IIM-A placements with i-banks

Higher Education

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February 28, 2009

The club class was missing. Instead of Day Zero's star regulars, Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch, IIM-A set date with the second-best, consulting firms such as Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Co, Bain and Co, AT Kearney and Booz Hamilton. India's top B-School, Indian Institute Of Management-Ahmedabad, which started its placement season last week, saw i-banks leaving the turf to top consultancy firms, indicating a clear change in the pecking order in troubled times.

The numbers, too, were not encouraging. Against last year's 25, the first day, reserved for the elite lot of recruiters, saw less than 10 companies coming in to scoop the country's top business grads. the day also marked an end to the five-year bull run at the IIM-A, where record salaries were offered year after year; last year a graduate from the institute was offered INR 1.44 crore by an i-bank.

This year, although i-banks did not make it to the first day of the placement, they did keep their crore-plus offers, but only to a select few pre-placement offers for those who interned with them. So far, three students are learnt to have been offered INR 1 crore and above salaries by global i-banks. Although, official information will be provided only towards the end of the placement season, this year, no one on the campus is flaunting multiple offers. For, there may be none. Also going mute are the talks of crore-plus (INR) salary figures, once a folklore of the institute. Sample this, nearly 17 students were recruited by the erstwhile Lehman Brothers for internship opportunities during last summer. With the bank sinking in the current recession, all 17 students have been left with no pre-placement offers, ready to battle it out in a highly-competitive pool.

Arjun Singh launches SPQEM

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digitalLEARNING Network

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February 28, 2009

HRD Minister Arjun Singhlaunched the Scheme for Providing Quality Education in Madarasa ( SPQEM ) through National Institute of Open Schooling ( NIOS ) by distributing free study material to students of madarasa and maktab. Arjun Singh also inaugurated the newly constructed building and Learner Support Centre (Call Centre) of NIOS through video conferencing. Human Resource Development Minister also felicitated NIOS for bagging the National Award for e-Governance from the Dept. of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances, Government of India. The registered Trade Mark of NIOS was also released by Arjun Singh. M. A. A. Fatmi, Minister of State for School Education and Literacy ; Anshu Vaish, Secretary, SE&L; and Maulana Wali Rahmani, Chairman, Sub-Committee, NMCME, were also present.

Launching the Scheme sponsored by the Central Government, Arjun Singh highlighted various measures undertaken by the UPA Government for the upliftment of the minorities. He emphasized the importance of National Monitoring Committee for Minority Education (NMCME) and said that this Committee gave a number of valuable recommendations including the one to link Madarasa and Maktabs to NIOS. Arjun Singh said that SPQEM will bring about a qualitative change in the education being imparted through Madarasas and Maktabs. He said that this will bring them into the mainstream of national education system.

TCEA 2009 aims to accelerate change in schools

K-12

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digitalLEARNING Network

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February 28, 2009

At the Texas Computer Education Association's 29th annual conference earlier this month, educators heard an impassioned plea to open their students' eyes to the world around them–and were urged to change their approach to instruction to take full advantage of 21st-century learning tools. Despite the gloomy economy, TCEA reported a record attendance of 8,500 educators from all over the country. Hundreds of exhibitors also showcased their latest ed-tech products and services in an exhibit hall that boasted more than 900 individual booths.

The conference opened on February 4 with a dynamic, student-produced video demonstrating how technology is transforming education and empowering kids at Klein Independent School District's Krimmel Intermediate School. Set to pulsating music (used with permission under the Creative Commons license), the video captured students using tablet PCs to record themselves speaking in foreign-language classes, so they can replay the audio and practice their pronunciation. It also showed them collaborating on projects, doing research online, and presenting what they've learned. After screening the video for the thousands of educators attending the three-day conference in Austin, Candace Threadgill, vice president of the convention, went live to Krimmel students through a real-time videoconferencing feed.

Faridabad to have UNESCO Centre for Biotechnology

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February 28, 2009

Realising the need of training and education for generating interdisciplinary human resource relevant to biotechnology, a Centre of the Biotechnology will be set up in Faridabad by the next year.

The Biotechnology Centre will be jointly set up by the Ministry of Science & Technology and Earth Sciences and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). The announcement was made by Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences.

Sibal told a media interaction, 'The centre would be beneficial to all countries in the region including India in developing knowledge-rich highly skilled human resource, harmonisation of policies & procedures in biotechnology and indirectly promoting trade. Biotechnology being essentially global, the partnerships are as much within as across countries.' He added, 'The centre will create a place from which many such partnerships will emerge. A centre of education, training and research in biotechnology with intimate contributions from the countries of the region and academic institutions from the rest of the world and provides a meeting place where innovation, enterprise, and industrial development will germinate.'

The mandate of the UNESCO Regional Centre for Biotechnology is to provide a platform for interdisciplinary research, education and training in order to create human resources required at the biotech interface of engineering, chemistry, physics and medicine and to empower human resources critical for a wide range of biotech needs and to seek knowledge-based innovative and context-specific biotechnology solutions. The goal of this interdisciplinary Ph.D. programme is to educate students at the interface of engineering, physical sciences and the biomedical sciences via a flexible structure that permits explorations at the intersections of these disciplines. The center will be open to industry for enhancing their skills in specific areas. Domain-specific programmes will also be designed for people from basic sciences in nanotechnology, implants and devices, vaccine development and stem cell biology in order to create a cadre of highly specialized scientists for technology development in these areas.

