Asia’s open source conference and expo, 8-10 February, India     Habitat Centre, New Delhi India
Special Focus- India Education Forum It’s the talk of the time, the big discussion, about easy-to-use, virusfree desktops, about  high-performance clusters, about data and application migration, about  wireless computing,  bout scalable storage and virtualization, and about  best practices,  ollaboration,  standards and saving big money.  Linux Asia conference and Expo 2006, the place to preview and evaluate the  open source latest technologies firsthand, paved the right forum(s)in New  Delhi, India from 8-10 February to put out all these talks and discussions for  all- from SMEs, ITES and BPOs, large enterprise, banking, financial  services, insurance, telecom, media,
government and education. Organised by Technetra, the  technology consulting comany in  partnership with EFY Group, a India based technology publications
company, LinuxAsia Conference and  Expo, the annual event since 2004, became an essential platform for  decision makers, managers, technologists and analysts from industry and government to learn, network and interact with  global and Indian open source peers and  players, in its third year this time. India Education Forum became the focal point for Digital Learning team  in Linux Asia 2006 that highlighted several industry sessions, forums,  open source panels, projects, awards, and many more with the theme “The  Customer Speaks”. India Education Forum on 10  February in the Gulmohar room of India Habitat Centre was started with the keynote ofDr. M.S.Vijay kumar,  assistant provost, Director of academic computing, IS&T, MIT,  honorary advisor – National  Knowledge Commission. The panel comprising Aruna Sundarajan,  ountry Programme Director, GESCI,  UNICT, Sadhana Bhalla, Principal, Mira Model High School, Delhi, Kushal Mitra,  IIIM, West Bengal and Venky  ariharan, Red Hat  furthered the forum with a very triumphant discussion on Open Source Solutions for Indian Schools. Open  Source in Universities, Open Source Educational Tools, Modernising the  Education Curriculum and Building a FOSS Education Community for India  are the other discussions, which  made the forum an illustrious one with panels like Dr. Sanjeev Singh, University of Delhi, Shankar Iyer, Red Hat, Zaheda Bhorat, Google, Narinder Bhatia, CII Shiksha India, Danese Cooper, Intel, HNS Rao, Navodya Vidyalaya, Anand Adkoli, Liqwid Krystal, Prof. CN Krishnan, NRCFOSS  and others. The India Habitat Centre, spread over nine acres of beautifully  landscaped environs in the heart of the capital city of India, provided an  ideal physical environment to  LinuxAsia 2006 with a range of facilities that would maximize the  effectiveness of the individuals and institutions, in their holistic support of the habitat.  Workshops: Apart from the education Forum, workshops at LinuxAsia provided a classroom  setting for collaborative learning and an opportunity to experience the  power and potential of Linux and open source software. Motivating  Open Source Contributors and Building Communities, Linux – Ready for the Enterprise, Open Solutions  Workshop by Novell, LinuxFest  Workshops by IBM are some of these workshop sessions that retained the  high-quality approach in promoting the knowledge of open source.  ‘.ORG Mela’- this free and open expo area for all open source community members interested in presenting  their open source projects to a FOSSfriendly  audience backed up showcasing their work and projects. And it created a platform LFY Reader’s Choice Awards where Linuxfriendly and Open Source products,  projects and services in the Indian marketplace got recognized. HP, IBM, Red Hat India, Sony, Lenovo along  with a few others shared the Industry  Awards, while some others were  recognized with Honourary Awards. Venkatesh Hariharan of Red Hat India  and Mark   huttleworth of Ubuntu became Indian Open Source  Personality of the Year and International Open Source Personality of the Year.  Lots of cool talks at  edora’s FUDCon on February 9, IBM’s LinuxFest on  February 10, Linux Developer  amp on  February 8 and 10, Novell’s workshop on February 9 and many more  pen  source talks, workshops and tech days- a great experience harvested in
Indian capital. ?

Did we miss knowledge?

