The Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Shri Kapil Sibal has discussed with his German counterpart, a consortia approach of twinning between universities of the two countries where two to three Indian Universities could partner with two to three German Universities for conducing degree level courses. The Minister was speaking on the occasion of his meeting with the German Federal Minister of Education and Research, Dr. Annettee Schavan in New Delhi today. The Minister said that setting up of such Meta
One-day training programme in ICT for teachers in Tamil Nadu (India)
A one-day training programme in ICT was organised by SHEPHERD, St Joseph's College, in in Tiruchy, Tamil Nadu on July 27, 2006.
The workshop was arranged, considering the need for equipping the panchayat school teachers and panchayat staff in the handling of computers. SHEPHERD, in collaboration with Fr Jerome Centre for Information and Communication Technology of SJC, started a venture to educate the teachers in computer handling. It identified that the 90 computers provided by the Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited to the government school in Thogamalai block of Karur district, are left without any work on it due to the lack of computer knowledge of teachers. In first phase, 22 panchyat assistants from Andanallur block and 15 from Manikandam block benefitted from the training programme. Apart from that, 85 teachers from six middle schools and eight primary schools of Thogamalai block took part in the programme. Assistant Educational Officer of Thogamalai M Ilanchezhiyan, SJC Vice-principal Rev M Elias, Principal Rev R Rajarathinam and others participated in the programme.
Unaffected campus placements at National Law School
Average domestic salary, however, fell to INR 7 lakh from INR 9 lakh last year. NLSIU not only managed to place almost all its students who wanted jobs, it even got new recruiters such as law firms Norton Rose Group and Ashurst. Students of NLSIU secured 18 foreign jobs this year, three more than last year. UK law firms that have been hiring from the institute for years such as Clifford Chance Llp, Allen and Overy Llp, Linklaters Llp, Simmons and Simmons Llp and Herbert Smith Llp offered students annual salary of UK
Placement wrap up by VGSOM
The Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSOM) at IIT Kharagpur has successfully wrapped up its final placements for the 2007-09 batch with the average domestic compensation touching INR 8.93 lakh per annum, a 22% decrease as compared to last year. The highest domestic compensa-tion offered this year was INR 14.7 lakh per annum. Nearly 65 companies took part this year for the batch of 110 students. Despite some of the regular recruiters giving it a miss this year at VGSOM due to the downturn, 32 new companies made offers. While 24% of the batch chose consulting as their preferred career, 21% chose profiles in the finance domain, another 21% chose the IT and ana-lytic sector, 20% went for marketing profiles, 9% for jobs in operations area and balance 5% in HR. Around 20% of the students accepted their pre-placement offers. The Big Four
Students take pledge to work for the nation in Chandigarh
Students of Government Senior Secondary School, Sector 33, Chandigarh, took a pledge on Tuesday to uphold the integrity of the nation and work for their motherland. They also wrote personal postcards of acknowledgement and appreciation for soldiers guarding the country's borders. On the second day of 'Project V-Care-Saluting the soldiers', the function was jointly organised by Yuvsatta, Indian Oil Corporation and Peace Club of the school. Gandhian activist Hira Lal Yadav, who is working for the cause of raising awareness about Indian soldiers languishing in jails of Pakistan as prisoners of war, was the chief guest on the occasion.
Volunteers of Yuvsatta with the support of various educational institutions in Chandigarh and Panchkula, are spearheading a campaign motivating children to pen letters to soldiers under the Western Command posted on the Indo-Pak border. Administering a 'Pledge of patriotism' to students and staff of the school, Dr. Surendra Singh said that such programmes are necessary to inculcate feelings of oneness and love for the nation among young students.
As economic slowdown bites, IIM grads settle for lower start-ups
Start-up companies are hoping to get some of these graduates on board by shelling out salaries in the region of INR 15 lakh per annum. The number of start-ups visiting IIM campuses this year has doubled and there has been a marked increase in the number of students willing to consider them. Bangalore-based start-up MxV, a strategy and management consulting firm founded by former executives at Mckinsey and BCG, have recruited from IIM-Kozhikode. According to sources, start-ups at IIM-K , which has a batch size of 185, are paying between INR 10 lakh and INR15 lakh per annum. The scene is similar at Indian School of Business at Hyderabad, where 10 start-ups are hiring and students are in talks with 10-15 other firms. At ISB, start-ups have so far hired 44 students, which is 10% of the 440 students who have sat for placements. 'I got around Rs 12 lakh a year. What more can I expect now? I am happy working for a new company,' says 26-year-old ISB student, who did not want to be named. At IIM-Lucknow , which will finish its placement on Monday, nearly 10 start-ups are hiring graduates from a class of 267.
