Donations to National Children’s Fund will get 100 percent tax exemption Government committed to the creation of Nalanda University as a centre of educational excellence Indian Institute of Biotechnology will be set up at Ranchi On-campus startup incubators get a boost

Dilip Chenoy, CEO & MD, National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC)

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The Finance Minister’s decision to set aside Rs 1,000 crore for a scheme to encourage youth to voluntarily enrol at skill development institutions and providing an incentive of `10,000 to every individual who undergoes training, coupled with the recognition given to industry-led assessment and certification, would create an aspiration value for skills and contribute significantly to ongoing efforts to ensure that India is in a position to leverage its demographic dividend.

Including vocational institutes affiliated to the State Council of Vocational Training in the negative list of service tax would make skills training affordable and more accessible to people, particularly for those living at the bottom of the pyramid.

SS Mantha, Chairman, AICTE on union Budget 2013-14 The budget is meant for ‘inclusive growth and sustainable development’ with a focus on social sectors-health and education. It is very pragmatic budget with feet on the ground.

Riad Joseph, Tax Partner – Education practice, Ernst & Young While a 15 percent increase for RTE is positive, there appear to be no specific announcements on regulatory reform, PPP framework and incentives for private sector

education.eletsonline.com

Ashok Mittal, Chancellor, Lovely Professional University This year’s budget promises to bring in a lot of hope for the education sector. It was indeed heartening to see that equal importance has being given to all levels of education starting from primary to higher level. The Sarv Shiksha Abhiyaan and child care primary education deserves to be given more importance and I am glad that this year’s budget has taken cognizance of this fact. The government’s decision to allocate over 65 thousand crore to HRD Ministry and additional 1600 crores to institutions like AIMS sends a clear message that education sector is finally getting the importance it truly deserves. The 17 percent increase in the budget allocation to our sector is appreciated and well received by one and all. However, it was a bit of a disappointment to notice that this year’s budget completely overlooked the education loans aspect.

Deepak Kaistha Managing Partner, Planman Consulting

Pramod Sharma Principal, Genesis Global School

With our finance minister pointing towards the imperative need of foreign investment in India, HR companies are likely to get an increment in terms of more hiring, more work. The budget also hints at increased focus on providing education and skills to youth for securing jobs in the 2013-14. Among this, the focuses will be on enhancing the ability of the undereducated and unskilled to become self-employed and find meaningful work.

I was hoping the focus to be more on teacher training so the students do not drop out and teachers are motivated to impart better education. The Government needs to introduce technology based learning in government schools.Since, private schools already have technology and the government schools cannot afford the same, this will increase the inequality in society.

Ambarish Gupta, CEO, Knowlarity Communication Pvt Ltd More funds are now available for startups under the initiative taken by the Finance Ministry to recognise certain funding to institutions like IIT as part of CSR activity. This is going to release more funds for startups. Overall this is a growth oriented budget. The finance minister has recognised the importance of creating quality jobs for the youth in India. It has pledged vast sums of money on skill enhancement schemes that will prepare the youth for the next generation of jobs.

Shantanu Prakash, CMD, Educomp Solutions

Furthermore, with a growth rate of 9 per cent and an outstanding growth in sectors like manufacturing, IT andITES, textile, agriculture, construction, and retail, there arise tremendous job opportunities. Manufacturing alone is expected to create 25 million jobs in next 10 years.

The tonality of the budget as far as the education sector goes was highly positive. The thematic emphasis on employability and therefore on skill and vocational training led education is a trend shift for certain. In fact the unqualified acceptance by the Government of the criticality of job-led education and the emphasis on vocational training and skilling is the corner stone of this budget. We will look forward to the fine print matching the fine sentiments going ahead. The absence of any encouragement for much needed private investment in the education sector was a bit disappointing.

digitalLEARNING / April 2013

55

Industry Speak

Budget

Ramana Akula, CFO, Pearson India It is overall a positive budget from the education sector standpoint â&#x20AC;&#x201C; despite the expenditure management exercise the government has increased allocation to the education sector by 17 percent. The education cess of three percent has been retained for the financial year 2013-14; this move will continue to promote the public spending in various education schemes like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. However, some expectations such as extension of tax sops provided to vocational education in agri sector to other streams of vocational education have not been met but nevertheless the budget of 2013-14 should provide a boost to the education sector and the overall economy largely due to serious measures to promote saving and investments in the economy.

