Yahoo! India has launched Yahoo! Indichat plug-in which enables users to chat in Hindi and Tamil without any need for a language keyboard.
The user can just load the side panel plug-in and start chatting in Hindi and Tamil. It also offers other plug-ins which facilitate chat in other Indian languages such as Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati and Malayalam.
Education was never so innovative: Schools in fishing boats, mobile schools in brick kilns; programmes like Meena campaign, Ujasbhani and Diwali camp for girl’s education, special teachers for children with disabilities. These and many more innovations made by four-year-old Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan to achieve universalisation of elementary education have been documented by IIM-Ahmedabad.
The 91-page document highlights best practices and innovations done by Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, UP, Uttaranchal and West Bengal. The study has found that the SSA has met with considerable success quantitatively if not qualitatively. While quality remains an area of concern, the SSA has been able to bridge the enrolment, retention and achievement gaps between the sexes and among social groups. According to the IIM-A study titled `Shiksha Sangam: Innovations under the SSA,’ the out-of-school population had come down from 28.5 per cent of the six-to-14 year age group in 2001 to 6.94 per cent by the end of 2005. Dropout rates at the primary level stands at about 12 per cent and 190 of the 400 districts were showing a declining trend in 2005-2006.
The SSA has been able to bring Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/STs)
With less than 5% application of Information Communications Technology (ICT) in Nigerian institutions, according to published studies on institutional technology application, added to Nigerian universities absence in 2005 ranking of 1000 global institutions of higher learning, experts have said that Universal Mandatory Information Technology Training, (UMITT) must be embraced by institutions of higher learning for the challenges ahead.
Available statistics shows there are more than 181 institutions of higher learning in Nigeria but a sizeable number of these institutions have enrollments of more than 20,000 students, with computer ratio at 200 students to 1 computer, or worse for most state universities. Most of these institutions have little or no infrastructure for cyber centers, computer-equipped classrooms or high
Department of Sainik Welfare has planned to open a computer centre to train ex-servicemen at Thrissur district in Kerala, India. < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
It was felt that making ex-servicemen, especially those under the age of 45, computer-literate, as an important step towards rehabilitation. Of the 1.46 lakh ex-servicemen in the state, 11,842 are from Thrissur. They include world war veterans, retired short-service commissioned officers and personnel who opted for retirement after fifteen years of service. The Department of Sainik Welfare plans to associate with national agencies in this regard. Qualified teachers from these agencies would handle the classes. Basic courses such as MS Office are on offer to start with. The total fee for each course is Rs.100. The basic qualification of the candidates should be SSLC.
Enterprise software company, Oracle has announced it will combine its two information technology education programmes – the Oracle Academy and the Oracle Academic Initiative – to offer a comprehensive course called the Oracle Academy.
The new programme would benefit educators and students by giving them broader choice and increased flexibility in curricula and educational offerings. The Oracle Academy now provides one complete, comprehensive offering – allowing ministries, schools and universities worldwide to develop technology training programs that address individual needs. This change will benefit both students and local economies by helping to create an agile and well-prepared workforce.
Indian students pursuing higher education may soon be provided with laptops going by the recommendations of the Oversight Committee.
The Committee headed by former Karnataka (Indian state) Chief Minister Veerappa Moily, which went into the issue of preparing a roadmap for the implementation of 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in higher educational institutions, has also suggested that teachers too should have laptops.
The Committee in its final report submitted to the PMO said, every student and every teacher should be given such a device on an ownership basis and the process should be facilitated by bank loans. The time has come and it is necessary to mandate and facilitate the purchase of personal computers and laptops for each student, it said. Where it was not possible, computer laboratories on campuses should be provided with sufficient intensity and should be made accessible on a 24×7 basis so that each student has a dedicated machine on a time-slotting basis. Recognising that technology would have a large part to play in the establishment of excellence, the Committee said that each campus of the institutes of higher learning should be Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) enabled, fully networked with digital classrooms and video conferencing lecture theatres.
The report said the grand plan for technology deployment on campuses was aimed at preparing and providing them essentially digital infrastructure ready to be used by a “plugged in, digital savvy-generation” called “net-Gen”. Similarly, there was some “idle capacity” in the institutes of higher learning and optimal use needed to be made of them, it said adding use of ICT, introduction of Edusat terminals and distance learning methods in these institutes could also reduce cost.
Hewitt Associates, a global consulting firm for the outsourcing industry, will provide a road map to the State Governments in India for creating educational institutions that would match the requirement of the industry.
The company will propose changes in the curriculum of educational institutes, for which it is in talks with 10 State Governments, including Rajasthan, Chandigarh, Punjab, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Sikkim amongst others. It will also analyse the challenges that individual States face in the context of human resources for the BPO sector. At present, it is focussing on making college level graduates more employable. It would be partnering with State Governments by providing recommendations at various levels for creating vocational training institutes.
The MapmyIndia portal is tying up with mobile service providers to offer easy navigable maps that will point out landmarks, shortest routes between two points and tell one where the nearest ATM is, all on mobile handsets. So cruising through complex roads in Indian cities using mobile phones is no more a difficult task.
To begin with the company has tied up with Airtel and MTNL to provide the service covering 163 cities. Consumers of other mobile providers can log on to the Web site mobile.mapmyindia.com/launch. While the service is free for now, consumers will be charged a monthly subscription fee of Rs 100 per month after November 30. Mobile users will require a GPRS-enabled handset to avail themselves of the service, which is to be launched shortly. The portal will, however, remain free for desktop users.
The company has launched the new version of mapmyindia.com, which covers the same number of cities but has increased the coverage from 2,50,000 km to 1.7 million km of road. It also has an added eLocation provider, which allows registered consumers to enter their location on the maps. MapmyIndia, whose clients include the Election Commission of India, travel portal Make my trip and Yatra, Hyundai and Skoda, also offers downloadable maps for INR 100 to INR 1000.
The National Education Policy of Nigeria has been administered for a periodical review, with mission to align with current development of national initiatives and, as well as the emerging global trends.< ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
The National Policy was manual driven when it was first enunciated in 1977. Over the period of thirty years education has become globally ICT-driven. With the emergence of newer concepts such as e-Education, e-Classrooms, e-Library, e-Governance etc., Nigeria too need to grow to meet the growing challenges. The main thrust of the current review of the National Policy on Education ought to include a general improvement on quality of education and merge with elements of National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) like capacity building, encouraging the promotion of gender equity, skill acquisition, using higher education to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS and other endemic diseases, strengthening ICT capabilities in tertiary education, including setting up of model e-Classrooms, and raising the profile of research in tertiary institutions as a vehicle for technological advancement.
