Two primary schools in Meath are to receive upgraded high-speed broadband, an announcement made by Communications Minister Eamon Ryan's, was welcomed by Meath D
Interchangeable ideas in Educational and Sports
The British Council along with the Union Human Resource Development Ministry and the Union Youth Affairs and Sports Ministry has launched an initiative called 'International Inspiration' to provide physical education curriculum at the primary school stage as a run-up to the 2012 Olympics. The initiative has been launched across the country. The initiative aims to explain how physical education and sports can be used to empower young boys and girls in schools and local community to raise standards in all areas of school life.
The British Council with the Youth Sport Trust has carried out a series of training and development activities in schools. The association between the British Council and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has led to the publication of 'Physical Education Cards India: Manual for Primary school Teachers,' a major part of which is the Physical Education Cards (PEC) being used in Britain. The main purpose of the material is to sustain the initiatives, reinforce the transaction process of physical education at primary stage and strengthen the delivery infrastructure. A pilot workshop is being organized by the British Council and the CBSE for the PEC in Delhi which aims at primary and physical education teachers from CBSE, Delhi State and Kendriya Vidyalaya schools. It intends at familiarization of the programme, active interaction with school principals, teachers and implementing practical examples. This will enhance the knowledge base of the current delegates for delivering PEC lessons more effectively, which will make them model practitioners of their environment and training other colleagues in their schools.
Intel and Government to increase ICT capability in Sri Lanka
Intel and Sri Lankan government are working together with former's aim at investing in public-private ventures for the advancement and spread of IT knowledge in the country. Having invested substantially in the country's education sector in terms of enhancing IT knowledge among students and especially teachers, Intel held discussions with the Education Ministrythe private sector and other PC manufacturers in the country last week in a bid to increase the Intel Teach programme, and to provide low priced PCs in addition to improving WiMax solutions.
The WiMax system will be in place this year. Similar models will be carried out by Intel in other countries like the Philippines, Japan and Malaysia, in order to reach out to the rural areas of those countries, increase users and lower the cost of PCs. With Intel's focus being on education, the organisation stated that most have not fully benefited from the Internet wave. In this respect, Intel is currently in the process of targeting the education of teachers in the IT sector in a bid to assist students to have a more interactive method of education through the use of computers. In addition, Intel aims at accelerating its assistance to the north and east of the country, while simultaneously assisting students in science and engineering. The Education Ministry has had discussions with regard to teacher training in the north and east; the government has agreed to assist in the expansion of this plan. ICT basics of teaching will be provided for teachers on how to integrate the school curriculum with ICT, enabling them to conduct their classes for students through the use of the PCs in an interactive mode. With 10 million teachers trained around the world, Intel Teach has conducted this programme in Sri Lanka. It has already targeted 10,000 teachers and is continuing with the project, explained Sri Lanka Liaison Office Country Business Manager, Indika de Zoysa. Discussions with the Telecommunication and Regulatory Commission in Sri Lanka (TRCSL) Director General Priyantha Kariyapperuma were positive. Assistance in terms of expanding on the scope for the use of WiMax solutions in Sri Lanka with the formulation of policies and knowledge transfer were discussed. He noted that the Telcos also had positive sentiments in assisting for the provision of WiMax solutions and broadband capability. During its meeting with the private sector, Intel geared to provide necessary background in the assistance for the growth of businesses in the country by educating consumers, bringing out new chips and talking about the roadmap of Intel.
India and Germany to partner for education venture
In a discussion between Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Human Resource Development (MHRD) and Professor Max. G. Huber, Vice President of the German Academic Exchange Service, recently, it was tabled that India and Germany are likely to setup a joint working group on education. This working group will act as an umbrella organization that encompasses all areas including research, academic training programmes, setting up of chairs in each other's countries', academic and faculty exchange programmes, etc.
Sibal pointed out that the area in which India and Germany could work together was in skill development. He talked about the HRD Ministry proposal to set up community polytechnics, which will specialise in imparting skills. He cited the example of the several German automobile units in India, for which skilled manpower could be generated through a focused programme in skill development between India and Germany, which will benefit both countries. The German delegation expressed their interest in imparting of joint degrees by Germany and India. The HRD Minister stated that the opening up of the education sector in India was proposed in the HRD Ministry's 100 day plan.