Sanjaya Sharma, CEO, TATA Interactive Systems I reiterate that there is a need for a PPP model in the sector not just to execute the delivery but also deploy modern technology infrastructure across schools enabling rapid proliferation of world-class education.

Another positive announcement was the `1000 crore allocation for the national skill development fund. Every sector in India is challenged with severe crunch of skilled workforce and such initiatives will help achieve its target of skilling 50 million people in the 12th Plan period, including nine million in 2013-14.

But, the gap is also widening at the same time and there will be a need for around 50 crore skilled workers across sectors in India by 2022. The Government and NSDC in particular should look at employing technology as a strategic partner to fast track and bridge this gap.

Prashant Bhalla, Senior Vice President, Manav Rachna International University Keeping the current fiscal deficit scenario in mind, the budget this year appears to be a move towards a focused economic growth, provided the elements are well implemented. It is good to see that education has retained its importance where the government plans to continue taking initiatives for education as well as imparting skills to the youth.

Given the challenges we have, rise in expenditures at all levels is obvious but one should not divert from our focus and continue our efforts. Rise in allocations for HRD, SSA, RMSA seems to be a move that will bring benefits to the countrymen. Having said that, monitoring also needs equal attention to overcome obstacles and thereafter succeed in our missions.

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Premlesh Machama, Managing Director, CareerBuilder India Allocation of `1,000 Crore allocation to develop joboriented skills among youth has also been promised and theNational Skill Development Corporation will train five crore people in current plan period.

Organisers

academic partner

knOwledge partner

quick chat

Q& A

Play, Passion and Purpose in Learning

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education.eletsonline.com

“Quality education must not focus just on student achievement but also student success as they get ready to take on employment opportunities. We know that growing the number of educated citizens is the best way to spark not only new businesses but entirely new industries. For that we need to build required competencies that can only be achieved by life-long learning, skilling and re-skilling learning,” says, Brian Gonzalez, Director Global Education Sales Programs, Intel Corporation.

During his recent visit to India, he spoke about various learner centric innovations for purposeful learning. In conversation with Pragya Gupta, ENN Please share the latest innovations by Intel?

At Intel we continue to innovate and make investment in education. Technology is playing an increasingly important role in education. Today, many consumer devices are available and used in education but do not offer the right educational experience to support purposeful learning. Deploying the right tools and technology for use in school and afterschool is what makes a difference.

Any technology or educational tool is only useful if it supports the goals of the educators to help students succeed. Intel continues to invest in education and offers solutions and expertise in order to support student achievement. Intel classmate PCs and Intel Education tablets are built for education to meet the needsof students, educators, administrators, and school IT. Based on extensive research

is part of the software suite. It turns the device into an exploration tool and can be used as microscope by children. Also, it comes with a thermal probe that can plug into the audio jacks which coupled with the software can enable scientific exploration and nurture students’ curiosity.

How about taking these innovations in the classroom?

It is really important to keep the children engaged in right things. Today, there is a dearth of right tools to engage them in purposeful learning.

To bring in our innovative platform to India we are talking to the OEMs, some of the service providers and state governments, and we are at different stages of discussions at this point of time.

The classmate PC and education tablets come with Intel Education Software Suite that helps students develop the skills they require to succeed in the 21st century skills such as collaboration, communication, problem solving through rich, engaging applications in classrooms worldwide and in collaboration with educators and local partners, Intelclassmate PCs and education tablets are designed to meet education specific needs from localized content to interoperability with school networks and infrastructures.

Intel Education solutions offer full PC functionality to support students’ needs both inside and outside of classrooms whether they are consuming or creating content.

Powered with Intel processors the classmate PC and education tablets come with Intel Education Software Suite that helps students develop the skills they require to succeed in the 21st century skills such as collaboration, communication, problem solving through rich, engaging applications .

These solutions are ruggedised, student-friendly, drop resistant and water resistant.