Often the modern world is associatedwith rapid change, high speed, fast growth and etc. However, all these factor fallout aside in comparison with today’s  development and “electonification/knowledgefication” of the world. Nowadays, we can put “e”/”k” behind everything and  find them in the internet or World Wide Web. This change brings a big mass of information to our world. The importance of information decreased in one sense and increased in another.  The decline informational importance occurred in sense that you can find dozens of web pages which includes the information which you need. Amplification occurred in sense that only competitive information or   competitive knowledge began to create difference. Knowing explicitly  what, where and how starts to create difference in modern world.  On the other hand, organizations start to look for the new opportunities. One  of these became e-nvironment, the place where you have equal  conditions to compete. Boom of dotcom; provoke many people to invest  heavily in the electronic area.
However, as BCG matrix emphasize heavily investment on stars never  means immediate income from them. Actually, one of the problems of that  ‘crises’ was high expectations and promises, which means lack of  knowledge. (M.Porter, March 2001.) As M.Robert (2000) pointed out in his  book, this is an era of denial or paranoia. Paranoids were those who  tried to do everything and anything they can think of with the internet and  knowledge. Though, as author
continues neither denial nor paranoia is solution. The solution could be to  understand the capabilities (knowledge, information, etc.) and  how they could be used by the company. However, before attempting  to understand the new world, one needs to understand the  organizational strategy for e-ducation of the institution. (M.  Robert (2000), p 6-7.)  In other words, the same content of strategy for e-ducation has to be understood and transformed into the  new context of the new world – eworld or k-world.  Generally, developing strategy for education (even in “e” or “k” world)  with its dimensions means running from the content, through the process, to the context. That means  strategy could not be perceived without its dimensions which are not  different from each other, rather than complimentary. (de Wit & Meyer  (dW&M) (2004), p.5) Therefore, even this paper will focus on the process  dimension it will include and emphasize others as well.  The desire to understand today’s complexity and confusion encouraged me to try to relate two strategies for education  processes in one and create simplicity. Moreover, during the preresearch  of the literature I have not found any explicit academic research on that topic. Even these two topics were quite “fresh” for the strategy  literature. <!–Ads1–>
The paper begins with a brief overview of “e” and “k” strategy and  its current focus on organizational resources and capabilities for education.  It links these strategies in the content dimension of the strategy  process for e-ducation. Building on  this view, it presents an interrelated developing process of strategy transformation to adapt to the gradually/evolutionary changing environment  for e-ducation.

e-Strategy
Changes in IT industry and in the whole world force companies to turn to the IT and develop appropriate  strategies on the organizational level. E-strategy can be regarded as one of these strategies. (M.Porter, 2001)  Therefore  organizations focused on estrategy  process for e-ducation as on a codified set of steps that first of all  “demystifies” the Internet. On one hand, the e-strategy process itself  drives you to think about what information processes you have in
place today, how your functions  relate to each other and to your teachers/senders and students/ receivers. Then, added to that, is the  e-effect of e-ducation, or the impact  that the Internet will have on those things. (M.Robert (2000), p. 107)  Briefly, e-strategy gives you an opportunity to move your organization to the electronic environment and operate there on the  organizational level. Therefore, operations in e-nvironment require organizational level strategy which is the e-strategy for that specific environment.

K-strategy
E-ducation organizations are coming to view knowledge as their most  valuable and strategic resource, and bringing that knowledge to bear on  problems and opportunities as their most important capability. They are  realizing that in order to remain  competitive they must explicitly manage their intellectual resources  and capabilities. However, many executives still have a problem  with   managing their capabilities-knowledgethat can help them to link  knowledge oriented processes to organization strategies, and are unsure of how to translate the goal of making their  organizations more intelligent into a strategic course of action. In other words, they lack of k-strategy  (knowledge strategy). (M.Zack, 1999) Knowledge strategy implies a notion  of knowledge-based strategy, that is, competitive strategy built around  institution’s intellectual resources and capabilities. Knowledge strategy is  oriented toward understanding what knowledge is strategic and why.  (N. Bontis and C. W. Choo, (2002), p.270-271)

Link between strategies
Concerning the fact that both strategies are based on organizations capabilities and resources to have/ create strategies and to develop them,  these strategies in their content can be formulated and understood from  resource-based view (RBV). (dW&M  (2004), p.284) In the RBV, organization resources gave them competitive advantage to create sustained  competitive advantage that will directly mirrored in their strategies. Therefore, here I will try to find links  between e-strategy and k-strategy for e-ducation and vice versa.  Both strategies have several patterns which can be generalized according to  the e-strategy for e-ducation (internet as a process) book of M. Robert,  where he states that generally estrategy is intangible, trying to focus  on moving, evolving target. (M.Robert (2000), p.19). Those general  patterns in broad sense could be applied to every strategy. However,  concerning the structure of k- and estrategies that patterns like  intangibility and evolvement can be particularly observed in knowledge  area/e-ducation where every moment means new person who shares it. And particularly neither knowledge nor  electronic e-nvironments are  intangible. Consequently, the new world/society becomes more and more dependent on information, this shift lends itself  perfectly to the Internet and should be properly managed e-ducation by  the right k-strategy which will intersect with the e-strategy on the  rapidly and evolving Internet area. (Ibid, p. 29).  Since the Internet is primarily a <!–Ads2–>
transporter of information, the more the society becomes dependent on information, the more disruptive the Internet will be to institutions. This is why the institutions most threatened by the Internet today are those with a  product or service mostly based on information, which means there comes  a new era of e+k–strategy (further estrategy= k-strategy will be used as  e+k-strategy model) . As it can be observed  from the  picture the  strategy,  which will  help organizations  to move (process)  to the new  world or  new environment  and even in new  circumstances  (context)  have an ability to properly manage its capabilities and resources (content).  As an example, at Amazon.com, has information on 17 million of its  ustomers. (Ibid, p.32) These  databases allow Amazon.com to know exactly the current interests of its  customers and their future interests as well. Simply by e-mail address  Amazon.com is able to do one-to-one  providing of new book/knowledge.

