Home Blog Page 1152

February 2, 2012

Principal: Dr Rajeev Kumar Chauhan
Dr Chauhan has 20 years of extensive experience in teaching and administration of educational institutions. He has served in senior positions in many institutions. The wealth of experience that he has garnered is the result of his services in International and Indian Education organisations in Gulf and India. He has been actively involved in all areas of education, including developing curriculum, student career preparation and developing evaluation methods. He is PhD in (Mathematics) from V.B.S Purvanchal University, Janunpur. Currently he serves as the Principal of Raffles International School, Behror.
The digital universe
In the contemporary era our technological responses have become so advanced that we can easily visualise the digital incarnation of the entire universe by the mere click of a button. There is an immense power in the digital technologies that we have with us today. This power must be utilised to further the goals of educating our young population. Digital resources, including digital libraries and classes, have the potential to transforming education by giving rise to innovative curricula, stimulating teaching methodology and other hands-on resources. These resources hold the promise of providing teachers with new ways of engaging students. High-tech methods of teaching can make it easier for students to understand various concepts. The bottom line is that digital technologies are a boon for the education industry.

Digital Tools for Teaching
We use Visual Thesaurus, Language labs, Photo stories, PowerPoint Presentations, YouTube, and much else for teaching. In the coming years we plan to enhance our classrooms with the Digital Science and Mathematics Labs. The relation between the students and the computers is 1:1 in the computer and language lab classes.

Vision Statement
We believe in offering integrated and holistic education to equip our students with relevant skills and knowledge. We seek to provide them with the intellectual resources that will enhance their employ ability.

Scottish High International School Gurgaon, Haryana

digitalLEARNING Network

February 2, 2012

ChairmanKartikaySaini
Commander Kartikay Saini, an alumnus of the Sacred Heart Convent School and the National Defence Academy, Pune, has served the nation in uniform for 15 years. From young age, he has exhibited leadership, dynamism and charisma. He led the main propulsion department of the mighty aircraft carrier INS Vikrant at 21. Currently Kartikay Saini is the Executive Director of Hema Engineering Industries Limited. He is the Chairman of Scottish High International School, Gurgaon. He is also the hea

d of Autism Research Centre of India and the Director of Special Olympics Bharat. Digital Teaching tools facilitate the concept of Engage- ransform- Achieve. The need of today’s learners has changed, and so have things changed around us. If we are to meet our students’ expectations today, we need to incorporate engaging technologies in collaborative, learning based environments with teachers who are willing and able to use technology’s power to assist them in transforming knowledge and skills into products, solutions and new information

Deployment of digital technologies
Scottish High International School proudly boasts of a large LAN/ WLAN network of more than two hundred computers. The entire school building and its sprawling campus are supported by the WIFI network system. The HP Innovation Lab facilitates students from international curriculums to engage in project based learning. There school’s centralised database can accessed by all the students and staff by way of usernames and passwords. The school has hi-speed leased line internet connectivity. We regularly monitor and scrutinise the web content through dedicated firewall and gateway security. The centralised School Management Software installed handles fee management, admissions,
library, student’s database and academic performance. In times to come, the Scottish High intends to deploy Digital Tables for collaborative information exploration. Tabletop displays can augment information exploration in physical spaces.
Vision Statement
The school intends to be a Centre of Excellence in education. In keeping with the rich Indian heritage of India, we will keep stressing on simultaneous development of Spirit, Mind and Body.

The Millennium School Noida, Uttar Pradesh

Magazine

digitalLEARNING Network

February 2, 2012

Principal: Rita Kaul
Born in 1956, Rita K 1987 asaul started her career in project head of Spastic Society of India. The first school that she helped found was built on the pattern of Shanti Niketan in Jammu and Kashmir under the name “The Saplings”. She has served as the Principal of Heritage School, before becoming the Founder Principal of The Millennium School, Noida. Her endeavours in the educational space have won her umerous prestigious awards. She is the proud recipient of Shiksha Shiromani Puraskar by international study circle. She has also received the Spardhashree award by All India Unique sports and cultural organisation.

