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Collaboration and networking promotes critical thinking!

 

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and  killfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. Professor Grayson H. Walker of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga explains the strategy applied there to promote critical thinking is through the conference mode. This promotes inquiry, sharing, interaction, and reflection on one’s own work and helps improve the critical thinking. This resonates well with Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies’ objective of bringing practitioners face-to-face in events such as the recently held triple conferences in Delhi, of which the Digital Learning India 2006 was an important  onference. Bringing together communities of practice in one platform, be it policy makers, school leaders, programme implementers, NGOs, private sector, development agencies or the individual researchers, to facilitate critical thinking. We are pleased to dedicate the October issue of Digital Learning magazine to report to you the process and the key discussion points that emerged at the conference. As always, making online and offline content available to practitioners in a concise form enables leaders, especially policy makers to draw the lessons and identify key recommendations for follow-up. Scaling up and the challenges that confront programmes initiated in a national scale draw most attention. Any programme to succeed must be vetted by the different stakeholders. What  etter opportunity than a face-to-face forum of the communities of practice as facilitated by the Digital Learning team? The conference provided the perfect forum for sharing experiences, exchanging good practices and taking stock of the added value of using ICT in education and training, especially in the school sector. The discussions, workshops, and panel presentations made by experts and practitioners to share their views freely, while also taking feedback and lessons for improving their own projects, and providing networking  pportunities to build new alliances made this conference a truly memorable one for over 700 participants. Digital Learning promises to build and nurture these communities at the national and Asian level, while making sure to invite international agencies and experts from the world over in upcoming annual events. We hope you enjoy this copy as much as we enjoyed putting this issue together.

EU unveils proposal for European Institute of Technology Brussels

The European Commission announced proposals to establish a European Institute of Technology (EIT) to rival the US Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Unveiling the plan, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the proposed Institute will be a flagship for excellence in innovation, research and higher education in Europe. China's research spending is growing 20% per year. Europe spends 60 euros per head on ICT (information and communication technology) research, US spends three times more. The EIT will attract talents and bring together the best actors in the knowledge triangle: innovation, research and education. If the European Parliament and the European Council give their consent, the EIT could begin operations in 2008, with an estimated budget of up to 2.4 billion euro for the period 2008-2013, to be financed by public and private sources.

Telecoms open up for deaf people

Services developed by UK organisations will help some hearing-impaired people to participate more fully in phone calls and meetings.

A Bedfordshire company will soon start two new services using Internet devices and voice recognition technology. And the Royal National Institute for Deaf people (RNID) is launching the ScreenPhone. Both products turn voice calls or meetings into text and are aimed at deaf people who prefer to speak.

The call is connected by a Typetalk operator so that the hard of hearing person is able to use their own voice but the other person's responses are typed and presented as text on the ScreenPhone's display. People who lose their hearing during adulthood often prefer to use their own voice for making phone calls. Until now, text phones have required the user to type what they want to say – something which some older people have found difficult. The ScreenPhone is made by Geemarc and has a large screen with adjustable font sizes.

Bedfordshire-based Teletec has announced two services that use an Internet device – a computer, PDA or smartphone – as well as a phone connection. WebCapTel connects two callers via an operator who then repeats the conversation into voice recognition software which then displays the whole thing as text on the deaf person's hardware. There will be a 3 or 4 second delay between a person speaking and the text appearing. WebCapTel needs an Internet and a phone connection. In this case the Teletec operator – or captioning assistant – listens to the meeting using a conference phone or even a mobile handset. The captioning assistants have to be specially trained to be able to listen and speak at the same time – a skill similar to that of a simultaneous translator. Both WebCapTel and Personal Communicating are expected to be launched early next year.

Digitalise campuses for higher visions

The Committee on implementation of the new reservation policy in higher educational institutions has set to be an emulative role model for campuses of higher education.< ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

It reiterated on campuses going digital as the way ahead to meet the challenges posed by the age of networked intelligence. Interactive learning with computers, had literally changed the learning paradigm from linear to hypermedia learning, from instruction to construction and discovery, teacher-centric to student-centric. Accordingly mind frame of the learning community should venture into broader horizons. The national project for technology-enhanced learning (NP-TEL), was implemented jointly by the seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science (IISc.). Funded by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, the programme is geared to enhance the quality of engineering education by developing over 300 curriculum-based video and web courses across the country.

 

Yahoo! India launches Indichat

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.

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan brings innovation

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)

Nigerian higher education has less than 5% ICT applications

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

Computer training centre is on anvil to rehabilitate ex-servicemen in India

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.

 

 

Oracle integrates two educational programmes

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.

Laptop for Indian students pursuing higher education

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.

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