BHAU institute, Eaton announce ‘Ignited Innovators of India’ 2011

Higher Education

By

-

September 6, 2011

BHAU institute in association with Eaton, announces the start of annual social entrepreneurship movement 'Ignited Innovators of India' at College of Engineering, Pune. This movement aims to provide a platform to students who are willing to become social entrepreneurs and intends at bring a small but significant change in the world around them. The motto of I2India movement being 'I see, I own, I solve', inspires the youth to take responsibility and 'be' the change in the society.

This initiative will commence its activities from September 20th, 2011. Students from around 100 colleges in Maharashtra will be encouraged to participate and implement social entrepreneurship projects. Setting up an objective of 200 social projects this year, the whole drive aims to give a platform to all those students who have an innovative idea and wishes to implement during their students life. BHAU Institute along with Eaton will be present at each step of the projects to provide with the funding, mentorship and network opportunities to the participants. Managers from Eaton will be assigned as mentors to students for the guidance and betterment of the projects.

“The uniqueness of the program is its simplicity and freedom. Students are expected to propose an idea and start implementing on their projects. These projects will aim at making a social difference in the lives of people and society in the best possible way. The vision for the project is to develop mainstream entrepreneurs with a will to generate employment and money, as well as benefit to the society”, says Dr A D. Sahasrabudhe, Director, College of Engineering, Pune.

Along with the founders of BHAU institute Narendra Kale, Sanjay Inamdar, Dr Nickhil Jakatdar, Atul Kirloskar; this year Eaton has also generously funded this initiative. Last year this initiative witnessed a participation of more than 400 students with the implementation of 103 projects. This year I2India aims at more than 200 projects with more than 1000 student's involvement.

Explaining about the project Narendren Nair, Director – HR, Eaton India says, “I2India initiative is focussed towards bringing social change in the society. The students will have to identify social problems and find an innovative solution to the problem. We as an organisation are committed to supporting activities that build stronger and safer society. This year our company will sponsor the complete project and also our employees will be actively involved as mentors to the students to help them achieve results with excellence.”

Social Media Campaign to Connect Alumni and Professors on Teacher

Corporate Updates

By

digitalLEARNING Network

-

September 5, 2011

Viburnix, the alumni relations cloud software, a product of Saviance Technologies, launched a month long social media Marketing Campaign on Teacher's Day. This campaign will reach out to C-Level executives, VP's and Senior Managers through LinkedIn and Economictimes.com. There is something special and nostalgic about college days and hence this campaign, aims to re-connect the target audience with their favorite teachers and help them relish special relationship shared when in college. The alum can send personalized messages, a special gift and pictures from their college days to their teachers that will help nurture the special bond shared between them. Commemorating the birthday of the great teacher Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, the one-month long campaign starts on September 5th 2011 and ends on October 5th 2011, marking the whole month as the 'Teacher's Month'.

This marketing campaign will provide an innovative platform to alumnus across India to bring alive the treasured connections with their Institutions and professors. In order to send a customized message to their teacher, one needs to click on the advertisement running on LinkedIn and Economictimes.com, which will land them on the Viburnix page where a few simple questions need to be filled by the alum with the details of their favourite teacher and a special message for them. Once the form is completed, a customized box will be sent (with a gift box) to the teacher of that college / university.

On this special occasion, Kaushik Bellani, CEO, Saviance Technologies said, “Teacher's Day is that one day when we can show all our gratitude and appreciation to our teachers who have encouraged us with utmost devotion. Over the years our experience in building Collaborative & customized online Alumni Communities for educational institutes through our product Viburnix, has given us a first-hand understanding of the special bond shared between students and teachers across college / university and through this Marketing Campaign Saviance Technologies aims to help a person relive their best years of life and send a message to the professor who has made a lasting impression on their life.”

CLASSEDGE targets 1000 Schools for this year

K-12

By

digitalLEARNING Network

-

September 4, 2011

Tata Interactive Systems (TIS) announced the implementation of CLASSEDGE, its integrated learning solution for the K-12 sector in 100 schools across 52 cities in India. These schools are affiliated to various boards such as CBSE, ICSE, IGCSE and State Boards.

The initiative is in line with TIS' objective of covering over 1000 schools across 125 cities by the end of this academic year. During this period, the company aims at increasing its employee base in the school division from 250 to 600. Currently TIS employs 200 business development managers in over 125 cities pan India.

Commenting on the occasion, Sanjaya Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, Tata Interactive Systems, said, “Earlier this year, with the launch of CLASSEDGE, we had set an ambitious goal of covering over 1000 schools by end of this academic year. Today, with over 100 schools already signed for this program, I am confident of meeting our targets on time.”

