Page 1308 – Elets digitalLEARNING
Home Blog Page 1308

ICT facilities to 2000 more unions

In order to build on the government's vision to develop 'Digital Bangladesh' by 2021, ICT facilities will be expanded to 2000 more unions in the country by this year to reach such facilities to the doorsteps of the rural people. Mohammad Nazrul Islam Khan, National Project Director of Access to Information (A2I) Programme under the Prime Minister's Office mentioned that government also has plans to set up union information centres (UICs) in all 4484 unions by 2011 with a view to bringing the country's total population under ICT facilities.

Besides, services like composing, printing, photo, scanning, email, internet browsing and multimedia projector will be provided to the rural people at a nominal price, explained Khan. Additionally it was reported that the A2I Programme has been providing field- level training to the concerned people. Initially, community-based e-centres (CECs) were set up in two unions within a pilot project of Democratic Government Thematic Trust Fund (DGTTF) in May 2007 with a view to reaching the ICT facilities to the doorsteps of the rural people.

Nod to NCHER from educational advisory body

On June 19, 2010, the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) mulled and endorsed setting up of the proposed National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) as an apex/ regulatory body. This body is to be entrusted with framing policy, and to bring within its ambit, medical education and other disciplines of higher education and research.

There is a turf war going on between the HRD Ministry and other Ministries over bringing all disciplines of higher education within the purview of NCHER. Another proposal on National Academic Depository Bill 2010, for the creation and maintenance of a national electronic database of academic records and awards, also received a 'yes' at the meeting. On implementation of the Right to Education, the states expressed some practical problems and demanded that the Centre share at least 90 % of the cost.

US education initiative receives funds from Investment guru

Peter Lynch, the legendary investor, is donating US$20 million to train school principals in Boston, in order to make them equipped with the latest in a growing list of high net worth individuals to publicly champion philanthropy. Last week, Microsoft (MSFT.O) founder Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway the two wealthiest Americans, said they were asking hundreds of U.S. billionaires to give away at least 50 % of their wealth. With the believe that the wealthy should give back to the society Lynch's fortune is considerably more modest. Lynch, now vice chairman of Fidelity Management and Research Co.,and his wife, Carolyn, have long funded educational initiatives through the Lynch Foundation, their philanthropic organization. The Fellow principals will be selected from Boston's 135 public schools, 16 charter schools and 135 parochial schools.

8 new specialised courses at BSD from this academic year

An announcement was made regarding launch of eight new specialised courses by Business School of Delhi (BSD), Greater Noida, India's one of the premier B-Schools, from the forthcoming academic session starting 2010-2012. These courses will add-on to the regular AICTE approved two year full time Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) course. These unique course have been designed in a way, that the students get prepared to face the challenges of the corporate world from the day one of their incorporation. The courses include SAP (Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing; K2 Knowledge Kinetics; Administrative Management; The Cambridge ESOL exam course; Certified Technical Analyst; Advance Certificate Programme in vital areas of Management; Six Sigma; and Open Learning Diploma in Business Entrepreneurship.


NIIT brings Mobile Science Labs into Classrooms

NIIT, leading Global Talent Development Corporation and Asia's largest IT trainer, in association with Fourier Systems, a worldwide leader in science education,  on June 15, 2010 demonstrated Mobile Science Lab for schools- an innovative learning solution which integrates Science Lab with classrooms. World Chess Champion and NIIT MindChampion Viswanathan Anand unveiled this revolutionary solution while highlighting the importance of 24*7 experiential learning. Also present on the occasion were Sanjiv R Pande, President, School Learning Solutions & HiWEL, NIIT Ltd, Tamar Antokol, Director

Kovair Announces the ALM Studio for Applications Development

Kovair announced that it has brought all the key point applications for an ALM-SDLC implementation in a single package under a single data repository called the ALM Studio. These include the Requirements Management, Test Management, Defect/Issue Management, Release Management, Risk Management and Project Management. This is a fully configured Applications Suite with best practices work flows for Requirements review and approval, test planning, development test execution and defects resolution. Additionally, Kovair's flexible and configurable work flow and the configurable application entities allow the users to configure it for their specific needs irrespective of the development methodology they are following whether it be the traditional Waterfall, Iterative or Agile.