Developing Interrelated Strategies
After the dot-com fallout, surviving companies/organizations needed to  sharpen strategy and analyze metrics  much better. (M. Epstein,  2004) Since the world entered into the new  world, institutions have to reviewtheir strategies and develop a new one. Therefore, I consider the  importance of the k-strategy which  will provide necessary knowledge to  organizations to develop (which also  means change in strategy formulation process) e-strategies for the new  conditions. In other words, I consider these changes as a ways of  encouragement to develop or interrelate these strategies in e+kstrategy  model for e-ducation the new e-nvironment, which will form and be part of new world. For that reason, I  will mainly refer to the combination ofM.Robert’s book on “E-strategy” and M.Zack’s article on “Developing a  Knowledge Strategy: Epilogue”. However, that part will not be limited  with these sources only and will provide combination of other  publications.Hence, one million of questions come in the mind of most of administrators,  what should I do? How should I do it? ho knows the solution? The answer  is simple, nobody knows. But, in order to make the picture clearer or  eradicate fuzziness I will try to combine the ways of k-strategy  development with the e-strategy development in order to create a  common picture and prove that strategies for e-ducation in process   may be interrelated and similar concerning certain merits and aspects. According to several strategy guru’s the best way to develop e-strategy in  the frame of organizational strategy it is better to start with your employee.  (M.Robert (2000), p.33) That could be easily supported with the k-strategy  development process which focuses on organization/society capabilities  and sources on employees. Consequently, we know with whom or  who will develop/change our organizational/institutional strategy  towards the new model e + k-strategy model in e-ducation world. So, where should we start?  That point is very important and may be most of you will have a feeling that  this paper repeats the traditional way  of strategy formulation. (dW&M (2004), p.7) However, I can argue and  say that the process in general always or in most of the cases remains stable.  The things, which make/create difference, are tiny pieces of similar/  huge process. Thus, I think that every administrator  or person who will start to develop  this model should first of all be able to understand new world/Internet and  structured process for e-ducation that  works. Any strategy must be oriented toward the future. Thus, the first  phase in formulating a clear organizational strategy (for education)  is to determine what the e-nvironment will look like in a few  years down the road. (M.Robert (2000), p.33)  As Business Week observed in an  article about the future impact of the Internet: “It is difficult to determine  how to improve something when you do not know what it is that you want  to do. Our experience has shown us that most people in organization do   ings right. Unfortunately, they are frequently blamed for doing things wrong.” (A. Slywotzky, 2000) In other  words, they are doing things right but doing the wrong things. So, it is  important to get people to identify the right things to work on, to help people  who do things right to work on the right things.  Another way to develop interrelated strategies is the right measurement.  For that kind of measurement there should be developed appropriate  metrics/e-tools. (Tony Ingram & Alison Hedges, 2004) The selected  metrics will likely include a  combination of input, processes, output, and outcome metrics to  effectively measure performance. There is no rule for the right number of metrics to include in a measurement  system; however, including too many tends distract administrators from  pursuing a focused strategy. (M.  Epstein, 2004). These analyses ensure that each unit is making a contribution  to the e-ducation initiative and improving organizational  effectiveness. Additionally, these metrics can be used to provide a gap  analysis that permits administrators to determine what other inputs or processes are required to meet the  organization’s e-ducation project
objectives. Similarly, Zack (1999) points in his  article that he observed many organizations whose strategy dictated a move to an e-nvironment model  without the requisite knowledge and skills and a knowledge management  initiative to address those knowledge  gaps. Others were migrating from providing outputs to providing knowledge-based services and  solutions for e-ducation, without their  first understanding what they knew (or did not know) about being a service provider, or identifying the  unique value (if any) to be found in their existing knowledge.  So, how to know what I or my  organization know? To identify what you know (later part will use  Zacks’(1999) suggestions) usually starts with some type of knowledge  mapping process. That means to  map existing knowledge against what is  required to formulate and execute the organization’s strategy for e-ducation. Further, the map can be used to  evaluate how an organization’s knowledge about e-ducation  compares to its “competitors”. If we  think of strategy as defending knowledge positions rather than “market” positions, then competitive  knowledge benchmarking is crucial for evaluating the organizations  “competitive” position. Where an organization holds a strong strategic knowledge position about e-ducation,  it may be prudent to invest to  maintain that position. Where it holds a weak knowledge position, it may be  prudent to invest to gain strength. These knowledge management  decisions must be made within the context of knowledge-based competitive opportunities and threats. It is also crucial to know what  “competitors” know. Some organizations try to know that via  intelligence or similar scanning  function. However, most intelligence functions attempt to identify what “competitors” are doing, not what  they know about e-ducation. On the other hand, Zack (2002) suggests that  those who want to learn may be become and ultra-aggressive organizations. Those, who proactively  transfer their knowledge out of the institution to accelerate the learning  cycle via e-strategy that approach is  frequently applied in software industry. An example of perhaps the  most aggressive strategy is that of the open-source movement used, for  example, to develop the Linux computer operating system,  which makes public the core source code to take advantage of those innovations others may develop. (E. S. Raymond, 1998)  Knowledge is not static and what is innovative knowledge today will  ultimately become the core knowledge  of tomorrow. The similar trend can be observed in e-nvironment  today’s innovative product – e-ducation can  became tomorrows’ core knowledge/ competitive advantage.