He further added, “It's heartening to see the adoption of Digital Classroom by academic institutions. It not only reflects the changing dynamics of education in our country but also the way it is imparted. At TIS we believe that to improve the quality of education in India we need to focus equally on teachers and students. This is where CLASSEDGE Lesson Plan approaches scores. Lesson Plan, unlike other available solutions in the market, provides complete framework of teaching a particular chapter and addresses the 'How to teach' problem of a teacher.”

CLASSEDGE uses the latest technology in terms of projector, updating content through cloud computing which makes real time updation possible. Apart from technology their biggest USP's are the way in which CLASSEDGE has been conceptualized i.e. Multiple Learning Experiences Model and empowering teachers with the Lesson Plan approach.

CLASSEDGE has a core in-house creative team, which consists of teachers, instructional designers and software programmers who continuously create, develop and upload the lesson content. The Multiple Learning Experiences Model- the CLASSEDGE instructional framework- is based on the premise that students learn better through a variety of multisensory experiences, including hands-on activities, discussions, debates, creative and critical thinking activities, collaborative research, field trips and multimedia. Lesson Plans are designed to help schools implement effective teaching practices across curricula. India's supplemental education represents a $15 billion market opportunity over the next decade. The market for technology-enabled learning solutions in the Indian school education sector has experienced a double digit annual growth over the last five years. India's current literacy rate is still a low 65% and so the Government is keen to promote educational initiatives to achieve 100 percent literacy by 2020. Needless to say, technology-enabled learning will be critical in revamping India's education system, which has over 15 lakh schools in both private and public domains.

BSE announces international finance programme

Higher Education

By

digitalLEARNING Network

-

September 2, 2011

BSE Training Institute Ltd has announced an international finance programme “Global Exposure in Financial Markets – Destination Canada” to offer exposure on financial markets of Toronto and Montr

Great Lakes Announces its Presence in Delhi NCR

Higher Education

By

digitalLEARNING Network

-

September 2, 2011

Great Lakes Institute of Management announced its presence in Delhi with the launch of its programs at its Gurgaon campus. With its Delhi NCR campus, Great Lakes would be well-positioned to engage with and address the management talent needs of the leading Indian and MNC corporations in Delhi NCR and become a resource center for them providing consulting, research and customized programs to meet their needs and challenges.

The programs being launched in Delhi include programs for working professionals as well as the full-time flag ship one-year PGPM that is ranked among the best in the country. The programs for working professionals include the two-year PGWPM weekend program that has been successfully running at Great Lakes Chennai campus and the new PGWPM (Energy), an energy sector focused weekend program for working professionals.

The Post Graduate Working Professional Program in Management (PGWPM), one of the key offerings of Great Lakes for executive management education, is a two-year program with classes held on alternate weekends with similar courses and credits as the flagship PGPM program of Great Lakes. The program was launched in Chennai very successfully two years back and has helped many working professionals in South India upgrade their business skills. This program is now being launched in Delhi NCR to offer the same benefits to working professionals in North India. This highly acclaimed PGWPM program would commence in Gurgaon from January 2012 and is tailored towards industry professionals with a minimum of two years of experience. The program has a total fee of Rs 6 lakhs and admissions will open from the first week of October 2011.

IU to partner with two Indian management institutes

News

By

digitalLEARNING Network

-

September 2, 2011

Through the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, Indiana University (IU) will expand its presence in India through partnerships with two Indian Institute of Management locations under memorandum of understandings signed on Aug 31st 2011.

The signings are part of an 11-day visit to India by IU President Michael A McRobbie and several university administrators and deans. During the trip, which includes stops in Mumbai, Bangalore, New Delhi and Hyderabad, the presidential group will meet with several Indian universities as well as alumni, businesses and leading politicians, including Indian Vice President Shri M Hamid Ansari.

“We live, work and learn in an increasingly global world, which demands that we provide our students and faculty with myriad international opportunities in order to provide the best education possible,” McRobbie said. “The partnerships we are forging and the contacts we are making in India are consistent with our international strategic plan and will open the door for future opportunities in this important part of the world.” IU already has strong student and faculty ties to India: Of the university's 7,000 international students, 800 are from India, the third-largest international population at IU. The university also has more than 240 faculty members of Indian descent.

The five-year agreement with Indian Institute of Management Lucknow will formalise and expand the relationship between the Kelley School and Lucknow, while the partnership with IIM Rohtak is the first collaboration between IU and the newest IIM.The memorandum of understanding with IIM Rohtak, also a five-year agreement, will initially focus on faculty research workshops and doctoral student development. Eventually, the Kelley School and IIM Rohtak hope to offer a dual executive MBA program targeting working professionals in India.

