Corporate News: Oct 2008

IIT-B, Wipro sign MoU to enhance engineering faculty

A MoU has been signed with signed between the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai and Wipro’s Mission 10X to enhance engineering faculty through innovative teaching and learning paradigms across the country.

The partnerships aim to create educational material, establishing a joint centre of excellence for research in the field of education. Mission 10X is a non-profit trust which was launched by Wipro Limited in September last year to address skills shortage affecting the IT industry’s growth. The 3-year MoU will include creation of educational material, establishment of a joint centre of excellence to carry out research in the field of education and transmission of education through EDUSAT.

Centre for Distance Engineering Education Programme (CDEEP), IIT has been facilitating distance education courses for several years now. Since January 2008, CDEEP has started transmitting IIT-B’s course free of cost to more than 50 colleges through the EDUSAT facility offered by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

Educomp alliance with Eurokids International arrives in pre-schools

sector Education services firm Educomp Solutions Ltd has acquired 50 percent stake in Mumbai-based EuroKids International Pvt Ltd for INR 390 million to expand in pre-school education.

Educomp has made a strategic investment in EuroKids to leverage the company’s established presence in early child care education foreseeing immense potential in the early child care education market in India which is highly under served.

Educomp currently has a presence in pre-school segment through its chain known as “Roots to Wings,” which currently has 52 franchisees. The alliance aims to capitalise on the growing need of “Early child care and education” and this segment in India.

Intel, Dell, Acer to partner Educomp alliance for pan-India IT in schools

The Indian education sector is one of the largest in the world with over a million schools yet less than 5% of classrooms are digitally enabled. Intel, Dell, Acer and Educomp have announced an alliance that aims to drive integration and accelerate adoption of technology into classroom teaching and learning in schools across India.

The partnership will undertake over seven thousand schools across 140 cities by holding ‘Next-Gen School Seminars’ over the next six months. These seminars will seek to update schools leaders with latest technology innovations in class room teaching across the globe.

The partnerships ties Intel’s World Ahead Programme that will be the learning platform for Intel by providing schools access to technology through PCs, and preparing teachers on effective use of technology in education. Acer brings value through its design, ergonomics and benefit driven features are at the cornerstone of our products strategy under the ‘Aspire’ brand and Educomp will showcase latest version of Smart Class with Smart Assessment System through its pan-India presence to schools Principals and Educators.

Karnataka schools to have digital tech devices

Schools in Karnataka State will soon have digital technology devices for students and teachers for performance assessment of students. The technology, offered by Canada-based SMART Technologies, provides the V280 interactive whiteboard with Notebook and Senteo (meaning voting in Latin) Interactive Response System to the teachers. It offers a 77-inch active screen area, whose large display area the users touch with a battery-powered pen to write notes in digital ink or access and control any computer or multimedia application, including CDs and DVDs, Internet applications and operating systems.

The company is a major partner with the Government of Kerala in its ‘IT for schools’ project. The digital technology, which is priced well over INR 90,000 for each school, is expected to improve the learning capabilities of students, increase teachers’ efficiency, besides provide instant feedback in the classroom.

Sun – VTU  launch VTU EDUSAT programme

A leader in open source, Sun Microsystems Learning services will conduct 50 hours of free-of-cost training on Sun technologies on the EDUSAT network to 111 VTU colleges. The platform also encourages collaboration between schools, enabling educators to easily share teaching best practices across local and global borders.

The topics covered will aim to give students an introduction to cutting-edge technologies with additional inputs on how to prepare for careers in software development in an increasingly open source world. The training will be conducted as part of Sun’s training and certification activities from Sun India Engineering Center, evangelists, and other subject matter experts sharing their knowledge on several key areas.

MBD Alchemie to launch e-Learning portal

MBD Alchemie, an online education academy of   MBD Group is launching an e-Learning project in India to become India’s mass education offering through dissemination of high quality standardised content across the country.

The online academy was aimed to introduce the courses for students of class 10th & 12th of Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and for AIEEE and AIPMT preparation. New course on IIT-JEE, STATE CETs, State Boards (Xth and XIIth), are in the pipeline and will be launched very soon. It is collaborating with State Boards of Punjab, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka. Once the knowledge portal is launched, the curriculum would be available in the respective regional languages as well.

The portal embedded with distinctive features like personalised coaching including self paced learning mechanism, self test tool, extensive self-education, online problem solving facility is created to be highly interactive and the instructional interface is very simple.

Etutelage Eduservices nominated for TATA Awards

Etutelage Eduservices, a fast growing e-Learning provider has been nominated for the coveted TATA NEN Hottest Startups Awards. The First ever ‘Public Choice’ awards to recognise India’s new wave of growth is an online contest where people can nominate companies and vote on Internet and through SMS.

The Awards are a unique collaboration between the Tata Group and National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), the largest representatives of new & future entrepreneurs in India. Etutelage Eduservices is an elearning company offering innovative technology solutions to school students worldwide. The company offers personalised online tutoring, one on one online SAT and ACT preparation, a unique Quiz a Day for SAT and ACT students and an innovative wiki, Wikifunda, for school students. The 2008 Tata-NEN Startups Awards will showcase a wide range of high potential startups from multiple sectors, ranging from healthcare, retail, mobile technologies, biotech, hospitality, lifestyle, IT and service providers.

GurukulOnline offers Certification on Financial Planning

GurukulOnline Learning Solutions (GOLS), an innovator of eLearning in India became the first company in India to offer online training for Certified Financial PlannerCM (CFPCM) certification.

Any graduate can apply for this online certification course, which is awarded in India by Financial Planning Standards Board, India, the licensing authority of the CFPCM mark in the country. The course is currently at an introductory price of INR 20,000.

NIIT opens Community Learning Centre in Delhi

The NIIT Community Learning Centre (CLC) will provide relevant skills to the unemployed youth in urban slums for making them employable for jobs in various sectors such as telecommunications, retail, hospitality, healthcare, etc.

Apart from IT sector Centre will also focussing on the retail sector and have planned for employment generation schemes. The leading Global Talent Development Corporation is working with leading retail and hospitality majors to provide job-opportunities for students trained at the CLC.

The first CLC in the city set up in association with NGO ABHAS was inaugurated by Smt Sheila Dikshit, Chief Minister of Delhi. CLC will offer training programs in the area of basic English communication; computer and operating system skills; knowledge of industry sector; and industry-specific skills such as customer handling in retail. The training programs will be of three months to one year duration for 10th and 12th pass students, residing in urban slums and semi-rural areas. NIIT plans to set up 20 CLCs in the next three years, in close proximity to slums.

OLPC eyes 1 mn laptop sales in India

US-based One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) plans to sell one million laptops in India, each with a price tag of about $300 (including deployment) in the next twelve months.

The Massachusetts-headquartered association, which set up its office in the capital this month, claims to have already gathered sponsorship commitments from six top business houses for distributing about one million laptops to primary school children. The OLPC is also talking to major companies like Infosys, Bharti and the Tatas for sponsorship commitment of the laptop called XO-1. Bharti, however, declined having made a large order commitment as yet. The price of a laptop is about $300 (inclusive of deployment and maintenance)

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