Digital teaching environment
We strongly believe that a digital teaching environment is a necessity for fostering better educational practices. The school uses a one-to-one computing environment. Our platform enables highly differentiated system of instruction, and supports collaborative learning and interdisciplinary techniques. We are making use of multimedia presentations, small group projects, and individualised practice and assessment systems. The teacher is fully in control of the student’s activities by making assignments, mentoring individuals, leading discussions, and providing feedback. The Smart Class Digital mediums like “Smart Class” are proving to be a great learning tool for our students. The digital systems help us in developing deep foundation of factual knowledge and procedural skills. We are also able to develop conceptual frameworks. The chalk and talk method of teaching, has now been completely replaced by Mimio tool and interactive board in all the classrooms. Our digital systems are being supported by Educomp’s R&D division. In future we are planning to upgrade our interactive whiteboards with touchscreen enabled boards. There is a whole range of highly researched and children centric system that we will incorporate in times to come.
Vision Statement
We aim to nurture the inherent potential of every child through the innovative Millennium Learning System. We are committed to creating lifelong learners who will be the leaders of tomorrow.

NIOS: An Institution with a Difference

Magazine

digitalLEARNING Network

February 2, 2012

NIOS strives to promote education in all sections of society in order to bring about an integrated development of the people
Dr S S Jena, Chairman, NIOS

The National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) prides itself for
being in a position to fulfil the basic education related needs of every student.Headquartered in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, the NIOS operates through a network of 15 regional centres, two sub-regional centres and over 3,700 study centres across India, Nepal and the Middle East. NIOS employs 251 fulltime staff. The importance of the institution lies in the fact that it serves the educational needs of school drop-outs and marginalised groups, including Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SCs and STs), rural youth, urban poor, girls, ex-servicemen and people with disabilities. Under the Open Learning System, NIOS is the only national level Board. The secondary and senior secondary programmes offered here are equivalent to the grade I 0 and 12 programmes of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and have the same status for admission to higher studies and employment. In fact, many students from NIOS go on to study at conventional schools and colleges including the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). In one specific instance a student, after having passed out of NIOS, completed a degree course in aeronautical engineering and is now pursuing higher studies in a prestigious university abroad.

Expanding the reach of education
Along with offering secondary level courses in three mediums of English, Hindi and Urdu, the NIOS also offers such courses in five regional languages namely Marathi, Telugu, Gujarati, Malayalam and Oriya. Senior secondary level programmes are offered in English, Hindi and Urdu medium. A number of vocational courses are also on offer to meet the demands of the job market and the interest of the learners. About 85 courses are on offer in the areas of Agriculture, Engineering and Technology, Health and Paramedical, Home Science and Hospitality Management, Computer and Information Technology, Business and Commerce and Teacher Training. The students taking the vocational programmes go on to provide the skilled manpower, a critical element in driving India’s economic growth

In 2010-2011, the NIOS had 4,70,834 enrolees and a cumulative student enrolment of 2.2 million in the 27 secondary subjects, 21 senior secondary subjects and over 80 certificate and diploma vocational programmes which implies an annual growth of about 14 percent to its total enrolment. Of the total learners enrolled, about 30 percent in the academic stream (Secondary & Sr. Secondary) and 55 percent in vocational education are girls, which is a substantial one. The majority of students are aged between 15-25 years.

Forging new partnerships in ODL To
reach out to its learners, the NIOS uses study centres that provide administrative and academic support. Those supporting the secondary and senior secondary students are called Accredited Institutions (AIs) and those supporting the vocational students are known as Accredited Vocational Institutions (AVIs). NIOS develops its own course materials, which are more appropriate for selfstudy. Printed Self Instructional study materials are supported by Audio-Video programmes. A half-yearly magazine ‘Open Learning’ is also provided to the learners. Approximately 3.93 lakh copies of combined study materials were despatched to the learners during the year 2010-11. At NIOS we have a Learner Support Centre (LSC) to address the problems of online learners that relate to admissions, courseware, examinations, results etc. Functioning on the pattern of a Call Centre, the Learner Support Executives respond to the queries of learners. The Adolescence Education Programme (AEP) of the NIOS in collaboration with MHRD and UNFPA has adopted a new approach with a focus on integrating subject knowledge with life skills. The NIOS is also in the process of developing a diploma course in Elementary Education for in-service training of elementary teachers.