With Kovair's proven Omnibus Bidirectional Integration Middleware, the ALM Studio has been integrated for all the popular development IDEs like Eclipse, Microsoft Visual Studio and the Rational Application Developer allowing the developers to continue to work in their familiar environments and yet have complete access to all the artifacts for Requirements, Test Cases and Defects from the ALM Studio. With Kovair's further integrations with its Omnibus for Configuration Management tools like Subversion, Clearcase, Perforce and TFS, developers can trace their source code to requirements and defects providing end to end traceability. For testing, the testers can build test scripts in tools like the HP Quick Test Pro (QTP), the Rational Functional Tester (RFT) and execute them automatically from the Test Lab in the Kovair ALM Studio. Any other test automation tools can also be integrated with the Kovair Test Lab through the Omnibus.

For Project Management; task management, time management, resource analysis and allocation, what if analysis, Gant charts and Dashboard capabilities are all built into the ALM Studio. The ALM Studio comes with multiple types of integrated reporting and dashboards for key project metrics and status

SIIA Releases Trends Report on K-12 and Postsecondary Education Technology

An announcement was made by the Education Division of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) reagrding the release of its most recent report on the K-12 and postsecondary education technology markets

Market driven school system in Britain, a possibility

The Conservative-Liberal government has started processing fast tracking of an Academies Bill through Parliament. Together with an Education and Children's Bill in the autumn, the new arrangements will lay the basis for a market-driven, competitive system of schools, free from Local Authority control and increasingly run by the private sector. This kind of system fore-communicates a severe deterioration in teachers' pay and conditions and the creation of profoundly unequal education for Britain's children.

The Bill, which will turn into law this summer, is to allow a planned 500 secondary and 1,700 primary schools to apply for academy status for September and leave Local Authority control. For the first time, primary schools will be able to apply to become academies. Also, allowed would be all all schools judged 'outstanding' by Ofsted, the government inspectorate, to apply directly to the Education Secretary for 'academy status'. They will also be free from routine Ofsted inspections. Exempted from normal rules of public procurement and operating as private concerns, the academies outsourcing contracts must be advertised and subject to competitive bidding. They are also exempt from freedom of information legislation.

The Academies Bill, additionally, is to allow schools to become 'Free Schools' to be run by outside providers, along the lines of the growing private school network in Sweden. This step of turning schools in to academies and introducing Free Schools will lead to a network of elite institutions in which access to a good education will be based on selection, overwhelmingly using the criteria of social class and the ability to pay. The academies are required to be specifically tailored to the requirements of business and their sponsors.

Saskatchewan, Canada scouting for Indian educational ties

Exploration of Indian varsities for research collaborations in several fields including sustainable development and nuclear energy research is underway by Canadian province of Saskatchewan, mentioned Rob Norris, Minister of Advanced Education, Employment and Labour of Saskatchewan. Rob Norris is currently touring India and under Norris, is being lead a team of educational institutes' representatives. Several educational institutes including IIT-Madras, University of Madras, SRM University amongst others have already been visited. The Minister and his delegation have already met 20 educational players in an academic round table at the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi.

Queensland Kids to get a kick start with massive investment in education

$9.5 billion education and training budget this year has been detailed-out by the Bligh Government. This is a massive investment that implies more kindergartens, sooner, and extra teachers and teacher's aides on the education frontline. Education and Training Minister Geoff Wilson mentioned the investment amounted to almost a quarter of the entire State Budget.

In February this year the Government released the Flying Start Green Paper to prepare the Queensland (Australia) education system for the future. Wilson mentioned that the budget has been designed to support delivery of many proposals including commitment to fund up to 240 extra kindergarten services. Key investment initiatives include $25.8 million will be allocated to the Literacy and Numeracy Action Plan in 2010-11 to build the reading, writing and numeracy skills of students, particularly in the primary school years; $19 .5 million will be provided under the second year of the $43.5 million three-year Science Spark program to improve science teaching; $14.1 million for an additional 5,000 teacher aide hours per week under the second year of the Government's $43 million three-year commitment to an additional 15,000 hours a week of teacher aide time in primary schools.

LATEST NEWS