Discussion
This paper mainly focuses on the interrelation of these two strategies in the context of strategy processing for e-ducation. However, it could be  argued that different developments are unique in their occurrence and  interrelation may create a catastrophe as Einstein’s atom, which was  interrelated to the nuclear weapon. Another contradictory argument may  come from knowledge strategist who will argue that this strategic  development has nothing to do with the e-strategy, at least because  they are applied in  different worlds. And even, going deeper they can  bring up the  argument that these  two different strategies have  different starting  points and different  destinations so, their processes  could never be interrelated or  at least linked.  On the other hand,  considering these  arguments I can emphasize the fact  that the world is becoming more global and smaller at the same time;  nowadays, the  news/information flow  all over the world in a second. And there is no possibility to stop it. Those floods are mainly supported  by the electronic  devices or let us  ay e-nvironment. Regarding that  fact it is even too late to   orry  bout its impacts because the  process already started and it is impossible to stop it.  According to the M. Roberts, technological change takes 25-30  years to find a valuable application  and another 50 to 70 years to infiltrate all the nooks and crannies of the society that it will eventually affect.  (Ibid, p.40) As an example he gives a microprocessor which was found in  1960 and still  applicable, even it had  its impacts after 18 years. Later he points that the same is true of the Internet and it was invented  in 1968. Therefore it means this new development have not yet applied to all parts of our life. It  only starts to affect the e-ducation/ world in late 1990.  Therefore, I personally think even these different strategies may have different starting point but, they go in  the same destination. All this happens with the aim of increasing  organizational “competitiveness”, “uniqueness” and etc. which in new   world will mean going “e”. And  being there will require resources  and capabilities which are basics of k-strategy. For example, (referring back to the picture)  the starting point in soccer,  volleyball, basketball, etc. is a ball   content) and destination point is the basket/gates (context). Here,  goal (destination) is to win and process is to play. Therefore, even if it seems to  you that this paper tries to  predict the future I would call it as another scenario analyze for the  nowadays trends. 

Conclusion
In the conclusion I would like to come back to M.Porters’ words:  Don’t   throw the strategy baby out with the  Internet bath water. And probably will  add there following phrase: Instead wash him/her with the knowledge soap and teach/e-educate him/her  how to use this beauty (knowledge) in the slippery Internet bath.  It is obvious to all of us that being paranoiac while experiencing a new  process will not help us to survive in today’s world. Therefore, we have  been more creative and innovative in the process of our strategy  fulfillment. In this way we exploit, explore and as was mentioned in this paper interrelate/link different  ways/processes to get better results.  Even these ways may seem quite strange and fresh (for some even  old and musty),  the difference  which we may create is lying in ourselves, in our knowledge. Here I tried to provide an idea that this  uniqueness can be strengthened in combinatory way and help to get  advantages in e-ducation. However, that work characterizes only a  different outlook which has not been tested yet. But, again using your knowledge you  can judge whether that way is  appropriate to  you or not. ?