Assessing the learners
For admissions and examinations the NIOS has a system of online registration, under the NIOS Online (Ni-On) Programme. Learners with different needs are served through four streams of online admission. The NIOS conducts examinations twice a year in April-May and October- November for the benefit
of the learners who can avail as many as nine chances to appear in the examinations. To introduce greater flexibility in the system, the NIOS has also introduced the On Demand Examination System (ODES) at the Secondary and Senior Secondary levels. These exams are conducted at the NIOS headquarters in Noida as well as its regional centres. The results are made available within 45 days on the NIOS website: www.nios.ac.in.

Educating India

Magazine

digitalLEARNING Network

February 2, 2012

The role of the private sector in education has become important for bringing technology to the myriad classrooms located in different parts of the country. Government has started focussing on public private partnership to take education to a different level. While celebrating its 75th issue, digitalLEARNING has invited private sector companies in education to discuss on how digital technologies are developing. Stalwarts from the private sector shared their vision on education in India and on their wish list from the government

K S Muralidhar
CEO, Learnsmart India Pvt Ltd

State of Digital education in 2011
In 2011, Aakash Tablet was launched but no one knows what could be the outcome of the same. Education technologies are shaping up well. However,connectivity and power remain a challenge.

Expectations for 2012
We expect Right to Education to be implemented fully. There are too many challenges to give compulsory education. Let us hope that ministry would come out with some implementable policies. I hope that the mindset will change in principals and school owners. Connectivity will increase in 2012.

Trends to rule 2012
Any adoptable technology will rule the roost. However, web based technologies have to wait for a long time India because of connectivity and power.

Dr Dheeraj Mehrotra DGM (K-12), S Chand Harcourt India Pvt Ltd

State of Digital education in 2011
The year 2011 saw a broad amount of success in the field of digital education in India, but we are yet to have an impact on larger sections of our students. Much more work needs to be done to ensure that e-learning becomes the preferred mode of delivering education.
Expectations for 2012
There has to be a new action from CBSE and other boards to ensure that adequate priority is given to digital framework of knowledge delivery in schools. The development through iPads and other assisting e-learning solutions have paved way to a novel mode of learning at schools.
Trends to Rule 2012
The leads in 2012 shall be iPad based knowledge support and online delivery of knowledge where the teachers shall remain portal to being just facilitators.

Ninad Vengurlekar
Vice President, IL&FS Education
State of Digital education in 2011
The year 2011 saw a greater acceptance of technology based education in schools. The digital education market has stabilised in schools in terms of offerings, quality, pricing as well as understanding. However, the biggest challenge is to further enhance the scope of digital technologies in our education system.

Role of Education Technologies
Education Technologies are shaping up rapidly in India. Learning is now being delivered through mobile phones and TV. Telecom operatorsare now waking up to this new untapped opportunity. DTH operators are building exclusive interactive educational channels for children and youth.

Expectations for 2012
The problem is not technology; the problem is of content that can guarantee learning outcomes. When world class learning content comes into play on world class technologies then magic will happen in education.

Trends to Rule 2012
I have great hopes from the stretch of high speed internet that runs across millions of homes and educational institutions across India. Small start-ups or even individuals can then start online schools, tuition classes and allow children, youth, housewives, employees, senior citizens to learn and educate themselves at their own pace.

Prof Pawan Gupta Educational & Management Consultants, SoftTech Engineers Pvt Ltd
State of Digital education in 2011
Digital Education in India is still in infancy. Even though many schools have adopted Smart classrooms, most are yet to make a move in that direction. If India wants to join the group of rich nations, then it has to use modern technological means in a big way for educating our youngsters. Leveraging of digital technology is the solution.

