The Price War

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April 9, 2013

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...

Adil Jahangir, GM
Marketing India/South Asia, SMART Technologies
“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. “

Ramya Chatterjee,
Director (Sales and Marketing), Cybernetyx
“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. ”

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

Rajeev Singh,
Country Head & GM, BenQ India
“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.”

Lalit Mohan,
Director, iTouch Technologies Pvt Ltd
“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.”

Tarun Jain,
Country Manager Hitachi
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.

DAX Aims to make Students Job-ready

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April 9, 2013

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

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.

A Research Oriented Institute

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April 9, 2013

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 man’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 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 laying 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 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 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.

Playing inverse chess will enhance the mental ability of people. If chess is a treadmill then inverse chess is a super-treadmill

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

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.

Network Security with UTM

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April 9, 2013

Sunil Sharma 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

UTM 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 day to 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.
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 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.

Effective monitoring
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.

Optical Technology Offers More Precise Touch

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April 9, 2013

Lalit Mohan, Director, iTouch Technologies Pvt Ltd
talks about new interactive technologies that are making stride in education…

“We look forward to huge volumes in the coming year because of our capability to design and customise solutions as per the customer’s need “

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 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 ecreasing cost of interactive hardware as well as software content, 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
There is a huge demand of interactive whiteboards as the focus of the 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 customer’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.

Addressing the Education to Employment Challenge

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April 9, 2013

By Sonya Hooja

Sonya Hooja In 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 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 today’s competitive working environment. They must provide industry relevant programmes that would offer successful specialised careers to India’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)

Interactive Classrooms from Hitachi

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April 9, 2013

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

Projectors
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 inputs making the projectors more versatile.

Interactive Boards
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 imultaneously.Like a competition/ problem solving / brainstorming session, etc.

Interactive Panels
Hitachi T17SXL and Hitachi T19WXL gives the same advantages of Interactive 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 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 quality and these are backed by company trained, customer oriented local support also Hitachi offers both Hardware and software (for Hardware).

Projectors
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 inputs making the projectors more versatile.

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

Integration with Tablets
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 conceptualization 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 StarBoard Software
Hitachi’s Starboard Software which is a powerful tool supplied along with interactive products, which enables a host of user benefits like

Easy and Intuitive: Software tools are readily accessible through multiple menu options
Conference Feature: Collaborate and conference with colleagues around the globe
Multi-touch Gestures: Use your fist to scroll, two fingers to erase or zoom in and out
External Applications: Create toolbar shortcuts to popular software applications
Google image integration: Drag and drop images instantlyinto StarBoard software
Customisable search engines: Add up to 4 search engines directly into the software
Handwriting recognition: Instantly convert freehand notes into text with the text pen
Simultaneous users: Up to two users can collaborate on the board at the same time
Customizable interface
Import MS Office files, make annotations

Cybernetyx Aspires to Become the Market Leader by 2015

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April 9, 2013

“The Interactive whitebaord of tomorrow would be an integrated product, which will play multiple roles by utilising the power of its software,”
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 aining 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 ultrasound based 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 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.

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”

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 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.

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?

Union Budget 2013-14 Focuses on Job Creation and Skill Development

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April 9, 2013

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

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.

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

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

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
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.
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.

Pramod Sharma
Principal, Genesis Global School
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.

Shantanu Prakash,
CMD, Educomp Solutions
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.

Ramana Akula,
CFO, Pearson India
It is overall a positive budget from the education sector standpoint – 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 ocational 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Play, Passion and Purpose in Learning

By

digitalLEARNING Network

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April 9, 2013

“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 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 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.

“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”

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.
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.

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