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Bhutanese Graduates to get training from Genpact

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, said a company official. 'We will begin with a batch of 50 graduates, who will be hired and trained at our operation centres,' told Genpact chief executive Pramod Bhasin. 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.

Encouraging facilities for the different and abled

With more than 1,500 seats on offer, Delhi University and its affiliated colleges are doing all they can to encourage physically challenged students to enroll. Many DU colleges, including Khalsa, Miranda House, Sri Ram College of Commerce, Hindu, Gargi, Kamla Nehru, Janki Devi Memorial college and Lady Sri Ram College are ready to welcome their special students with lifts, ramps, specially designed toilets and libraries equipped with resources. In 2008, DU was able to fill a mere 386 of its 1,500 seats. At Miranda House, there is a special section in the library containing Braille books and talking computers, which serve as a resource centre for visually challenged students. The railings at Kamla Nehru College are being painted red for the benefit of the partially blind.

The university also has in place a central Braille library with screen readers, magnifiers and special softwares that assist the visually impaired students. But there is still scope for improvement. Delhi University's Equal Opportunity Cell (EOC) has been working on programmes to make the university experience truly enriching for physically challenged students. But hostel facility, that tops the priority of the disabled, is not available in most colleges. While physically challenged can get admission on the basis of reservation, special facilities like toilets or ground floor room are mostly not available. But more and more colleges are becoming sensitive to the needs of the disabled. 'We have tried to make the application process more comfortable and hope to fill as many seats as possible,' said Seema M Parihar, Deputy Dean (Students Welfare).

Summer made fun with music, theatre and dance

While government schools used to hold 'hobby classes' for students in Class X and XII during summer vacations, this is the first time the government has started summer camps modelled on public schools, involving at least 44 schools. The project called Indradhanush (rainbow), is teaching them theatre, music, dance, painting and crafts. Summer camps, an urban phenomenon and also, a relatively new concept in India, where most children use the vacations for family visits, are mostly out of the reach of low-income groups. Director of Education Chandrabhushan Kumar said this was a step towards the government's decision to combine vocational training with academics and expose government school children to various art forms. He said that at the end of the month-long camp, which started May 19, participants will be awarded certificates and their plays will be staged at school functions.

In the hall at Zeenat Mahal School, as they practised, the children sweated, but continued. The play was a story of four villages that had names that reflected their traits, like the morality plays of olden days, and how they got together to overcome their fear of a monster who they believed existed. Principal Raziya Begum said the students were excited about the camp. Many children from the neighbouring areas have also joined in. At the Government Girls' Senior Secondary School, Dilshad Garden, the children's singing could be heard from outside the gates. As they raised their pitch to match their teacher's, Principal Sunita Rahi stood at the door, watching. Currently, the school is holding music and theatre classes in its camp. Each region has several schools that conduct two of the five courses so that children in the area can take up activities of their choice. In another hall across the corridor, around 42 children jumped and kicked as they staged an impromptu platform scene. For Chandrabhushan Kumar who pushed the summer camp project, this is something that will help students explore the talents they might not have discovered otherwise. The camps are free.

Online GATE 2010 for the first time

On 9th February 2010, for the very first time, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) at Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras, Roorkee and the Indian Institute of Science (IIS) Bangalore, successfully conducted online Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) 2010 for two out of twenty-one papers. Examinations in two subjects, namely Textile Engineering and Fiber Science (TF), and Mining Engineering (MN) were conducted using computers by these institutes. About 1700 candidates were registered for these examinations, which were conducted simultaneously in eight cities over two shifts.

February 14, 2010, is to see ehe offline version of the exam in other 19 papers shall be conducted all over the country. GATE is an all India examination administered and conducted jointly by IIS and seven IITs on behalf of the National Coordination Board – GATE, Department of Higher Education, MHRD. Admission to postgraduate programmes with MHRD and some other government scholarship/ assistant ship in engineering colleges/ institutes is open to those who qualify through GATE.

Rush at DU for final counseling session

The last of the nine open day sessions organised by Delhi University on Wednesday to counsel students and parents about the admission procedures saw an overwhelming number of university aspirants inquiring about cutoffs, said officials. The counseling programme of the final open day was held at the Acharya Narendra Dev College in the university's south Delhi campus. Students and parents poured in for all the three scheduled sessions – resulting in a jam-packed auditorium each time, said counselors. The sessions even had to be extended by additional two hours to accommodate the massive turnout.