Expectations for 2012
State and central governments should make provision for much more financial
outlays for purchasing quality digital content.

Trends to rule 2012
Education for all will be possible only through the digital learning. Wish list to the government for policies, PPP Government should have a policy to understand the quality of content.

Rajiv Bhalla
Associate Vice President and Country Head, Sales & Marketing, NEC India
State of Digital education in 2011
The Indian education system has shown a sustainable growth over the past few years. Moreover, the advent of interactive technology in education system has given a boost to the overall Indian education system. The advanced technology tools are sure to better equip the teachers in imparting knowledge to students.

Technology trends to rule 2012
In the coming year, India’s education sector is likely to step up its IT spending. Increased spending is necessary if we wish to modernise the teaching learning process. The advent of 3D technology in education system is surely going to mark a revolution in the education sector as this is bound to better equip the teachers in imparting knowledge

Sudarshan Borker Founder-Business Head, Innovative Education
Concepts
State of Digital education in 2011
The year 2011 has been a great year for digital education. It has been the year of awareness and information. It has been a year of reaching out to the schools across India through seminars, conferences, and exhibitions. It has been a year when India has geared for next phase for digital education. With the increasing reach of broadband connectivity in India, there is scope and opportunity for developing new educational applications and solutions. Technology Trends to Rule 2012 Teacher friendly low cost solutions will emerge as a trend in 2012
Expectations from 2012
We expect the successful implementation of the RTE and more focus on the teacher training programme and enhancement of the work in education. Wish list from government for policies, PPP We expect that government should focus on teacher training programme to recognise and encourage teachers to teach; CCE implementation must be at all levels. We are also looking for IT Certification programme specially developed for teachers, recognition of innovative practices by the teaching community.

Sanjeev Mansotra Chairman and Group CEO, CORE Group
State of digital education in 2011
Education customers in India are going beyond IT enabled education practices like multimedia, IT enabled classrooms, etc. to transformational solutions that are based on more outcomes. Indian education system has long way to go, and government has taken some positive steps on CCE and it is expected to show results over the period of time.
Wishlist to the government for policies, PPP
India needs significant improvement in quality of education. Hence the governments at all levels should encourage PPP initiatives through infrastructure support, tax breaks, co-funding of local IP creation and the facilitation of capacity building of industry manpower.
Trends to rule 2012
We have seen various states adopting cloud based solutions, Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) in their operations and we expect these demands to grow to next level.

Nirmal Singh
Co-Founder and CEO, WheeBOX
State of Digital education in 2011
New partnerships are being forged in the education space. Private participation has extended beyond NSDC and many companies have come forward. Axis Bank and Bandhan jointly launched an Rs.100-crore initiative on providing skills training and assets to the marginalised in West Bengal. Education technology will play a larger role in integrating all modes of education.
Expectations for 2012
Government is unveiling a new manufacturing Policy that promises 100 million new jobs. The government should focus on using technology in education space, as this will lead to creation of new jobs.
Trends to rule 2012
Online Assessment,Analytics, and Virtual Delivery of classroom Wish list to government for policies, PPP PPP initiatives must play a major role in all forms of education. We need to get more private players involved in National Literacy Mission, Vocational Job Creation, and Upgrading Education Technology Solution in Higher Education Ecosystem

Mohammed Ghouse Regional Sales Manager (South & Western Asia), Luidia
State of Digital education in 2011
Indian education technology market is a “complete” market in the sense that there is enough scope for the industry to keep growing for many years to come. There is no end to interactive technologies that are being developed, there is easy availability of digital contents and there are millions of classrooms where
systems can be installed.

Wishlist to the government for policies, PPP
There must be enhanced financial provision for implementation of quality products in our schools.
Technology trends to rule 2012
Interactive and assessment technologies will continue to flourish.The customer will look for more features beyond just interactivity.