The classmate PC also has ruggedised DC jack, rubber feet, retractable handle, dual audio jacks, and enhanced camera.

The camera can be used with Lab Camera application, which

Some of the products are already available in Indian schools. Two Indian states have been using them for the past six months. We are trying ‘Beyond the classroom’ in five schools in a particular state. At one of the places, we have the village Panchayat and a lot of other villages coming there and saying that they want more of this. That is the level of excitement.

What is next at Intel?

We are committed to delivering successful education solutions and providing the critical foundation to help students, educators, governments, and communities benefit from the unprecedented potential of technology. We engage deeply with our ecosystem including software vendors, publishers, service providers and OEMs to bring the right locally relevant solutions.You will continue to see many exciting new solutions and programs from Intel – all focused on improving student outcomes.

digitalLEARNING / April 2013

59

PERSPECTIVE

The Answer is Robust Accreditation Today economically advanced countries are witnessing a “silver tsunami” with the proportion of adults over the young population is set to increase largely. The trend is expected to broaden the skill gap in the long term, unless offset by substantial immigration. For developing and emerging economies like India to leverage their talent pool to plug these labour and skill shortages, a robust accreditation process will play a critical role

By Nilaya Varma

T

he global financial crisis has given way to acute economic uncertainty and a prolonged crisis of jobs in most parts of the world. In several developed countries, one in five people under the age of 25 who are willing to work cannot find a job. Policymakers know that, without acting today, they risk watching a whole generation of young people suffer from policy decisions and conditions that are not of their making. For all stakeholders, the cost of inaction is high.

Changing global population trends are demanding a transformation in the way public services operate. On one hand, a major part of the Western world is getting older, with decreasing birth rates and increasing longevity. On the other hand, some developing nations are getting younger, with a huge part of the youth joining the workforce. This has put the spotlight on the abundant talent pool in emerging markets like India where, according to recent research by Accenture, educational and skill requirements have expanded faster than the capabilities of the workforce.

In the words of Angel Gurría, the OECD Secretary-General, “Skills have become the global currency of 21st century economies”. The need to retain skilled staff dominates today’s management agenda.

Developed nations are now looking to plug labour and skill shortages by leveraging cross-border resources, addressing growing skills demands from regions with a skills surplus and driving internationalization of labour. The resultant need for a dynamic and fluid labour force needs to be met by reassessing the boundaries between education and employment.

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April 2013 / digitalLEARNING

India has one of the world’s largest young population. Yet, according to CII, 70 percent of job-seekers are educated but not employable. Moreover, less than 10 percent have recognised professional certifications.

The diversification, growth and privatisation of higher education globally calls for quality processes and output, and many higher education institutions are investing time and money on devising new mechanisms to ensure external quality management. Despite this, the accreditation system in India faces some core challenges. For instance, the globalisation of jobs and their mobility across countries places pressure on institutions to deliver education recognisable in an international market. Further, there exists a lack of alignment between business requirements and the skills derived from education. Additionally, the lack of infrastructure as well as other procedural complexities in India impacts the reach and penetration of accreditation systems across the education landscape.

Can policy makers and education providers in different countries move towards identifying skills in a harmonised manner and work together to foster a universally recognised accreditation process? Is it possible to devise a framework of global accreditation standards and parameters?

What could be the components of an international framework that match and meet the twin needs of international education and global employability?

One common answer to these questions is the development of a robust accreditation process. As the process of accreditation is market-driven and cuts across geographies, it helps educational

institutions to assess their strengths and problem areas. It also provides “consumers” with reliable information on the quality of education available.

It is imperative that we focus on employable skills and not just education. It is necessary to devise an international framework that recognises the potential of “international education” based on global standards and accreditation parameters. The recent surge in students going abroad to study, as well as the growth of courses available over the Internet, make it imperative for international education policy makers to collaboratively move towards global accreditation standards.

Delivering education services in the future must be marked by assurance, monitoring and evaluation to improve education quality for all stakeholders with a strategy and landscape that is insightdriven and future-oriented.

The author is the Managing Director, Health & Public Service, Accenture India. He has over 15 years of experience advising State and National Governments improve public service delivery and help build IT and physical infrastructure.

academia speak

Q& â&#x20AC;&#x153;Restructure curriculum A According to the Industry Needsâ&#x20AC;?

