CBSE has decided to promote awareness about nature and biodiversity among students through its Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system. The central board’s training director Sadhna Parashar told principals in a letter that the “attittude to respect life forms must be promoted through classroom interactions and co-curricular activities”.
This step is being taken in support of a conference related to biodiversity being hosted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests in Hyderabad later this year. Ms Parashar added, “In sync with the national event and concern for biological diversity, CBSE considers it important for its schools to participate and popularize the awareness through optimum use of formative tasks related to issues and concerns about biological diversity and India’s role.”
The board has given some guidelines on how schools can include in CCE topics pertaining to biodiversity in such a way that students not only participate but also understand the gravity of it. Parashar writes that initiatives may include collaborative activities like bringing out newsletters, role play, slogan drives, and landscaping, exchanging and nurturing plants.
CBSE Asks Schools to Push Environmental Concerns among Students
SHCOE partners with K12 Inc. to launch career online high school
US based SHCOE has partnered with K12 Inc.—the provider of proprietary curriculum and online education programs for students in grades K–12—to launch Independence Career Online High School .
SHCOE became the world’s first AdvancED/SACS accredited online school district in February of 2011 and serves both non-traditional teenage and adult learners. Powered by SHCOE’s career online education model, Independence Career Online High School will enable adult students to complete an 18-credit high school diploma as well as earn a credentialed career certificate. Career certificates will include: Childcare, Transportation Services, Office Management, Homeland Security, Protection Services, and General Career Preparation.
Established in 1999, K12 Inc. provides individualised public and private schooling options in 33 states and around the world. K12 also provides a complete continuum of individualized education products and solutions to over 2,000 school districts in the United States, as well as direct to consumers seeking high-quality online curriculum for enrichment, homeschooling, or remediation. K12 has delivered over 4 million online courses to students in 70 countries worldwide.
Nationwide protest by lawyers against higher education bill
Lawyers of all the district courts here will abstain from work for two days beginning from Wednesday to oppose the government’s proposed Higher Education and Research (HER) Bill, the Bar Council of Delhi said on Tuesday. The apex lawyers’ body Bar Council of India had given a call for nation-wide protest against the proposed Bill. Lawyers across the country sat on strike against a controversial Higher Education and Research Bill, alleging that it would take away important academic regulatory powers.
Judicial activities in the lower and higher courts were severely affected as the lawyers abstained from work to protest against the proposed legislation. The Bill, which seeks to regulate the legal education system in the country, has been facing strong opposition from the apex lawyer’s body which has alleged that it is aimed at usurping the BCI’s control over legal education.
New admission portal for distance education
The University of Mumbai has learnt a lesson from last year’s admission and exam-related goof-ups. This year, admissions to the Institute of Distance and Open Learning (IDOL) may not be done via the Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited (MKCL). Admissions will not only be done through a portal, three options are being considered, including MKCL, but also will be decentralized and around 20 colleges will now act as IDOL’s study centres. A meeting was held with officials from IDOL and the varsity to discuss the admission strategy for distance education programmes.
A senior official said, “There were a lot of goof-ups last year. Besides technical issues, the rate quoted by MKCL is Rs 125 to fill each form online. So, MU is looking at other options besides MKCL. The contract for admissions may go to another portal.”
Career 2.0 for students’ dream jobs
Networking is an important tool, works alike for job seekers and for Job hunters. It is very important that one begins networking relationships in the right way. Whether you accept it or not, you are a brand now. And social media communicates your brand more so than a resume.
Now, Indian students are graduating from social networking to professional networking. A recent study by the social media site revealed the top 10 companies that students would want to work for in the country.
This is based on the students’ LinkedIn activities that gave information such as the job pages students look at, the number of followers for a company, and track how students are looking at companies. This activity, of course, increases during the placement season.
Of LinkedIn’s 20 million student members, over 11 per cent are in India. They are using the professional networking site to follow their ‘dream’ companies or sectors.
These members, who are largely below 25 years, have graduated in the last three years, or have mentioned ‘student’ in personal profiles. In turn, professional networking site LinkedIn is now helping companies engage with students or recent grads through career pages.
Companies such as L&T and HCL Technologies are using LinkedIn to reach out to students for employer branding. The most watched mid-size companies among Indian students are Facebook, Sapient, Biocon, Flipkart and Nvidia.
AICTE Moots New Courses from Std IX
All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has designed the National Vocational Curriculum Framework under which students can take up courses in industry sectors such as automobile, tourism, IT starting from standard IX.
S S Mantha,Chairman, AICTE gave details of this 1,000 hours system, which combines skill and education – skill to be provided by the industry and educational content by the institutions.
He said, “Nearly 80% of the workforce doesn’t have a system to provide training. Of the 12.8 million new entrants to the workforce, only 3.1 million get training. The vocational education scenario is not very encouraging as only 3% of the total population goes for it. To bridge the gap between industry and academia, we have framed this curriculum where students will get an opportunity to enter at the level they find appropriate.”