Sanjiv Pande Country Director, India and South Asia, for SMART Technologies
Digital Education in 2011
India has made extraordinary advances in education in recent years, but there is still a long way for us to go. India’s education sector is poised for substantial growth and progress.
Technology Trends to Rule 2012
There will continue to be product innovation and development with regards to
classroom technology. In India, less than 1 percent of classrooms currently have access to an interactive whiteboards (IWB), so there is clearly room for growth. The teacher’s computer becomes the classroom computer, allowing the full class to explore and understand together. Another clear trend is the increasing availability of quality digital resources.
Wish-list to the government for policies, PPP
The existing schools in the rural areas are lacking infrastructure and quality learning materials and are unable to adhere to set standards. The scope of higher education in villages and small cities is understandably scarce and is marked with major roadblocks of poor infrastructure, shortage of teachers and basic amenities like electricity. High student dropout rate is another major challenge

Kannan Bharadwaj CEO,Math Buddy
State of Digital education in 2011
Education technology market is still a highly under penetrated and there is lots of opportunities for making a difference. Schools have started to see value in the use of technology and more importantly, they started to see the difference it can make in a student’s level of understanding.
Wish-list to the government for policies, PPP
I believe that the area that requires a lot of focus is training of teachers in the use of technology in the classrooms. Setting up of technology should be accompanied by making teachers comfortable with these technologies. Government needs to set up agencies that will help overcome the gap in teacher
training and have certification programmes that will serve as a requirement for the teachers so that they actually use what they get trained in.
Technology trends to rule 2012
Proliferation of affordable tablets will surely be one of the biggest drivers for 2012. While I am a little skeptical whether this is going to make an immediate impact on a student’s learning, the cost of a tablet should surely make it attractive for many parents to get one and try it out. The online market should open up even more, with internet penetration getting better and 3G getting even cheaper.

Srikanth Iyer COO, Pearson Education
State of Digital education in 2011
In terms of technology, the Tablet has been a big breakthrough. Once the textbooks are available in digital format, they can be accessed through the Tablet. This will become the tipping point that will actually encourage a movement towards e-books. The education technology market is still at a nascent stage in India and we see fantastic growth potential. Primarily this is because, as a culture Indians and Indian parents take education very seriously.
Wish-list to the government for policies, PPP
My wish list would be that the government should implement PPP in running of schools, Currently I can see that there are 6-7 thousand rupees being spent on every child per year. While this money goes out of the government’s coffers, the full value of this amount is not reaching the child. By partly privatising this and implementing PPP in schools, I think the government can resolve the problem. I expect the government to divert more money in equipping classrooms with technology and not just the labs in government schools.
Technology trends to rule 2012
Tablets will take the path of ascendency. I see it as a leading trend in 2012 also

Welcoming the digital future

digitalLEARNING Network

February 2, 2012

Ravi_Gupta — Ravi Gupta, Editor-in-Chief

Dear Readers,
Warm welcome to the 75th issue of digitalLEARNING. Looking back, I can say that digitalLEARNING began its journey at a crucial point of time, because it was about 75 months ago that digital teaching tools began making deeper inroads into our system of education. To mark the 75th month of its publication, digitalLEARNING interacted with a galaxy of stakeholders, to find out the most compelling issues being faced in education. We have reached out to the schools and higher education institutes located in all parts of the country to get an overview of the digital technologies that have been deployed and the systems they would like to have in future.

The overwhelming view from the academia is that the digital push is set to go far beyond gadgets. It will transform the very nature of pedagogy; it aims to turn the teacher into a guide instead of a lecturer. The government too has warmed up to the idea of using ICT to expand the reach of education in the country. But this is not the whole story. At best, the digital technologies have met with mixed results. Many of our schools located in far-flung areas are lacking in basic infrastructure like electricity, so they are not in position to use modern technological tools.