What is your vision for Utkal University?

The Utkal University, established in the year 1943, is the 17th oldest University in India. My basic purpose is to ensure that the University is providing education of good quality. There has to be perfect discipline among the teachers, students and the employees.

According to you what are the core strengths of the University?

The University is home to 27 regular departments and 23 self-financed programmes. The campus is spread across 400 acres of land. We also have 357 affiliated colleges under Utkal University. At present the University has 27 Post-Graduate teaching and research departments located within the campus and three constituent Institutions, viz Directorate of Distance and Continuing Education, University Law College at Vani Vihar and M S Law College at Cuttack. Besides the regular courses, 26 sponsored courses are offered under the direct academic control of the P.G. Council of the University.

When we compare Odisha with other states in the country, it is still lagging behind some of the other states like Maharashtra and Karnataka in the matter of investments. When it comes to education how do the students in Odisha compare with their counterparts in other states.

Our students are not only competing in the national level, they are also competing in the international level. Many bright students from Odisha are doing well in JNU and Delhi University. Students are also doing well in IITs and IIMs. Are you using ICT for making the systems for education at the Utkal University more effective?

Application of ICT is must. Otherwise you will be outdated and cannot com-

Prof Prasant Kumar Sahoo provides his views on the educational initiatives being undertaken by the Utkal University. In conversation with Nayana Singh

pete with national and international level. Therefore, we are taking steps to include ICT in every sphere of our operations. Very shortly we are going to introduce choice-based study system as per the guidelines of UGC in both postgraduate departments and affiliated colleges. This will lead to an enhancement of the quality of education at the University. As we want to maintain ethical practices and transparency in every sphere, we are promoting the usage of ICT. How are you ensuring that syllabus is updated every year?

We have been taking steps for restructuring our curriculum. As a part of that we have introduced choice-based credit system and therefore, we have organised two seminars. In one seminar, all the teachers came and restructured the curriculum as per the needs of the industry and nation and another two-day seminar for principals of 357 colleges.

Therefore, we have taken steps for restructuring and designing of the cur-

riculum. On February 20, we are going to pass it in the Academic Council. Once it is passed, we will introduce it in 2013.

How do you ensure that the students that come out of the University are well groomed to adjust to the industry needs?

It has to be first found out what is the national and global need and accordingly the curriculum will be shaped. And I always say that the curriculum should be always restructured according to the need of the state, industry and country.

Are you facing any challenges in your functioning and do you need more support from the government?

Definitely, we need support from the government. Now we have more than 100 faculty posts lying vacant and we need government approval to fill up the post. As it is a state university, financed by the state government, therefore, in any sphere, be it finance or academics, we need government support.

digitalLEARNING / April 2012

61

Quick Chat

Q& A

Making Technology Accessible to All “There is a lot of scope for a tablet to show its importance in the education,” says Sandeep Arya, MD, Amtrak Info System & Amtrak Group.

He is a seasoned veteran with an experience of over two decades in the IT sector. He also presided as Chairman at Presto Infosolutions (P) Ltd and Data Gold Softwares (P) Ltd. He is on the Executive Committee of The Association of British Scholars and an active member of the European Business Group, the British Business group, FICCI, ASSOCHAM and CII. Recently, he has also been appointed as the General Secretary of the Telecom Industries Services Association (TISA). In conversation with Pragya Gupta, ENN

Please share the genesis of Amtrak Info Systems.

Amtrak Technologies Ltd is a customised solutions provider company incorporated in 1991 that specialises in IT, Audio-Visual, Electronics and Communications solutions. Amtrak has recently entered into the segment of producing user-friendly technology products, with its newly presented ‘My Buddy’. Started in the year 2012, Amtrak Infosystems believes in bringing about a change in the age of technology by introducing that was never seen before. Amtrak Info System aims at bringing more comprehensible products and support services to its customers with its presence growing pan-India.

Our aim is to make our path-breaking technological solutions accessible to maximum users across India by tapping on its business network in the market.

Our designing team is situated in Singapore while two manufacturing units are located in China.