Kerela students compete for 250,000 dollar prize
In a global competition for the best business plan, Innoz, a company floated by students of LBS College of Engineering at Kasargode in the state, is the only Indian start-up among 16 such firms vying for a US$250,000 prize money. Co-sponsored by US based venture capitalist Draper Fisher Jurveston (DFJ) and networking and communications technology major Cisco, the competition is for university and business school students. In addition to the financial investment awarded to the winner, DFJ and Cisco will assist all the 16 finalists to take their projects forward.
The only other finalist with an India link is Husk Power, floated by students of Darden School of Business, University of Virginia. Their project relates to miniature power plants that cost-effectively convert rice husks into electricity, serving off-grid Indian villages. Since its founding in 1985, DFJ has backed over 500 companies including Hotmail (later acquired by Microsoft), Skype (acquired by eBay), Overture (acquired by Yahoo) and Feedburner (acquired by Google). The Innoz project is an SMS text messaging interface for trivia and other information for 300 million Indian cell phone subscribers. Innoz Technologies was registered last August, and in November, Ravindran and three other students launched the text messaging interface. Innoz is the first virtual incubated company in Technopark, the information technology park here. The capital for the company came from contributions of INR 1 lakh each from the four partners.
India rubbishes MIT’s laptop scheme for kids
The Human Resources Development ministry in India has rejected the idea of 'one-laptop-per-child' (OLPC) being aggressively marketed by Nicholas Negroponte of MIT Media Laboratory. The ministry says, India must not allow itself to be used for experimentation with children in this area.
The ministry's detailed objection based on technical, social and financial grounds was sent to the Planning Commission two weeks ago. Negroponte had made a presentation on OLPC on April 7 seeking to sell one million laptops at the rate of USD100 per unit for children, the cost to be borne by the government. HRD contends that spending INR 450 crore on digital empowerment can be better spent on primary and secondary education. It is quite obvious that the financial expenditure to be made on the scheme will be out of public funds. It would be impossible to justify an expenditure of this scale on a debatable scheme when public funds continue to be in inadequate supply for well-established needs listed in different policy documents, the ministry says. It also finds it intriguing as to “why no developed country has been chosen” for MIT's OLPC experiment given the fact that most of the developed world is far from universalising the possession and use of laptops among children of 6-12 age group. The ministry says 6-12 is a highly vulnerable age group to cover in an area of human technology interface which is so new and heavily debated.
Leveraging Technologies to Facilitate Change in Education Systems
Introduction
The time is opportune for India to make its transition to the knowledge economy – an economy that creates, disseminates, and uses knowledge – to enhance its growth and development. Universities are now experiencing competitive pressures resulting from the reduction in government financial support and the consequent need for enterprising approaches to revenue generation.
Universities need to be consciously and explicitly managing the process associated with the creation of their knowledge assets and to recognise the value of their intellectual capital to their continuing role in society and a wider global marketplace for higher education. Almost all institutions whether public or private engaged in imparting higher education within or any part of the globe will store, access, capture, share and deliver knowledge from faculty members to students and community. The total advancement and adaptation of technologies in any organisation would depend upon the management strategy, availability of funds and the procedures adopted. The most common techniques used for managing knowledge assets are:-
Decision Support techniques – They are tools services as data mining, simulators, artificial intelligence or the integration of all of them in an OLAP (Online AnalyticalProcessing). By making right information available at the right time to the right decision makers, in the right manner, data warehousing and decision support technologies empower employees to become knowledge workers with the ability to make the right decisions and solve problems creating strategic leverage for the organisations.