The future of education in the digital age will mostly be determined by our ability to improve the overall infrastructure in the country. Lot of work has been done by digital learning organisations, but much more work needs to be done. By diligently reporting on the successes and the struggles of different sections of the industry, digitalLEARNING has helped in strengthening the foundations of the educational system in our country and beyond. It is possible that in times to come we may have educational approaches that will be more appropriate to the digital era than what we have now. This is the view of many stakeholders in education. Today companies in the digital learning space are doing well. But the leading members of the industry, whose views we have covered in this issue, are forthcoming about the challenges that lie ahead. We would like to thank all the co-travellers who have shared our vision during the magazine’s journey of 75 months. We hope you will find the 75th issue of digitalLEARNING informative and enjoyable.

Educomp Offers Tech Enabled Olympiad for School Students

digitalLEARNING Network

January 31, 2012

EducompOnline, an educational content and online school management resource for progressive schools, recently announced technology-enabled academic olympiad for school students across India—EduOlympiad. Conducted in over 400 cities across more than 5,000 schools, EduOlympiad is an extensive and inclusive competition for school students with multiple levels to prove their genius at a national level.

Open to all students from Classes 4 to 12, EduOlympiad is being conducted for two subjects — Science and Mathematics. The registration for EduOlympiad started on December 12, last year and will close on February 7.

Elaborating on this initiative, Pushkar Saran, Business Head, EducompOnline, shared the concept of EduOlympiad. “In continuation of Educomp’s heritage of technology-enabled education, we launched EduOlympiad, with which we wish to take the academic Olympiads to a new level for the new generation of students—for whom technology is a part of life. This is the first time that the reach of the competition, titled Genius in You, is across India, in smaller cities as well.”

‘Rashtriya Uchch Shiksha Abhiyan’ on Agenda

digitalLEARNING Network

January 31, 2012

University Grants Commission has proposed the ‘Rashtriya Uchch Shiksha Abhiyan’ (National Higher Education Mission) for enhancement of admissions to higher education, during the 12th plan period.

An increase in enrolment by 62.97 lakh has been projected during the Plan Period. At least 800 new colleges under Central universities, 400 new college cluster universities and a set of other new universities under various categories would be set up in the process reported the Pioneer.

The proposal also calls for introduction of integrated five-year programme at the university level during the 12th Plan period to enhance the gross enrolment ratio (GER) and to have better human resource. It intends to increase the potential of producing good researchers and teachers by exposing them to the university academics early.

National Testing Service Signs MoU with NGF College of Engineering & Technology

News

digitalLEARNING Network

January 31, 2012

National Testing Service -India has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with NGF College Of Engineering & Technology. Under NTS is situated the Central Institute Of Indian Languages (CIIL). At present Central Institute Of Indian Languages (CIIL) testing and evaluation in three major languages Hindi, Urdu, and Tamil.

There are many assessment institutions, accreditation and evaluation centers such as NAAC of UGC, NBA of Directorates etc for all level of education, but to meet the multiple demand of evaluation being received from various organizations of the country.

The objectives of National Testing Service India are to enlist the means and ends of education in reference to all discipline and languages.

Arunachal State Education Minister Directs SSA Rajya Mission to Release Teachers’ Salary

digitalLEARNING Network

January 31, 2012

State Education Minister Bosiram Siram during a meeting with Arunachal Teachers’ Association (ATA) and All Arunachal Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Teachers’ Association (AASSATA) has directed the SSA Rajya Mission to immediately release one month’s salary at enhanced rate reported Economic Times.

Even after the announcement the agitating teachers under AASSATA are unbendable to go with its proposed indefinite pen down strike. Siram informed that the state government has released an amount of Rs 25 crore towards state share for receiving central grant under SSA last week basing on which the state would receive the central grants very shortly. The AASSATA had earlier given an ultimatum with 2 points demand which includes release of enhanced salary and regularization of 2003 batch SSA teachers at one go.

1...1,1511,1521,153...1,745 Page 1,152 of 1,745

LATEST NEWS

JOIN US

LATEST NEWS

Top Trending News

Top Trending Categories