“This is a very special day for Indiana University, the Kelley School and India,” said Kelley School Dean Dan Smith. “At the Kelley School, we think these types of collaborations are the way of the future as we look to provide our students with a unique educational experience. IIM Lucknow is one of the most innovative institutes of its kind in India, and IIM Rohtak has the promise to become a marquee member of the IIM family. IIM is the leading name in business education in India, and we are proud to be partners with both institutions.”

India needs more than 2.91 lakh classrooms for elementary education

News

By

digitalLEARNING Network

-

September 2, 2011

It is estimated that approximately 2.91 lakh and 1.77 lakh classrooms are required at the elementary and secondary stage of education respectively. As per District Information System for Education (DISE) 2009-10, there are a total of 58.00 lakh classrooms at the elementary level (Government

Skills Training for ITeS in South Africa: A PPP Model

Magazine

By

digitalLEARNING Network

-

September 1, 2011

www.niit.com

The Public Private Partnership Model has evolved as a key requirement for sustainable and scalable developmental programmes. With skills training becoming an important requirement to cater to the needs of the rapidly growing economy, the featured case study demonstrates a method for effective skills training programmes through collaboration between NIIT, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Government of South Africa

By Ajai Manohar Lal, Chief Business Officer, Individual Learning Solutions – IT (International), NIIT

Skill development in the IT Industry has assumed great importance on account of the massive shortage of manpower in this sector. The National Skill Development Corporation has listed the IT and IT enabled services (ITeS) Industry as the one of the key growth sectors that would face severe manpower crunch if adequate arrangements are not made to train human resources. According to the reports of IDC, NASSCOM, close to US $ 1.7 trillion is spent on hardware and IT related services and this spending has been growing at more than 7 percent Compund Annual Growth (CAGR). It is anticipated that IT Services will grow at a CAGR of 6 to 7 percent till 2012 and ITES is expected to grow at 10 to 12 percent over the same period. Several private industry players in the skills training sector have entered into the training field in order to cater to the manpower requirements. This need is not only limited to India but also in various other countries.

One of the innovative initiatives in this field has been that of the Department of Economic Development and Tourism of Kwa Zulu Natal

New Pedagogy through Mobile Technology for Parents with Special Needs Children

Magazine

By

digitalLEARNING Network

-

September 1, 2011

Mobile technology has come to be used extensively across the world. The article features the use of mLearning in Malaysia for various purposes, including those of addressing the needs of parents with special needs children. The DHH Mobile Project of Universiti Sains Malaysia uses the technology to 'bridge' education divide by providing extensive research for Deaf or Hard of Hearing (DHH) children

By Dr Issham Ismail, Universiti Sains Malaysia

Approximately 90 to 95% of Deaf or Hard of Hearing (DHH) children are born to hearing parents who know very little about deafness and its diagnosis or impact on the child development. It is axiomatic that the hearing parents of these DHH children need as much information as possible to help them to deal or cope with their children. Hearing parents of DHH children May experience many challenges and obstacles that affect multiple areas of family life. There are four domains of family life namely the interactions, resources, parenting and support services, that have been noted to be highly impacted by deafness.

Parents need to find adaptive ways to cope with these demands in their family life, which in turn will promote their own adjustments and functioning as parents of DHH children. In line with these demands, a research was conducted by Hintermair in 2006 to promote human strengths and parents' quality of life. Hintermair found that shaping an effective training by the healthcare professionals' is vital to identify factors that promote successful coping with the demands faced by parents of a child with a cochlear implant (CI). Similar scenario is expected in the case of parents to DHH children.

In Malaysia, there are very few hearing parents who know about deafness and its impact on the child language and language acquisition development. Most of these parents are either ignorant of the importance or do not have access to information. Thus, the DHH Mobile Project was initiated by mobilelearning@usm, a part of Universiti Sains Malaysia, in August 2010 to fulfill the needs of hearing parents of DHH children in terms of basic sign language. As such, these parents are able to interact effectively with their improved knowledge in basic sign language. The objective of the project has been to introduce educational pedagogy for parents of special needs through DHH MMS.

A pilot study was conducted on the parents of DHH students in Federation School for the Deaf, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia. At the beginning stage of the project, parents were asked to rate their level of knowledge on the basic hand sign language and their consent was gathered to sent MMS messages. The MMS content of the basic hand sign language included the alphabets A-Z and numbers 1-9 which was to be transmitted using an in-house interactive system. This study had been performed for 3 months among the normal parents whereby MMS content was loaded into the system for a scheduled delivery on a daily basis.