Our business model targets every

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April 2013 / digitalLEARNING

medium that can sell ranging from the traditional B2B, Channel medium to reach out to customers and Online Selling. The underlying principle is to produce innovative product line-ups that benefit customers as per their requirements. The company’s core strength lies in designing its products in-house with the utmost creativity. It emphasizes on manufacturing hi-tech products at an affordable range.

How do you see the role of ICT in Education?

ICT definitely sees a clear path in the education segment. India is highly receptive to technology at every industry, and when technology innovations are aimed at providing ease, there is pure success to it. ICT has already begun in spreading its wings in the education segment by introducing some of the most innovative ideas for bringing education closer to learners. With the already emerging ideas of ICT in Education, such as, smart teaching aids, virtual class room

and classboard, there can be seen immense scope for many more such IT innovations to be introduced.

How do you see the importance of tablets in education?

A tablet must not be just seen advancement to a laptop or desktop, but there’s a lot more to it. With its quality of being light-weight and ‘on the go’, a tablet can be your book, your sketch book, your blackboard, and even your classroom. There is a lot of scope for a tablet to show its importance in the education sector.

How does your solution integrate with today’s classrooms?

We are yet to define a package of solutions for the education segment, but we aim at bringing a complete innovation when we present our education tablets.

This will be a true benefit for the students where the student will actually feel the importance of its My Buddy as much as his or her books.

eCommerce Industry Speak

Q& A

Buying Online Helps Metros continue to be a potential market in eCommerce, but the real growth will come from small cities, says Manoj Chandra, Founder & CEO, AllSchoolStuff.com, in conversation with Pragya Gupta, ENN Please tell us about the growth pattern of eCommerce in India.

The Business-to-Consumer (B2C) business through eCommerce is growing immensly due to the penetration of the Internet. Earlier, people used to search the Internet for information, and now, they browse for products and services.

They transact when they find value in what is being offered in terms of price, choice, convenience and service. I believe eCommerce will soon penetrate into every part of the country. This is because our country has a large geography and people in small towns do not have access to a lot of good products and services. These customers are amongst the first people to browse the web for the products they require. In fact, 80 percent of our customer base is from tier one and two cities. Metros continue to be a potential market, but the real growth will come from small cities.

The market potential is two-billion dollar but there are a very few players in this space.

Manoj Chandra

How did the idea of launching an eCommerce portal exclusively for education come to your mind?

I have worked with the shoe company - Bata that used to be the predominant player in the shoe market. We realised that parents find it a challenge to get the right pair of shoes at the right time for their kids. Therefore, we started selling school shoes online which turned out to be a great success.

This triggered the thought in my mind that there exists a possibility of parents wanting to buy things for their kids online.

Today, everything you need is sold by different vendors. That was where we thought we should aggregate the things needed by parents at one place to give them convenience. That is how Allshcoolstuff born in September 2011.

What strategies drive the portal?

We began very small with some books and stationery items.

Primarily, our outreach has been through social media and emails. Now we have half a million fans on Facebook. From `50,000 in the first month, our sales have grown to rupee one crore in just twelve months.

Please throw light on your approach to your consumers.

We have a two-pronged outreach. One is B2C through our online retail store, where we offer around 25,000 categories of products.

At the B2B level, a lot of small schools buy from us online. We work directly with large organised school chains also.We also work with school chains and help them in outsourcing their requirement in setting up their schools and student-specific needs.

We are the only organised player in the market, both as a retailer and outsource supplier. We are also penetrating into retail from school supply segment and participating in various forums to reach out to schools and educational institutions.

What kind of growth do you foresee for the company?

Considering the rapid pace at which we are growing, we hope to become a Rs 100-crore-business in the next couple of years. We would also like to achieve a scale of operation to make a difference.

digitalLEARNING / April 2012

63

special feature

Launch of NIELIT Web Portal

L to R: Dr Rajendra Kumar, Joint Secretary, Department of Electronics & Information Technology; Rajiv Gauba, Additional Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY); Kapil Sibal, Minister of Communications and Information Technology; Dr Ashwini Kumar Sharma, Managing Director, National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT), J Satyanarayana, Secretary, Dept of Electronics & Information Technology.