 

'There were a lot of students because of which we had to go beyond the session timings. Usually we have the open day session from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. But today it went on till three in the afternoon,' told DU student counsellor Angad Singh Kalra. 'Most students were inquiring about how high the cut offs would go and which were the best colleges for them. However, students must remember that they should put the course above college,' said Kalra. Although the open day sessions culminated here on Wednesday, the student counselors have a tough task ahead – keep counselling sessions going till the second and third cut off lists are announced in mid-June. Akanksha Arora, another counselor said, 'We will keep on guiding students till the third cut off list is out. We will now divide ourselves into two groups of eight and continue to counsel students at two centres – students can contact us at the DSW (Deputy Dean Students Welfare) office in the north and south campuses.'

eLearning to develop personal skills by Aptec

Over 15 senior managers from Aptec Holdings Ltd, one of the region's largest technology distributors covering Middle East, Pakistan, Turkey & (English-speaking) sub-Saharan Africa, underwent and completed a special program to develop behavioural and soft skills related to each manager's position and responsibility. Hosted by Xpert Learning, an e-learning solutions provider based in Knowledge Village in Dubai, the courses were selected based on input by Aptec's HR department, management, senior line managers and the participants themselves. The graduation ceremony was held earlier this month to mar k the occasion.

 

Aptec Distribution's Managing Director, Bahaa Salah presented SkillSoft certificates to all participants who completed and mastered courses with a 70% score or higher. E-learning champion, Manoj P K, was presented with an Outstanding Participation Award for completing the most number of courses, assigned to the Aptec participants. Ali Baghdadi, CEO at Aptec Holdings Ltd said, 'People are the key to the success of any company. I am proud that our team had given up their own time to develop their skills and look forward to them applying these skills in the workplace to enhance the business. We will continue to invest in our team and help our managers develop the right skills to provide the infrastructure that, in turn, helps our business partners.' The strategic elements and implementation of the program were designed by the Xpert Learning team and Aptec's Human Resource Manager, Arti Chopra Chhibber. 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. Each participating manager, together with HR and their line manager, selected the courses (a minimum of 10 per manager) that were best suited for their job and personal development.

Free computer training for teachers in Agona East and West

Free computer training is to be provided to basic school teachers in the Agona West and East Districts of the Central Region, to enable them to become Information Communication Technology (ICT) literate. Williams Yirenkyi, the Chief Executive Officer(CEO) of the Glovo Vision Orphans, a non profitable organization based at Agona Swedru, told the above while presenting 16 computers and accessories worth GH

Vice Chancellors seek curriculum revision

Forty-six vice chancellors from federal, states and private universities, and 134 other delegates from all over the country, weekend, called for proper analysis and revision of curriculum of the nation's universities. This, they said that would go a long way to incorporate ICT and meet world -class standard of education development. This was contained in a communiqu

Research: Computer science to continue to see gender gap

If the attitudes of high school students are a good predictor of eventual career choices, the future will continue to see computer science fields dominated by males. According to new research released by ACM and the WGBH Educational Foundation, compared with girls, more than twice as many boys see computer science as a 'good' or 'very good' choice as a college major. What's more, four times as many boys cited computer science as a 'very good' career choice. The report (PDF) is part of a larger, multi-stage effort called New Image for Computing that looks to answer the question of why interest in computer science is waning in the United States and to promote computer science as a career choice. For the first phase of the effort, researchers surveyed 1,406 college-bound teens in December to determine the attitudes of high school students.

What it found was that 52 % of all student viewed computing, computer science, and information technology as good or very good potential choices for college majors. By this measure, the computing category is in the top 3, virtually neck and neck with business/management/marketing (55 % positive) and art/music/design (53 % positive). However, by gender, 74 % of boys cited computing/computer science/information technology as a good or very good choice, compared with only 32 % of girls. Broken down by ethnicity and gender, as seen in the following chart, white females had the lowest positive response to computer science as a major. Hispanic males had the highest.

Sweden ranks first in tech usage

As compared to last year's ranking where United States ranked first on the usage of telecommunications technologies such as networks, cellphones and computers; Sweden took the number one spot to top the annual rankings. The scorecard that London Business School professor Leonard Waverman created in 2008 measure 50 countries on many factors including including technological skills and usage of communications technology. Sweden was second in the last survey behind the United States, and Norway is placed third, up from fifth spot last year.

It was reported that new indicator, that is, commissioned by telecom gear maker Nokia Siemens Networks, is already used by several countries in developing innovation strategies. Eastern and Southern European countries including Italy, Spain, Greece and Poland, took the last spots on the list of 25 developed countries.Malaysia, helped by good co-operation between the public and private sectors, continued to top the list for developing countries, while South Africa rose to second spot, helped by strong corporate spending on IT hardware, software and services. The ranking (From top to bottom) included following countries in top ten slot: Sweden, United States, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan.

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