Recent advancement in mobile technology has given a boost to many sectors and services which includes the education sector. Mobile technology applications provide unique opportunities for both learners and educators, by providing greater flexibility, thereby enabling education to take place anytime, anywhere and by anyone without boundaries. Therefore, mobile technology serves as a new pedagogy for parents with special needs children.

Attractions of Mobile Technology

Some of the special features that have made the technology more innovative are its easy access and affordability. The mobile phone technology can be utilized anytime, anywhere and anyone for DHH purposes. The mobile technology provides an opportunity for a short piece of information to be delivered to the students or parents without the constraint of space and time.

The DHH Mobile Project has been used to help parents in accessing content (sign language) and learning materials, assisting parents of Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH), and improve interaction between parents and children. It has provided a platform for sign language educators for dissemination of information and knowledge to the public. Users also have the option of browsing through the archives at their convenience.

Mobile technology applications provide unique opportunities for both learners and educators, by providing greater flexibility, thereby enabling education to take place anytime, anywhere and by anyone without boundaries

How Mobile Technology Scores Among Users

Several previous research studies have encompassed preliminary study on the acceptance on mobile phone usage and SMS-learning amongst distance learners. Presently, the team at USM has focused on 2 main cohort of mobile learning which are formal and informal pocket education. Formal Pocket Education embraces System Pocket Education which proposes a mobile platform via Pocket Education. It provides mobile learning services which suit the requirements and needs from various users, particularly for university subjects. The project also explores the awareness of mobile learning system in education world among IPTA's in Malaysia.

Linguistic Pocket Education plays a vital role in identifying the communicative functions of SMS messages which are important to be employed in SMS learning from the perception of USM students and instructors. On the other hand, Value Added Service (VAS) is used to design and develop a SMS system to support teaching and learning which will track the navigating behaviour of students using SMS as a learning tool. In this cohort, project on the special education needs is focused in identifying the level of knowledge in sign language among the normal parents of deaf students before and after using the mobile learning. Users receive their messages upon registration via the DHH Mobile site by using their respective hand phone numbers. The DHH Mobile management unit is fitted with multi-provider slot to cater to the different lines subscribed by the users and thereby reducing the cost of delivery Apart from receiving messages, users have the option to browse the archives at their convenience. Users are also able to pose a question via the hand phone that will appear in the management site for the attention of the Sign Language Educator. The programme consists of a web-based management unit that was home-grown and can be offered on a trial period.

The second cohort explores informal pocket education merely by addressing aspects on Islamic, sustainability and health issues. Sustainability issue is also a focus in this project on examining the awareness of communicative functions of SMS messages which are important to be employed in SMS learning from the perception of USM students and instructors. The project involves health education which is crucial on postnatal care by providing SMSs to new mother's on physical and mental information during the confinement period.

www.usm.my

Public Private Partnerships: The Fast Track Way to Education Reforms

By

digitalLEARNING Network

-

September 1, 2011

The education sector today is seeing tremendous amount of enthusiasm and participation from all stakeholders across spectrum. The past few years have witnessed the maximum number of educational reforms being undertaken by the Government. The education targets set by the government have been hugely ambitious and aggressive by all means. The Government of India is now open to Public Private Partnerships (PPP) like never before, in order to achieve its goals.

If we glance through the higher education sector, the government attempts to attain a GER of 30 percent by 2020, which effectively means reaching an enrollment figure of 40 million. It is estimated that an additional 33,000 institutions will be required, with an investment of `1,000,000 crores to accomplish this mammoth task.

Even in the skills training field, the current national target is to skill 500 million people by 2020. However, with the present training capacity of India, it is estimated that we will be able to skill only 4.2 million per year. That leaves a gap of upto 10 times in achieving the national target!

Attaining the said numbers would require colossal amount of investment and resources which the government alone cannot strive to achieve. In this, the PPP model has to be adopted with full force and vigor.

The National Knowledge Network throws open tremendous possibilities for all solution providers in the education sector. The National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT), National Programme for Technology Enabled Learning (NPTEL) and related IT activities of the government have all emphasised on the involvement of the private sector to address educational concerns. The immense amount of research and development efforts undertaken by the private stakeholders and the diverse number of educational tools, if effectively deployed, would help put governmental efforts on the fast track.

Today, India is a leader of the education sector. Partnership model would help actualise the educational priorities of the country, and also integrate the efforts of a large segment of education stakeholders into the developmental arena. With the amalgamation of the best of both worlds, education will only scale new heights in the coming years.

LATEST NEWS

Top Trending News

Top Trending Categories