Apple’s hot-selling iPod finds home on college campuses and is not for entertainment

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February 6, 2006

Stanford, Duke, Drexel, University of Michigan and several other universities have been making lecture notes, podcasts and other content available via a custom iTunes store hosted by Apple.

With these pilot programs well under way for several months, Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple (Quote, Chart) this week formalized the unveiling of iTunes U, a program specifically designed to help schools make their content available to students online via the iTunes store. Apple is providing free hosting services to the universities. An iTunes U store can include lectures, podcasts, course materials, and audio books available on an authenticated basis (i.e. via password) to students, teachers and administrators. Stanford was the first and one of the few to also make content available to the public through its Stanford on iTunes program.
Stanford has a separate iTunes store for registered students, faculty and administrators; the public site includes lectures, book readings, music and drama performances that were recorded on. One of the most popular downloads was a series of lectures by the Dalai Lama who spoke at the campus in November. Stanford also has a podcast service where registered users can be notified when new content appears. Any RSS reader should also work. It's about 20 courses in areas like the arts and music and medicine where the public site has been using multimedia materials already in the classroom. There are no plans to require students to have iPods or for Stanford to provide them. The university has numerous PC and Macintosh workstations on campus loaded with iTunes that can be used to access content.

ActionAid to set up community radio

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February 6, 2006

In a bid to boost information and communication technology at the grassroots level, ActionAid-The Gambia is on the verge of setting up a community radio station. This was revealed by the institution's coordinator of Information and Communication Technology, Marie Mendy while addressing students from the University of The Gambia at the BPMRU complex in Kanifing.

Her company has been supporting existing community radio stations in various forms to enable them disseminate accurate and timely information to the communities they are serving. ActionAid is poised to revitalize multi-media video halls for rural communities to enhance their learning. The increasing importance of the use of ICT in the country is very visible, especially in the education sector. ICT plays a vital role in the research, teaching and administration of learning institutions. It also helps them to acquire marketable skills. The justification for using ICT to benefit education has focused on ICT's potential for bringing about changes in the teaching and learning practice. ICTs are most often used in education to support existing teaching and learning practices with new and often expensive tools. The company is trying to institute an international Wide Area Network project to provide an integrated network across ActionAid's country offices in The Gambia, Senegal and Guinea Bissau. This aims to address the connectivity needs of each country and every remote location. The benefits are numerous. They include faster access to applications, voice over Internet Protocol or IP based telephone, video conferencing and it will improve e-Mail and Internet services.

Education cess in India falls short of plan

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February 6, 2006

If the 2% education cess was the government's great hope for financing basic education in India, then perhaps it's time for a rethink. In the first eight months of the current fiscal, the government has raised Rs 2,400 crore through the cess. It amounts to only one-third of the Budget estimate of Rs 6,975 crore for the year.

In the four months between December and March, the government hopes to raise the difference to two-thirds of the estimated cess collection. Official figures show that till November end, Rs 1,30,095 crore had been collected, which was about 48% of the Budget estimate of Rs 2,73,466 crore as tax collection. Even in '04-05, the education cess yielded much less than what the government had hoped for. In '04-05, the revised estimate put the education collection at Rs 5,010 crore, but the actual collection was Rs 4,173 crore, a shortfall of nearly Rs 1,000 crore. Going by past records, it would seem that tax collection picks up in the post-November period. By December this year, the government has achieved about 61.7% (Rs 1,68,715 crore) of its Budget estimate of Rs 2,73,466 crore. While that might make the tax man happy, it does is present a problem when it comes to the education cess. The HRD ministry is unable to tap into the cess money for the better part of the year as tax collections are slow. So in effect, the ministry gets a large portion of the money at the end of the fiscal and not during the year when programmes like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and mid-day meals require funding. This defeats the purpose of the cess. The government created the Prarambhik Shiksha Kosh in the public accounts to hold the education cess, and ensure a smooth and continued flow of funds. However, this would work if funds allocated for the programme remained unspent. The government's flagship elementary education programmes have been rapidly expanding and require greater and timely influx of funds.

Tele-counselling to help Indian students getting exams on nerves

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February 6, 2006

With board examinations just round the corner in India, for students suffering from exam jitters, relief is just a phone call away. The Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) began its tele-counselling service for the students from February 1, while another helpline called 'Disha' has been launched by the NGO Snehi.

Using the CBSE helpline, which will be on till March 31, the students will be able to contact as many as 40 principals, trained counsellors of CBSE affiliated to government and private schools and psychologists. The CBSE helpline will have experts from 13 as many as cities such as Delhi, Chandigarh, Meerut, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Vishakhapatnam, Coimbatore, Mumbai and Kolkata among others, for solving the problems of the students. It will also be operational in Dubai during the same period. Introduced in 1998, the CBSE tele-counselling service is the first of its kind to be provided by any educational board in the country. Besides regular tele-counselling, the board will offer counselling through a multi-tier system in order to enable examinees in far-flung areas to avail the facility. The tele-counselling service will be available through interactive voice response system (IVRS) mode. Snehi's helpline 'Disha', which started functioning on February 1 and be on till March 2, will this year have 20 trained volunteer counsellors. The helpline got 1638 calls last year, out of which 1204 callers were students, 195 parents and relatives of the students. Of the 1204 students who were counselled and helped, 617 were students of 10th and 12th classes and the rest 587 callers were students from class IV to under-graduate and post-graduate or those preparing for different competitive exams.

Kosmix, India’s answer to Google

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February 6, 2006

Two Indian computer wizards, who studied along with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University, are now launching a start-up to compete with the world's best known search engine.

Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan are betting that 'Kosmix', with its deep search technology, can challenge Google by gleaning more about the overall content of web pages searched instead of their popularity. Google basically searches pages based on a sort of popularity contest and not necessarily its content, but creators of Kosmix say that they took a different approach and developed a new kind of 'categorisation' technology. The two Indians, who were among the co-founders of web database company 'Junglee', hope that their deep search technology can improve upon Google's one-size-fits-all approach. Kosmix asks users to define a category for a search. If a search term is related to health, users can make a query in a health-related search box. That way, it can find web pages closely associated in meaning with the search term. It then looks at what web pages linking to other pages say, to take a bigger stab at judging the page's subject. If a web page is saying something similar to the page it links to, one can get enough information to categorise it by topic. Kosmix has already started testing a health search on its website. Over the next year, the company will release numerous categories of search – from health to travel, politics and finance. It plans to unveil a general search box within a year.

Libraries fear digital lockdown

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February 6, 2006

Libraries have warned that the rise of digital publishing may make it harder or even impossible to access items in their collections in the future. Many publishers put restrictions on how digital books and journals can be used.

According to the British Library, such digital rights management (DRM) controls may block some legitimate uses. And there are fears that restricted works may not be safe for future generations if people can no longer unlock them when technology evolves. The British Library spends

Reality bites on computer Brailles for blinds in India

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February 6, 2006

According to some reports, just 5% of the millions of blind children in India get an education. And for these brave few it's an uphill struggle. Recently, the University Grants Commission, the apex regulatory body for university education in the country, paved the way for visually-impaired students to be given the option of using a computer to write answers during exams. UGC's stance follows a similar instruction from the Central Board of Education (CBSC) allowing candidates from Delhi to use PCs or typewriters during exams.

Till recently, the visually-impaired needed to depend on scribes or writers for examinations, a system that is fraught with problems. A switch to computers, however, will do little to change the plight of the visually-impaired, unless institutions back this up with some progressive support. Examinations are in fact just one part of what is a daily struggle for the visually-impaired. Take the most basic need any student has- books. There is no accessibility of reading and study material in India. In the absence of these, visually-impaired students are left to the mercy of others or spend hours scanning page after page of text books to be loaded on to computers so that screen-reading software (which allows the blind and visually-impaired to access information on their PCs either by voice or through Braille or both) can be used. The National Association in Delhi for the Blind is trying to change what is a cruel reality for the visually-impaired by using its in-house mini-computerised Braille press to publish textbooks and literature of general interest. All year round, the organisation gets special requests from school and college students for transcriptions. Already, NAB has covered substantial college-level material in subjects like history, political science, English and BEd. With the help of Media Lab Asia it hopes to provide material in 12 other subjects identified as being popular choices for visually-impaired students within the next three years. These include Hindi, Sanskrit, sociology, philosophy, law and social work.

NAB Delhi has been working with the Delhi University, under which it believes 200 visually-impaired students study to bring about just such a change. It hopes that by 2007 they will have the training in place to transition DU's students to computer-based exams. Apart from training, another problem that some foresee in using technology to give visually-impaired students greater academic indep- endence is infrastructure. The other problem that could emerge, is if colleges are asked to provide computers themselves.

Classroom construction funded by Vietnam

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February 6, 2006

It was announced recently, that a project for building classrooms and teacher's houses through 2012 will receive around US $241 million in form or government bonds, by the minister of Education and Training at a conference. Nguyen Thien Nhan, deputy Prime Minister, has asked the ministry to make a list of localities that have already used up the funds by June. The ministry and the Ministry of Finance will recommend which localities are to receive additional grants from the 2011 budget.

Local leaders were asked to utilise their available land, as the money would only be enough for construction, not land compensation. Priority should be given to poor districts, Nhan said, repeating instructions from Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. The programme on school construction began in 2008. It received more than VND12 trillion ($642 million) in government funding over the past two years, including VND8,275 billion in government bonds. The rest of the money came from local funds and private sponsors.

IIT to host first Indian school on IPR Law

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February 2, 2006

IIT-Kharagpur and George Washington University (GWU) have signed a technical collaboration agreement to set up India's first school of Intellectual Property Rights Law.

Christened the 'Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law', and approved by the Union HRD ministry, this school will attempt to equip post graduate students in the fast emerging field of IPR. This school has also got funding of US$1 million from Vinod Gupta, under whose guidance IIT-Kharagpur became the first IIT to house a business school. The Law school will start its academic courses from July 2006 and the starting programmes will be a 3 year, 6 semester, full time, residential course leading to Bachelor of Law in Technology and Intellectual Property Law. The eligibility for this course will be degree in engineering or technology or PG degree in any branch of science or MBA. Admission announcement shall be made in March 2006 and will be based on examination, group discussions and personal interviews.

Govt schools run by Pvt to reserve 25 lac seats for poor

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February 2, 2006

In order to develop and enhance a more inclusive educational society in India, the government has opted to permit corporates, non-profit companies and societies to establish 2,500 schools all over the country. The Public Private Partnership (PPP) model that would allow the government to fill up 1,000 seats from the existing 2,500 seats in each school having children from disadvantaged sections, has been finalised by the Planning Commission in consultation with the private sector.

Around 25 lac students are to receive benefits from the schools that are to be set up and run by a private management, but are still to remain as government schools. Out of the 1000 available seats at the PPP schools, half of these would be reserved for students from the scheduled castes (SC), scheduled tribes (ST) and other backward classes (OBC). These students would only have to pay a tuition fee of INR 25 per month. The panel has decided that the rest of the seats would be allotted to children of non-income tax paying parents, who would have to pay a monthly tuition fee of INR 50. The students would be provided free textbooks and two uniform sets in a year.

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