For most people in the world this Indian state Kerala is quite little  known. But among academics, Kerala has become something of a  star, a place to study and to puzzle about. The reason is undoubtedly  because of the  so-called Kerala Model which generally refers to the high achievements of Kerala’s people on statistical indicators of  development. One of the key factors for  the substantial human progress in kerala, is the Kerala’s education system, especially for  women. Kerala has the best primary education system in India, and a literacy rate of 90% – almost twice the rate for all of India at 52%

The literacy rate for females in Kerala is 82%—one of the highest in all of Asia. Even in the rural areas, more than half the women are literate, compared with 43  per cent for all of India. Kerala was declared a ‘Fully Literate State’ in 1991 and is the only state in India where over 90% of the people  can read and write, and credit for this goes to the free and compulsory  education provided to all children up to the age of 14 years.  Kerala schools possess better physical and basic facilities compared to those in other parts of India. 83%  of schools are housed in proper building.  The IT @ School Project, launched  four years ago, has remodeled conventional teaching methodologies  in classrooms through   se of Information Technology. The project,  in its first stage, is being  mplemented in 2,738 High Schools in the State.  Over 40,000 teachers were given 90 hours of training on IT skills.  Computer labs with 10 to 60 computers are available in all High Schools. DLP projection-enabled  classrooms are  resent in nearly 400  High Schools. IT @ SCHOOL is a project under the  irectorate of Public Instruction of the Government of  Kerala, which introduces Information Technology in High School Education  for qualitative improvement of the conventional teaching / learning  system.  The Education  Department  plans to introduce an elibrary project in  the educational institutions in the state, which aims at equipping students  to explore the vast potential of the
emerging elearning  system. Under the project,each school will be given 150   CD’s containing educational programmes,  each with duration of one hour. The
VCDs costing Rs.200 will be given to the schools at a subsidised rate of  Rs.40 each. The State Institute of Educational Technology (SIET) is the  implementing agency for the project.  SIET will also help the students to set up a home CD-library. Of the VCDs, 80 per cent will be based on the SSLC  curriculum.  The SIET telecasts educational programmes, in association with the  Doordarshan, from December 26 to help the students who appear for the  SSLC examinations in March 2006. The SIET has also developed a SSLCtop  winner audio CD-ROM with possible questions in each topic for  the examination. CD, both in English
and Malayalam, with duration of 20 hours is also available. The SIET has  also prepared Malayala Kavitha Padanam CDs. The State Government  would provide Rs.2 crore for the school library modernization project.  EDUSAT program would be implemented to the whole L.P schools  in Kerala by June-July by the help of Local Self Government. ?