K

apil Sibal, the Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, launched the new website of National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology (NIELIT) at a glittering event held on March 25, 2013 at the e-Governance Hall of Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) at Electronics Niketan, New Delhi.

The web portal located at www.nielit.in is colourful and pleasing to the eye, besides being GIGW (Guidelines for Indian Government Website) compliant. It boasts of several new features for supplementing the CSC (Common Service Centre) scheme; NIELIT accredited institutes have been mandated to provide G2C services to the citizens. With NIELIT accredited institutes also performing the task of CSC kiosks, there will be a vast improvement in the delivery of such services in the States.

NIELIT students will benefit as the new web portal is designed to provide placement related facilities. It provides free online assessment test on employability and soft skills, in association with Wheebox

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;NIELIT has constantly endeavoured to upgrade existing technologies and has considered it appropriate to invigorate its web presence by way of a new web portal. The new website launched

by NIELIT is dynamic, interactive and user friendly. It is designed to provide a multitude of online services. As the website is integrated with the payment gateway, NIELIT students can now register online and also make

payments online.â&#x20AC;?

- Dr Ashwini Kumar Sharma, Managing Director, NIELIT

education.eletsonline.com

Launch of Electronic Payment & Application System of Scholarships (e-Pass)

T

he Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Kapil Sibal, also launched the e-Pass application (Electronic payment and application system for scholarships) for Himachal Pradesh and Tripura on March 25, 2013 at the e-Governance Hall of Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) at Electronics Niketan, New Delhi. e-Pass, developed by Centre for Good Governance, Government of Andhra Pradesh, is an end to end solution right from registration of application by the student to the transfer of money to the bank accounts of colleges and students.

It has been has been operational in Andhra Pradesh since November 2009.

The Rapid Replication Roll-out Initiative comprises of selection of some of the successful applications of one State and replicating them in other States that are willing to adopt them with customisation as per the Seeker States requirements.

Technology Used Attribute Details Software e-Pass Platform

Java Struts 1.2, Tomcat

Database

Postgres SQL

Environment Linux Hosted at

Centre for Good Governance, Government of Andhra Pradesh

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The e-Pass application is being replicated in Himachal Pradesh and Tripura under the pilot implementation of Rapid Replication Roll-out Initiative. Such replication will lead to significant savings in terms of time, efforts and costs. We have been talking about not reinventing the wheel every time an e-Governance initiative needs to be launched. The replication of e-Pass application in Himachal Pradesh and Tripura is a step in this direction.â&#x20AC;?

- Rajiv Gauba, Additional Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Ministry of Communications & IT, Government of India

digitalLEARNING / April 2013

65

Event Report

IMT Ghaziabad and Hyderabad Convocation 2013

“I

ndia has the largest aspirational society on this planet and this is a manifestation of the courage, knowledge and enthusiasm of its youth and the enterprise of its business leaders. Young generation will be an integral part of this aspirational society and will be engaged in generating economic wealth and creating social harmony to build an India of the 21st Century,” said Kamal Nath, President, IMT “Management education has a unique opportunity to address global socio economic issue, by developing a generation of responsive citizens who are driven not by profit motive alone rather have a long term vision based on the philosophy of inclusive growth. At IMT, the universe of management education is centred on the basic tenets of awareness of self, society and Action Oriented learning.” said Adi Godrej, Chairman, Godrej Group.

According to Dr Bibek Banerjee, Director, IMT Ghaziabad, “In the last decade, we have witnessed the power of technology-enabled social networking

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manifested as mass dissent. The churning in the environment is palpable, and the challenges, both economic and social are expected to remain for some time to come. While this churn is frighteningly many, IMT Ghaziabad has attempted to respond to it proactively—by changing content, structure and delivery of curriculum of their PGDM programs, redesigning executive education and reframing resources toward doctoral programs.” The convocation would witness experts deliberating on the crucial issue, discussing ways to focus on emergent changes, and find synergies.