Groupware solutions- It is to apply variety of computer based systems designed to allow people to communicate with each other to complete projects. The most common feature of group solutions re electronic mails and messaging online calendars or diaries of employees; project management , Total Quality Management and environmental manuals document
and best practices (expert diaries or yellow pages) desktop video conferencing online catalogues of library materials book , journals articles and workflow tools. Following are some of the techniques, the use of which will enhance the competitive capacity of Knowledge Management (KM) in Higher education. Data Mining: It is a process of discovering meaningful new co-relations, patterns and trends by sifting through large amount of data stored in repositories and by using pattern recognition technologies as well as statistical and mathematical techniques by Gartner Group. e-Learning: e-Learning is the use of electronic multimedia technology to deliver education, information skill, knowledge and individual learning programmes to large audiences , potentially around the globe ,
PERSPECTIVE
Dr. M.S.Rawat using internet and other technology based systems. E-learning is one of the most important Knowledge Management (KM) practices, something which one would expect
higher education institutions to have as an advantage. Yet these e-learning opportunities are geared most often to student as online customers, not to employees as part of capitalising on their knowledge as an intellectual asset. Total Quality Management in Higher Education (T.Q.M): Some colleges and universities are beginning to recognize the T.Q.M values as more compatible with higher education than existing management system”. TQM in any rganization is a dynamic and progressive approach. The success of TQM would largely depend on the educational leaders/administrators accepting responsibility for providing better quality of services. It calls for redesign of work systems, redefining objectives, roles and responsibilities .In such a process “quality” is the permeating ethic in community and organisation delivering maximum welfare. Human Resource Information System
(HRIS) in context of Higher Education:
The establishment of HRIS looks towards the integration and support for three essential, corporate processes: strategic planning, operational planning and human resource planning (including career planning). The essential components of an HRIS are accuracy, combined with timeliness, to increase reporting capacity and controlling the whole systems to achieve accuracy, confidentiality. HRIS, moves from isolation to integration and facilitates holistic approach of education. Basic objective of HRIS include standardisation of activities and processes, reduced paper work, information at fingertips, improved service delivery, enhanced efficiency at work, enables effective analysis, student self service (SSS)/Open systems, web systems/analysis, web systems/user’s ID/passwords for users’s perspective.
Digital Dashboards:
A digital dashboard is customised solution for knowledge workers that consolidates personal, team, corporate and external information and provides single click access to analytical and
collaboration tools. It brings an integrated view of a company’s knowledge source to an individual’s desktop, enabling better decision making by providing immediate access to key business information.
Statistical Analysis Systems (SAS): Large amount of data database can be transformed into meaningful intelligence resources. SAS provides a powerful and comprehensive suite of solution and services form decision support administrative solutions to curriculum resources. Educational professionals can turn to SAS to get accurate, critical, and timely information they need. SAS offer capabilities in various categories, which include i) Enrolment Management, ii) Institutional Advancement, iii) Institutional Effectiveness, iv) Operational Efficiency, v) Online Curriculum, The choice of any technology project is a complex issue to be wisely considered after taking strategic considerations such as: Budgets and time suitability;
Value of Knowledge Management in terms of tangible and visible advantages; Changing requirements of institutions;
India News : July 2009
government in favour of scrapping Class X Board exams
In a path-breaking step to reform the school education system, Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal has come up with a plan to scrap the class X examination system. The minister opined that the examination-based system causes trauma to both the parents and the students. He also felt that the time had come to restructure the system and make it less strssful for the students.
Sibal said that since the student continued in the same school even after Class 10, board exams were not required. However, Sibal said that a final decision in this regard would be taken only after consultations with the state education boards and schools.
DU partners with 5 companies for Industry oriented course
Easy admissions with Disable friendly software at DU
Audio Management lessons aid e-Learning for Visually Challenged
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500 IGNOU community colleges to Operationalise The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) is planning to start 500 community colleges, which aims at skill based education for under privileged, by 2011. IGNOU vice chancellor Professor V.N.Rajasekharan Pillai said that IGNOU had so far received 890 applications, of which 100 have been selected. Inaugurating Royal community college dealing in hotel management run by Thanchankary Foundation, he said IGNOU intends to start one community college in every panchayath in the long term. Community colleges will empower the local population with skills needed for the industry that has potential in the particular region. IGNOU provides the framework, guidelines and training facilities for starting the college. The corporates or other oprganisations will have to bring in the necessary funds, said Pillai. He added that Tamil Nadu Open University has agreed to admit students with associate degrees. IGNOU has received around 20 applications community colleges from Kerala. |
Corporate News: July 2009
Intel commitment to Education
eLearning to develop personal skills by Aptec
Participating managers had a selection of 20 different topics, the majority of which were behavioural and soft skill courses apart from the functional skill courses like Selling Techniques, Promoting creative thinking, Communication & leadership, Planning a Business Strategy, Business Case writing, Time management, etc.
Animation venture by Anil Ambani firm
OMATEK exports e-education
Omatek has decided to extend most of its e-education initiatives outside the shores of Nigeria. The indigenous computer company assisted the Ghanaian Government in achieving its goal of ensuring that every Ghanaian owns a personal computer. To mark its support, it distributed computers to beneficiaries under the Omatek e-Xpress/Government Assisted PC Programme (GAPP), which is originally a Nigerian e-education initiative of Omatek.