Mantha said, “The levels for vocational courses will begin from standard IX and standard X would be the second level. After that standard XI and XII would be third and fourth level, which students can pursue while in junior colleges. After the third, fourth and fifth levels, students can bag their diploma in polytechnic. If students do the sixth and seventh in polytechnic college, they will get the advanced diploma, and if they pursue the fifth, sixth and seventh level while in university, they would get the bachelor’s degree.”
Boxlight Unveils ProjectoWrite2 Interactive Projectors
Boxlight has unveiled its new ProjectoWrite2 series that will meet the diverse requirements of its customers, be it a business executive, an academician, today’s style conscious youth or the diligent learner.
The ProjectoWrite is the portable interactive presentation solution built in a stand- alone unit. The user simply needs to connect the Projector to a computer source, save the software and can interact within five minutes. This interactive and portable projector with an automatic search, sync and filter alert trio, can be mounted depending upon the space available ranging from 4 inches to 30 inches claims to achieve an image size of 48 inches to 300 inches. The pressure sensing interactive pen, full function IR remote with laser pointer along with a telescopic interactive wand enables better interaction with the image on screen and complete mouse control over it. Boxlight ProjectoWrite series have an increased lamp life of up to 3000/4000hours (standard/economy).With digital zoom up to 4x and audio output of 1×800 mono the projector gives an interactive experience to both sight and sound.
Unveiling the new ProjectoWrite series, Joy Ghosh, VP Sales & Marketing, Edaxis systems India Pvt Ltd said “The Boxlight projectors are unique in itself as it lays emphasis on the four major principles that is affordability, simplicity, flexibility and compatibility and we would like our partners to make end users to understand how Boxlight is better in terms of quality, features, pricing, warranty and after-sales service.”
Boxlight’s ProjectoWrite2 caters to academician, defence personnel’s, business people and trainers in any industry, law enforcement officials, and athletic coaches and also for anyone who wants to interact with a screen.
ProjectoWrite projectors from Boxlight have free lifetime technical support and are available with Edaxis at a price starting from Rs 79,000 along with Five years warranty on Projectors and two years on Lamp.
IFC Invests in Global Indian International School
Global Indian International School (GIIS) was initiated by Global Schools Foundation (GSF) with the aim of providing quality education to the expatriate community in Singapore. IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, has invested 25 million Singapore dollars (equivalent to $19.4 million) in GIIS to increase access to quality primary and secondary education in emerging markets in Asia, including lower-income countries.
The amount has been invested for Greenfield and acquisition in the lesser developed countries in South and South East Asia. India has significant opportunity in K-12 space and a significant part of the loan facility will be used in India. The project includes the construction of new schools in India and the acquisition of schools in Southeast Asia and South Asia. This facility will allow the GIIS brand to expand its footprint in India by providing the necessary capital for growth.
“Global Indian International School’s ability to implement high standards of educational delivery helps drive innovation in the private primary and secondary education sector and fulfills the growing need for quality education in emerging markets,” said Vipul Prakash, IFC Director for Manufacturing, Agribusiness, and Services in Asia. “The company’s expansion into new, underserved markets will not only help expand access to affordable education, but also set standards for other private providers in those markets.”
“IFC’s long-term loan will allow us to accelerate our expansion plan and reach more students throughout the region,” said Atul Temurnikar, Co-Founder & Chairman of Global Schools Foundation. “As we enter new countries, we expect to also benefit from IFC’s deep industry knowledge and on-the-ground expertise in local markets.”
Private education has a key role to play to boost enrollment levels and the quality of learning in emerging markets. While most of Global Indian International School’s target markets for expansion are close to achieving universal enrollment in basic education, the quality and student enrollment levels in secondary education continue to lag.
The investment is in line with IFC’s education sector strategy in Asia, which includes supporting service providers that operate scalable business models that can reach lower-income households, establish best practices, raise standards, and provide employment opportunities for skilled professionals.
CBSE discontinue Sample Papers for classes IX, X
The Central Board of Secondary Education has decided to discontinue issuing of ‘blue prints, sample question papers and marking schemes’ in all major subjects for class IX and X.
The Board used to provide a model template to serve as a guide for entailing uniformity in assessment, and proper coverage of the curricula. However, the Board officials say that it has been noticed that a large section of students and examiners are ‘punctiliously’ following these documents, which is preventing the open-ended approach and diversity in expression, style and content.
Opposition walkout on private engineering colleges issue in Kerala
CPI-M led LDF Opposition in Kerala staged a walkout dissatisfied with the government response to an High court order regarding effective steps to improve the quality of education in private engineering colleges. Both Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and Education Minister P K Abdu Rabb assured the House that government would adhere to the court directions and take steps to ensure that infrastructure and faculty in private professional colleges were of high-quality. The court had also made the observation that pass percentage in most of these institutions was very low.