Teenagers fail in basic English and maths tests

K-12

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digitalLEARNING Network

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February 28, 2009

New exams taken by 16-year-olds in England reveal thousands struggled to grasp basic English and maths, including grammar, punctuation, percentages and fractions. From 2010 all students will take a 'functional skills' paper as part of GCSEs in the two subjects. Tests are designed to show that school-leavers are competent in the foundations of literacy and numeracy. But trials of the exams – carried out three times last year – show the majority of young people failed. Critics said it provided a more accurate picture of standards achieved by teenagers in England because – unlike in existing GCSEs and Sats tests – they had not been 'coached' to pass beforehand. Documents published under the Freedom of Information Act show only 30 % of candidates passed the first maths test, which was run by the exam board OCR in January.

This dipped to 24 % in a test in March, then rose slightly in June to 35 %. The pass rates in the three English papers was 66, 41 and 57 %. It suggests students are failing to learn key concepts such as spelling and commas in English and measuring distances and graph reading in maths. These are topics that critics say should have been mastered in primary school. Low pass rates will also send GCSE results plummeting when functional tests become part of the GCSE requirement from 2010. Unless students pass the functional skills papers, they will not be able to gain a grade C or above in GCSE. Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham University said, 'It is a comment on the system that after 11 years of formal education in English and maths pupils can not carry out basic operations successfully. Pupils may not have received specific teaching in the tests but if they are studying maths GCSE, they should be able to tackle this material.' In traditional GCSEs last year, 63 % of candidates achieved at least a C grade in English and 56 % in maths.

Traditional mental health practices conference

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February 28, 2009

A conference involving indigenous leaders in mental health from New Zealand, Canada, Australia and the United States will be held at the Manawatu campus from Sunday. Assistant Vice-Chancellor (M

Life Science Park to be set up in Thiruvananthapuram

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February 28, 2009

The Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation will set up a Life Science Park under the public-private partnership mode in Thiruvananthapuram district with an outlay of INR 300 crore. KSIDC officials said the park would come up at a 260-acre campus near Thonnakkal. The park is proposed to be a geographic cluster of industries in biotech and nanotech domains, research institutions and sci-tech academia.

Officials said the park would be a knowledge centre consisting of an incubation centre and a technology development centre, housing biotech, drug discovery and pure play companies besides contract research outsourcing firms with a focus on human health.

Cumbrian schools told to spend UK

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February 27, 2009

Cumbria County Council has been warned to claw back millions of pounds being held in the bank by schools across north and west Cumbria that should be being spent on children's education. Lynda DalkinOfficial figures released yesterday show that nine secondary schools and 72 primary schools across the area failed to spend UK

Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University MoU with US varsity

Higher Education

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digitalLEARNING Network

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February 27, 2009

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed between the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) Kakinada and the Central Michigan University (CMU), USA. 'We have entered into an agreement with the CMU for research collaboration, faculty and student exchange,' said Allam Appa Rao, Vice-Chancellor,JNTU.

The agreement will comprise of formation of joint research programmes, organizing seminars and exchange of scientific and educational literature. 'MoU will be beneficial for the both the institution,' said Monica C. Holmes, Associate Dean.

e-Learning for children in Kenya

Corporate Updates

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digitalLEARNING Network

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February 27, 2009

Twenty-five teachers selected from teacher training colleges (TTCs), Centre for Maths and Science and Technology Education in Africa (CEMASTEA), Kenya Institute of Education (KIE) and Kenya Education Staff Institute (KESI) will be incorporating e-learning teaching methods and teach others. 'Intel wants to extend the reach and impact of teachers. We believe this initiative will change the way teachers plan and execute their class lessons,' emphasised Andre Christian, Intel Education Manager for Sub-Saharan and South Africa. There are 250,000 teachers in Kenya, thus online material will be provided to orient them in the training program being facilitated by the KIE and Intel. The program is already successfully being carried out in South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt, whereby schools have adapted their curricula to embrace e-learning to improve the academic performance of students. 'The Kenyan government is committed to helping teachers access and use technology to improve their teaching. We know that technology and e-learning will help increase and improve the skills of our teachers, which will have a major benefit to Kenyan students,' said Prof Karega Mutahi, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education during the Intel Teach Program launch.

Rapid improvements in technology in the recent past have led to globalisation, especially in mobile telephones and the Internet. This has led to what is now currently referred to as a knowledge based economy. Growth in this sector has been impeded by high costs of Internet connectivity; but this is expected to change with the arrival of the undersea fiber optic cables in Mombasa by July this year. In the current global economic crisis, countries that are knowledge based economies are bound to survive better than resource based economies and in this scenario, Kenya will have a better chance to compete and be at par with the rest of the world. The Education Ministry has put in place policy strategies aimed at addressing the issue of ICT in the education sector. In addition, the ministry has embarked on a number of initiatives towards the adoption and integration of ICT in education. Some of the programs have ensured that learning institutions are equipped with facilities such as technicians, computers and connection services.

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