The programme being implemented in Ghana forms part of Ghana Government Assisted PC Programme tagged i-Advance aiming at equipping every Ghanaian with Personal Computers at affordable prices.
Cisco provides wireless network for connecting students and lecturers
A new wireless network deployed by Cisco provides Kant State University students and lecturers with online access to educational and information resources from any location across the university campus. The university's new Wi-Fi network is built around a centralised architecture with 180 Cisco
Asia News : July 2009
NewsMaker project launched by ASEAN
The ASEAN News Maker Project will soon give an opportunity to school children to share their rich and diverse cultures with their peers in ASEAN countries. Led by Singapore and endorsed by the ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information (COCI), this initiative will engage close to 500 primary and secondary school students across the 10 ASEAN countries to produce informational video content which showcases their country's culture and lifestyle. The COCI has been supporting projects to nurture talent and promote interaction among ASEAN people to help preserve and promote ASEAN's diverse cultural heritage, while fostering regional identity as well as cultivating people's awareness of ASEAN.
MoU on cooperation in education to be signed between India and Malaysia
India and Malaysia have agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in education. As a prelude, the two countries set up a task force to look at issues of equivalence of the degrees in India and Malaysia. The norms of 'equivalence' will facilitate the mutual recognition of each other's educational degrees. These steps were decided upon at a meeting between Malaysia's Minister for Higher Education Mohamed Khaled Nordin and Union Human Resource Minister Kapil Sibal in Kuala Lumpur. The two met on the sidelines of the 17th conference of the Commonwealth Education Ministers. India's High Commissioner to Malaysia Ashok Kantha took part in the talks.
DoST provides for Scholarship programme
The Department of Science and Technology (DoST), Philippines has posted their scholarship program which will benefit those who take up courses or May want to take up fields of study related to Science and Technology (S&T) disciplines. First of their four scholarship programs is the Junior Level Science Scholarship (JLSS). JLSS is intended for all regular 3rd year college students throughout the academic year 2009-2010 who are at present enrolled in state universities under any of the subsequent recognised priority S&T courses, namely: Agricultural Chemistry, Biochemistry, Biology, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Computer Engineering, Physics and Statistics, among others.
There are also scholarships available
for those professionals engaged in research, fresh graduates, and on-going MS/PhD students who took courses in Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources, Biology, Biotechnology, Chemistry, Earth and Space Science, Environment, Fisheries and Marine Science, ICT Material, Science and Engineering, Mathematics, Medical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Microelectronics, and Physics.
Genpact to provide training to Bhutanese Graduates
Gurgaon-based business process outsourcer (BPO) Genpact will train Bhutanese graduates to help develop the IT and IT-enabled services industry in the Himalayan nation. The training will begin with a batch of 50 graduates, who will be hired and trained at the operation centres. The US$1-billion global back-office firm will also work with the Bhutanese government and Royal University of Bhutan for training in business processes across industries, including voice, finance and accounting and IT services. The exact investment involved was not disclosed. Incidentally, Bhutan is the only country in the world that gauges 'gross national happiness' as a measure of economic progress.
Asian classrooms with cellphones
The latest and seventh volume of the 'Digital Review of Asia Pacific', that was recently released highlights the power of new communication technologies in the field of education. In the Philippines, the cellphone and SMS are being used as the primary means for interactive learning. SMS is also being used to inform students of schedule changes, deadlines, examination regulations, grades, new courses and library resources. Student groups and organisations use the cellphone to publicise social activities, job fairs and book discounts as well as for voting in student elections. University administrators use cellphones to coordinate the admissions process to conduct marketing campaigns and announce grants, surveys, policies and emergency information like bad weather and suspension of classes.
Aptech views Vietnam with potential for IT growth
Aptech Limited, the global retail & corporate training solutions major, commemorated 10 years of success in Vietnam recently. Since 1999, Aptech has been training the Vietnamese youth on state-of-the-art IT education through its network of 38 training centres. Aptech in Vietnam has trained over 40,000 students in areas of Software Education, Animation & Multimedia and Hardware & Networking, since it's inception.
Aptech's flagship ACCP programme is among the most popular IT training programs in Vietnam. Aptech has localized its course curriculum by translating it into Vietnamese. Aptech has been rated as the No 1 IT Training organization in Vietnam for six consecutive years (2003-2008), by IDG and Ho Chi Minh Computer Association. Vietnam is one of the most important emerging IT markets in Asia. The country's IT sector has grown more than 20 percent annually.