This year, six start-ups have hired from IIM-Bangalore for sales, marketing and, strategy roles. These include ADPS, Insta Health Solutions, Ecologics, ScanCafe and iRunway and EVI who have hired nearly 10 students, constituting 4% of the batch of 249. Seven IIM-B students are starting their own ventures. Among them is 26 -year-old Shobhit Shukla, who has started flowersinstead.com, an online flower retailing venture. 'I wanted to do something on my own. There is a high demand for flowers and it is a new concept in Bangalore,' says Shukla, a former software engineer who also plans to start an event management company. Online bus tickets booking service provider redbus.in is also making a debut at IIMs looking for graduates for positions in analytics and finance.
Ministry of Education Endorses ICT Standard for Students at Taiwan
The globally recognized digital literacy certification program is included as part of a five-year plan in which the MOE will require all technical and vocational students, more than 1 million, to achieve at least one internationally accepted credential by graduation. IC
Microsoft appoints graduates for school’s IT Projects in Ireland
Microsoft will recruit technology teachers to help develop digital material for the school curriculum in Ireland. The graduates, who will be based in Microsoft Ireland headquarters in Dublin, will work with the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE) seek to find ways of integrating information communications technology into teaching and learning.
These graduates will be employed to help find new ways of intergrating ICT into learning, under the Government's graduate back-to-work programme which allows them to retain their social welfare entitlements. The graduate training places are among a number of key elements in the 'education alliance' agreed between Microsoft Ireland and the Department of Education and Science.
The education alliance agreement will also bring extra benefits to schools using Microsoft products under a yearly licensing agreement. The yearly licensing agreement allows schools to acquire a perpetual licence by paying a once-off amount for Microsoft products on their existing computers and for any new Microsoft products bought for new computers. As a result of Microsoft's investment in the programme, the once-off perpetual licence fee will be offered at a discounted rate to the schools.
Microsoft will also provide access to a range of online and digital resources including, The Learning Suite (including Office 2007) which has several titles of educational value to primary and post-primary schools. Paul Rellis, Managing Director of Microsoft Ireland, said: “The Government has demonstrated its commitment to integrating ICT into teaching and learning with the announcement of the
Queensland
Queensland's Sheldon College has outsourced its entire data and communications network to provide staff and students with around the clock access to resources and online learning tools.< ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
The school has 180-plus staff and 1600 students using the network and work is underway for an IP telephony network delivered over a wireless mesh solution. The network, which has been outsourced to privately owned system integrator TTGroup Communications, is based on Nortel technology. TTGroup Communications CEO Bob Bishop said until a few years ago Sheldon College had a typical school network made up of a haphazard mix of PCs, servers, laptops, limited connectivity and no single standardised operating platform. He said it was a network that grew organically and was managed reactively, but still served its purpose on a day-to-day operational basis. The project is one of the first by an Australian school to be completely outsourced to a third-party supplier covering the network's tender, design, deployment, and ongoing maintenance.
Bold plan to reshape higher education in Australia
Australia's 38 public universities face an upheaval on a scale they have not experienced in 20 years under bold new government plans. The main goal in a set of wholesale reforms to the nation's higher education system is the government's intention to boost the number of Australians aged 25 to 34 with bachelor degrees from 32% of the population to 40% over the next 15 years – an enormous challenge given it would mean producing an additional 550,000 graduates by 2025 – and perhaps require more than 20 new universities. Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard announced some of the reforms last Wednesday in an address to a conference organised by the vice-chancellors organisation, Universities Australia. In the first of a series of three speeches she intends to make, Gillard set out the government's initial responses to recommendations arising from a review of higher education she commissioned after the Labor government was elected in November 2007. The review was headed by Professor Denise Bradley, former vice-chancellor of the University of South Australia, and her report was released last December. Gillard welcomed the review at the time and has now promised to begin implementing some of its radical recommendations.
'In an era when investment in knowledge and skills promises to be the ultimate determinant of national and individual prosperity, Australia is losing ground against our competitors,' said Gillard said. 'National participation and attainment in higher education is too low. We are losing touch with the OECD's leaders in higher education: between 1996 and 2006, we slipped from seventh in the OECD in terms of attainment among 25-34 year olds to ninth.' Other comparable nations had exacting targets for participation in recent years,' said Gillard. Germany had set its target at 40%, Sweden and the UK at 50% while the Irish were aiming at 72%. She said that in Australia, too few young people from disadvantaged backgrounds were enrolling in higher education while completion rates, estimated by the Bradley review to be less than three in every four students who started at university, were unacceptably low.