Dr V Panduranga Rao, Director, IMT Hyderabad says, “This convocation is very special for IMT Hyderabad, because students of its first batch are graduating today. It gives us great pleasure to see our students stepping out into the business world. We have always attempted to them from knowing mode to a doing mode and in turn to innovate for better lives, organizations and a better world. I am sure they will not only lead the busi-

ness landscape, but they will also transform livelihoods and add value to human existence. I wish all success to this pioneering batch of IMT Hyderabad.”

The total number of students who have got the degree are 588 and 94 from Ghaziabad and Hyderabad campus respectively.

As Asia continues to propel the world economic growth, India has a huge role to play. While there will be a plethora of opportunities for talented young people, new challenges and responsibilities will become relevant. Business strategies during uncertainties, effectively harnessing technology, constructively employing social media, environment and social consciousness are some issue that CEOs all around the world are grappling with today. India’s role as a constructive player in the evolving global order will depend on how we shoulder the responsibilities of addressing these and new concerns that crop up. IMT Ghaziabad and Hyderabad is heading towards making valuable contributions to India business and industry.

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Event Report

SUMMIT

Towards A Digital Economy

Chief Minister of Odisha, Shri Naveen Patnaik inaugurates the e-Odisha Summit

T

he revolution in Information and communications Technology (ICT) has brought a whole new agenda for governance into the realm of possibility. eGovernance, simply defined, is leveraging ICT solutions for transforming the reach and quality of the government’s service delivery. Being increasingly viewed as an enabler and facilitator of ‘good governance’, ICT widens the scope of good governance by including attributes such as a service-centric approach, citizen-centricity, anytime, anywhere delivery of services, integrated delivery of services, focus on outcomes, accountability, promoting

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right to information, and inclusion of disadvantaged communities.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that ICT struck a timely chord with speakers and delegates and made the theme of the eOdisha conference held on 6th March, 2013 at Hotel Swosti Premium, Bhubaneswar in Odisha. The spotlight was on Odisha, the state playing the harbinger of a silent revolution in small towns and villages, acknowledging the IT initiatives and efforts in bringing about a digitally inclusive society.

The summit gave an opportunity to more than 500 participants, coming from governments, business and industry sector, academia, to create a level-sharing

platform for easy exchange of knowledge and ideas in building and upgrading governance through ICT solutions, and build new visions of the future through good practice and case presentations. eOdisha Summit 2013 was organised

by Elets Technomedia under the patronage of Department of IT, Govt of Odisha and Odisha Computer Application Centre (OCAC). The eOdisha summit was designed and facilitated under the leadership of the Secretary IT, Department of IT in Odisha, Shri Madhusudan Padhi as the Program Chair.

Chief Minister of Odisha, Shri Naveen Patnaik inaugurated the e-Odisha summit. He was joined by the Guests of Hon-

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our, the then IT Minister of Odisha and also by R S Sharma. Director General and Mission Director of Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI).

The objectives of the eOdisha summit were to provide a platform to stakeholders in ICT to address regional issues and the challenges in the development sector; to highlight the regional perspectives and to draw the attention of concerned authorities towards addressing these challenges; to highlight best practices and deliberate on ways of replicating the same across different regions; and to expand and diversify the multiple stakeholder voices in order to make the state more dynamic and vibrant, thereby, incorporating issues of contemporary relevance.

Inaugurating the one-day e-Odisha summit, the Chief Minister of Odisha said the IT sector is at the top of the State Government’s agenda and Odisha is trying its best to be in the forefront of the IT revolution. It is a matter of pride that the IT exports from the State was more than `1600 crore during the year 2011-12 with a growth of 17 percent in comparison to the previous year. To accommodate future development in IT sector, particularly in Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM), the Government is developing one IT Investment Region (ITIR) in Bhubaneswar.

Amongst others, the opening ceremony was also joined by the then IT Minister of Odisha, the Director General and Mission Director of UIDAI (Unique Identity Authority of India), Secretary, Department of IT, Madhusudan Padhi, Ranbir Singh, Group Director, Government Affairs, Microsoft India and Dr Ravi Gupta, CEO, Elets Technomedia and Editor-in-Chief, egov magazine. eOdisha Summit comprised of parallel thematic track conferences on IT and Governance, IT in Education, and IT in Health. It hosted discussions around themes including ‘Effective electronic service delivery’, ‘Urban governance & Infrastructure’, ‘ICT for inclusive framework for eGovernance’, ‘Application & Infrastructure security and public safety’, ‘Technology in

healthcare’, and ‘Scope of technology in education and skill training’.