With 179 million students and 888,000 educational institutions, modernizing  India’s education system is a huge challenge. The need of the hour is  therefore a close collaboration between educationists and technologists; and  open source provides the ideal framework for this process 
Napoleon once said that, “War is too important to be left to generals alone.”  imilarly technology is too important to be left  to technologists alone. By the  ame  token, education is too important to be left to educationists alone. Today,
we are on the cusp of an age that is  being defined by the intersection of education and technology,  particularly information technology. However, India faces a massive challenge in modernizing its education  system. In a country that has 888,000  educational institutions, 179 million students and more than 2.9 million teachers modernizing the system is a  task that requires innovative thinking and a radically new approach. In the  2005 budget, the Government of India embarked upon an aggressive plan of spending a bigger chunk of its GDP (approximately six percent) on modernization of education.In many villages and cities across India, millions of children have no access to basic educational facilities. At the same time, the basic structure of our society has changed from an  ndustrial economy to one where the importance of  knowledge pervades every action of ours. The billion dollar  question that affects the lives of these 179 million students and the  future of our 888,000 educational institutions therefore is—how do we modernize our education system at a time when we haven’t been able to  deliver on the basic  onstitutional promise of providing basic primary  education to all Indians? The shifting structure of our society from an industrial economy to a  knowledge economy offers us both a threat and an opportunity as we seek to modernize our education system. In a world where the creation anddissemination of knowledge are being     rapidly digitized, it is inevitable thatIT will play a central role in the education system of the future. Classrooms of the future will not be mere brick and mortar structures  imparting instructions but information hubs where knowledge is created and  disseminated. This shift is very  similar to the shift we see in the media where power is shifting away from  “broadcast” media like print and television to the “interactive” medium of the Internet where  individuals are not passive consumers of information but also producers of information. In the  professional world a similar shift is happening with organizations  placing a premium on employees who can think on their feet and  execute tasks independently, as against those who merely follow  instructions. If we wish to equip the next generation of Indian students for the knowledge economy, our  education system needs to make a 180degree shift from a system that emphasizes rote learning and studious  adherence to instructions to one that  emphasizes creativity and encouragesinnovation and independent thinking. Our 179 million students (and 2.9 million teachers!) must not be passive “downloaders” of information but  active participants in the process of creating and  disseminating  knowledge.  If we deliver effectively on this  vision of ushering  our vast army of  students into thedigital age, we lay the foundation for   making India one of the superpowers of the 21st century. This  is a challenge that  should deeply engage India’seducationists and technologists and  requires an interdisciplinary  collaboration that has  ever been seen before. The open  source development model provides the ideal framework for this process.  In the context of a developing country like India which is rich in talent but  lacks the purchasing power of the  west, open source offers several sustainable, long-term advantages as we seek to modernize our education  system. The term “Open Source” originated in the world of software. At a simplistic level, the term  represents software that is distributed along with the  source code. Open Sourcesoftware programs are released with a liberal license that allow  users to study the code, modify  it and freely redistribute it. The philosophical underpinnings of  Open Source sound very simple but the tenets on which open source is based—collaboration,  community and the shared  ownership of intellectualresources—has resulted in tremendous innovation.  Moodle (www.moodle.org) an  Open Source course management system was developed by an educator who  found existing proprietary programs inadequate  or expensive. It is now used by thousands of  educational  institutions to  manage their coursework and   s  supported by an  active community that develops and  upgrades it. Since   t  has been developed  by an educator  himself, it enables a teacher to use  Moodle to teach a  course fully online or to supplement a  course taught in    traditional setting.  In the world of software, Open Source  has lead to the   reation of world-class   oftware like the Linux operating system, the Apache web     rver and thousands of other software  programs. Millions of people have  contributed to the development of  these programs and benefited from using   hem. Linux, for instance, was released under the General Public  License in 1991  and consisted of 10,000 lines of code. In a mere 14  years, due to the  ontributions of  open source developers across the world, this code-base has grown to 10   million lines of code. Linux now runs on everything from  supercomputers to hand-held computers. It is  estimated that if these 10 million lines  of code were commercially developed, the cost would run into billions of dollars. Because Linux is available  under an open source license, it is a community resource that is freely  available to everyone. The Open Source philosophy has  proved to be so popular that other  disciplines are embracing the tenets of  community, collaboration and shared ownership of intellectual resources  with powerful results.  The Open Source philosophy is catching on in the world of education  content. For example, Wikipedia  (www.wikipedia.org) has rapidly  emerged as one of the largest online dictionaries in the world. In a short span of five years, Wikipedia has  attracted five million entries fromacross the world in several languages  and is a fantastic educational resource that we should localize to Indian  languages. Because it is released under the open source, “Creative  Commons” copyright, Indian educators have the freedom to translate Wikipedia into Indian  languages and share it with theirstudents. The venerable,  Massachusetts Institute of Technology took the radical step of “open sourcing” 1,100 courses online  at http://ocw.mit.edu based on their conviction that, “the open  dissemination of knowledge andinformation can open new doors to  the powerful benefits of education for humanity around the world.” Other  eb sites like Planet Math  (www.planetmath.org)aim at creating communities of educators focussed  on a specific domain to make knowledge more accessible.  Many educational institutions themselves are now coming together  to leverage the economic benefits of  participating in Open Source development. For instance, leading
universities like the University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT  and Stanford are investing up to $1  million in staff time to develop producing open source Collaboration  and Learning Environment (CLE) software. Even universities that are  not members of the Sakai Project can download the software and interest in  the Sakai Educational Partner Program (SEPP) is growing at the rate of 1-2  universities per week. Thus it is clear that whether it is for creating educational content,  managing coursework and learning,
teaching a specific discipline or administration of an educational  institution, the open source model offers tremendous benefits as a model  for the creation and dissemination of knowledge. In a country where  888,000 educational institutions need  to be modernized and more than 179 million students educated, the  community ownership model of open source can help the country save  billions of dollars that would be spent on proprietary operating
systems, software and content. Since anything developed under an  open source model can be shared freely, it can help in the rapid  dissemination of educational materials to India’s vast population  of students.  From a long-term perspective, it is important that the creation and  dissemination of knowledge  hould  be a collaborative, community driven  process rather than one that is
monopolized by a few individuals or companies. In the Indian, intellectual  tradition, knowledge has always been  considered as a common good treated
as a community resource rather than private property that can be  monopolized and enjoyed by a few.  The need of the hour is therefore a close collaboration  between educationists and  technologists. The open source
model provides a framework that can lead to an open source  renaissance for Indian education.?

With a passion to bring better education to remote areas in  Thailand, Sat-Ed System Co is  delivering learning centres in rural Thailand called ‘Room for life’  using the cutting-edge  technology of the iPSTAR broadband satellite.  Aimed at providing lifelong learning for the rural Thai people, this  initiative is providing access to education content in remote rural  areas beyond the reach of telephone networks.
Chang is a bright young man who won a full scholarship to  a technical  university in Thailand. He had to turn it down  because, while it would pay for his tuition and fees he had no way to  support himself living in Bangkok and his parents were not well enough off to pay for it either. Chang was  overjoyed when he learned about the Sat-Ed Room for Life because it will  allow him the chance to earn his degree without leaving the village.  There are many kids just like Chang; kids who are bright and eager and  desperate to learn but time, money and other circumstances keep them in  he village. With the Room for Life, Chang and others will not have to make the hard choice because they  can study there.
In the sleepy hamlet of Baan Nong Pai, deep in the rural heart of Sakhon  Nakorn stands the pilot Room for  Life, a unique educational and learning center. For the first time anywhere in the world, a village that  has no phone lines has been able to access broadband Internet, IPTV VoD  (providing educational video on
demand), web cam, university degrees  and a whole host of vocational learning and e-government services.  The development of IPTV (Internet Protocol   elevision) over the last 3  years has dramatically changed the  way pay TV will   e seen in the future; and yet these technologies to date  have not been used by   he  educational market even though they  offer an unparalleled opportunity for learning as well as access to digital  content. 

The technology: InternetProtocol Television (IPTV)
First one has to understand the core technology. IPTV differs from normal  TV-based delivery systems in that  instead of being a passive device that  you  atch it is now a two-way  interactive device. IPTV allows a  person to interact   ith the content  delivered to the TV. To the viewer, it  looks exactly like a   ormal   V screen  as the pages are designed for viewing  on a TV. Using a simple   emote   ontrol, a person can navigate  through a series of high-quality  videos and text pages, take tests using the remote control to answer the on-screen questions and be assessed on their results. In actual fact, these are computer web pages are being delivered through a  thin web browser located in the IPTV
set-top box. Using middleware written for this purpose by Sat-Ed it becomes  an interactive navigation device. This allows the TV to be used as the  device to deliver a traditional LMS (Learning Management System)  directly to the end-user’s TV instead  of a PC. The thin web browser then  takes an HTML or Java page and displays it on a TV screen.