The session on ‘Scope of Technology in Education & Skill training’ hold a fruitful discussion with some prominent panelists including Gagan Kumar Dhal, Principal Secretary, Dept of Higher Education, Odisha, Krushna Gopal Mahapatra, State Project Director, OPEPA, Dept. of School and Mass Education, Odisha, Prof Gopal Naik, Director, IIIT, Bhubaneshwar, Ratnakar Rout, Additional Secretary, Department of Employment and Technical Education & Training, Odisha, Lokesh Mehra, Director, Education Advocacy, Microsoft, and Ajay Krishnan, Director, Cisco Solutions. eOdisha also presented three impor-

tant components including active Conference, Exhibition, and Awards. Other than the active conferencing through thematic sessions, the eOdisha Awards platform recognised innovation and excellence in governance, education and healthcare. The awards were conferred in categories like eChampion of the State, Government to Business (G2B) Initiative, Government to Citizens (G2C) Initiative, ICT for Sustainable Development Initiative, ICT implementation in Public Sector Unit, ICT Initiative for Urban Development, ICT enabled School, ICT enabled Higher Education Institute/ University in Odisha, ICT in education initiative by Government in Odisha, ICT in healthcare initiative and more.

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Event Report

Scope of Technology in Education and Skills Training also have a studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s helpline number for the grievance redressal.

Gagan Kumar Dhal, Principal Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Government of Odisha We are keen on digitising the libraries in the state so that there can be proper accounting of the journals, which are purchased and the students will be able to access them. We are coming up with a very comprehensive scheme for the same purpose.

Gopal Mahapatra, Director, School and Mass Education Department, Government of Odisha Every year we carry out a survey called District Information System for Education, which is essential to plan for the children belonging to the state. We get to know the requirement of teachers, infrastructural requirements, and requirement of text books. Around 65,000 schools across the state are monitored through our CRC, BRC and other. We monitor the performance of the schools broadly on four points, viz, infrastructure, curricular activities, extracurricular activities, and school community linkage. We analyse the performance of schools from all the 30 districts and the blocks too. We

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Ratnakar Rout, Additional Secretary, Employment and Technical Education & Training, Government of Odisha We have 630 ITI s and ITC s. We used to have manual registration of students till 2010. We introduced online registration in the year 2011 and were partly successful. In the year 2013, we have achieved 100 percent online registration during. Around 55990 students have registered their names through online procedure. Despite a lot of obstruction, we have introduced online JEE in Odisha. The counseling of students was done via online since last year and this year we have outsourced the service to an IT company. Odisha has around 100 engineering colleges, 100 polytechnic schools. We have observed that, there is dearth of technically qualified people in the government institutions and suitable people are not available to fill up the vacancies.

Lokesh Mehra, Director, Education Advocacy, Microsoft The government is focusing a lot on

the development of the education sector. This sector has been allotted an increased budget of 17 percent.

As we are progressing towards a virtual education system, the concepts of time and place changes leading to an alteration of the entire paradigm.

By the year 2025, there will be 47 million youths and there should be 52 million job opportunities to employ everyone. There is a common complain that the industries do not come forward. However, the truth is that industries operate in silos. Some people prefer to go and deliver a guest lecture, some of them allow students to visit them, and some of them will come forward and donate equipment. Also, as far as the curriculum is concerned, the board of study sits twice or thrice a year. So the curriculum is not updated often.

Ajay Krishnan, Director, Cisco Solutions In order to bring about inclusive growth, we focus on three areas, viz, education, skills development and healthcare. We have used technology to solve the issue of lack of teachers in the schools.

Through video conferencing, we have brought teachers to the class rooms which are located far away in the rural areas of Karnataka. There are 2000 students studying in classes 5, 6, 7 and 8 are learning through this medium. We have seen that will minimum usage of technology, education can be made to reach a large group of people. In a similar way, we have connected engineering students to a group of Indian Institute of Science professors.

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