Room for life- delivering education
In the village, the Room for Life has a great many different courses on offer. In addition to High School and University courses, there is a heavy emphasis on vocational training from agricultural practices to silk weaving  and everything in-between. This often means that the students are  older adults who have never seen a PC much less used one for learning.  This is where the PC is a barrier to
learning. In the same way that our parents and grandparents would leave  the VCR clock flashing 12:00 while waiting for a grandchild to come over  and program it, older adults not trained on PCs look at it as an  confronting technology. Contrast  that to our experience with children in the Room for Life. In order to be delivered through IPTV, the video has  to be converted into an Mpeg 2 transport stream. We were running  out of time to make a deadline for
another Room for Life and, in desperation our chief engineer trained  two of the village children, ages 11 and 14, to convert the videos to  transport streams. To our engineer’s  shock and surprise, the children listened carefully and fearlessly
started to convert video files flawlessly. When seasoned pay-TV  pros heard about this they were mightily impressed. We have found  that the children under 15 in the village are soon learning things on the  computer that took other people years  to figure out for themselves. The adults are a different story.
Perhaps the most telling story about the differences between the two  groups was illustrated by the time I  handed my laptop with one hand to one of the adults to hold while I did something else. Their eyes got wide  and they backed away, unwilling to  take on that kind of responsibility for fear of breaking it. Their child popped  up and took it from me without hesitation as the parent barked out  warnings to the child to be careful. I was intrigued and tried this over and over with different adults over the  course of several weeks and the result was the same. All of them either  backed away or grabbed it with both
hands, visibly scared of breaking it. In contrast the children all took it  without thinking at all. That is where using IPTV as an  educational tool becomes so
important. It allows these adults to access content, often in a group,  using the same technology that they  se sitting in front of their TV at home… a remote control. With this remote control, they can navigate through a course; stop, fast-forward, rewind or pause to discuss what they  have just learned. They can stop a course for the evening and go back  and pick it up where they last left off.
Coming soon will be the ability for the student to input their ID number into the system and the middleware will know where they left off so there is no  time-consuming backtracking to find  the spot. The Sat-Ed LMS will then track their progress and report back nightly by satellite.  Another important part of the technology is the use of “Push”  technology. Through the use of a next-generation of satellite such as iPSTAR, content is “pushed forward” so it resides on the Sat-Ed digital library. This specially designed VOD server caches the educational content at  each site so when a student accesses it using the  IPTV STB it plays out the  transport stream  instantly, in fullscreen, media-rich
video. This greatly enhances the  educational  experience. The  trouble with Internetbased  e learning is that your experience is  connection  dependent.  ven with broadband access (a rarity inside Bangkok and  unheard in the rural  reas) the most  you will be able to view is a postagestamp-  sized video because the  content is created for the lowest common denominator. You also have  to wait for the information to come through the Internet pipeline and the  content delivery is as slow as the slowest pipe it has to go through to  get to the user. This often creates a scenario where, even with a  broadband connection, a person is always waiting for the buffering to  finish; turning the World Wide Web
into the World Wide Wait. Contrast that to VOD learning with  the content residing in the Sat-Ed  digital library on-site. It plays out an instantaneous stream in full-screen  color. This allows extensive use of video in training and it also gives the  students additional video cues for enhanced learning. Studies have  shown that people learn in different ways. By delivering as many cues as
possible to learning, you increase  dramatically the chances that one of them will be ultimately successful for the viewer. This mirrors the old adage  of not just telling someone what to do but also show them what to do. With  IPTV-based learning, the video that is  elivered can address both of these at   once.  That brings us to an interesting problem. There are a number of training courses available but there is a paucity of content for IPTV-based learning.  nly a few forward-thinking  organizations have  developed content so  far but as the  emand rows, the availability  will increase  dramatically. Already curriculum is being written that   ddresses the ability to use IPTV as a  teaching tool as an  adjunct to traditional face-to-face teaching  models. Potential uses for this might be a history class that watches a  video of news reports of the period
just studied. Another might be a chemistry class watching a video  presentation of a chemical interaction shown in a lab setting instead of just  reading about it. Still another might be an anatomy class watching a video  of a dissection of a rat while following  along with their own specimen to dissect in the classroom.
The first use of the Sat-Ed Digital Library is the caching of educational  content for on-demand access. A second use, almost as important in an  educational setting, is the caching of  web sites. Because education is predicative, we can
assume that there  are a number of sites that students will want to access. In a
school settings  using the Sat-Ed digital library, the  web pages are updated nightly by satellite and stored  on the server. When the students go to access it in the  classrooms all over the country linked into Sat-Ed digital libraries, instead of having to wait while each person is trying to access  the same file over and over, they get it instantly. By multicasting it once to  all the sites that are linked to the Sat-  Ed network, it saves dramatically on bandwidth costs and greatly reduces  the burden on the in-school network.

Room for life- beyond education
There are other uses for the Room for Life in addition to strictly educational uses.  Patra had not seen her children since April last year, nearly a year ago.
Patra is not a bad mother. The  economic reality of her small village in the Northeast of Thailand means she  has to leave to find work in the Deep South in a rubber plantation. On  Saturday, she got to see them and talk to them for an hour. It cost her 20  baht (50 US cents). Patra went to an Internet café near
where she works in the South and their grandmother brought the  children to the newly opened Sat-Ed “Room for Life”. There her children,  Beau and Bee, were able to talk to their mother online using a web cam  and VoIP available in the Room for Life. The hour cost the grandmother  20 baht. Many of the  illagers have family that are away temporarily in  places all over the globe and the
ability to stayed in touch with them  through VoIP is priceless. Also there is the opportunity to bring the market to the village. By using  Ebay and other sites to sell their  goods, villagers can cut out the  middleman who marks up the fruits of
their labor and makes a profit simply because the villagers do not have  access to the marketplace. With the Sat-Ed Room for Life the global  village becomes a reality. Each Room for Life site will be owned  by a local IT professional who invests in the franchise. All of the profits  generated stay in the community and
there is someone who is able to  address the unique needs of each site. Sat-Ed does its part by continually  aggregating content and responding to requests from the field.  Currently, Thailand has an Internet access penetration of only 11.9%.  This number is skewed on the high side with a 29% access rate in
Bangkok. The rural areas are much  lower. By using IPTV through the Room for Life Sat-Ed has built a  bridge across the digital divide and helped to provide access to education  to everyone. The ability for everyone to access knowledge is available through this technology today. With  the technology in place in the village, the only limits one has are the limits  to their own imagination.?