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ICT in fulfilling the educational potentials of students

By
digitalLEARNING Network
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The Dell ICT in education research surveyed 277 UK primary and secondary schools and found that nearly three quarters (72%) of teachers identify the main reason for using ICT (Information and Communication Technology) is that it helps them teach more effectively. < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

Now in its second year, Dell's ICT in Education research shows technology is supporting the delivery of the Department for Education and Skills' 2005 e-Strategy of transforming learning and enabling children to fulfil their educational potential. This is particularly pertinent to boys at school, traditionally seen as a harder to reach learner group than their female peers. Almost a third of teachers, deputy heads and ICT co-ordinators (28%) believe boys respond better to ICT in the classroom compared to just 4% who said girls. According to Dell's research, teachers cite the way ICT enables them to engage and interact with pupils more effectively as a key reason for using it more in the classroom.

ICT for PEACE

By
digitalLEARNING Network
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13 young researchers under the Toda Institute research programme seek to analyse how Information and Communication Technologies can help promote peace. The project is launched under the general theme `Peace, Education, Art, Culture, and Environment in a globalising world' (PEACE).< ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

The participants seek to find out what young people and policy experts around the world think about the digital divide and draw out the most innovative ideas to promote peace, justice and digital inclusion. The research will gather ideas and opinions through essay inputs from young people, interviews with industry experts and policy contributors, and workshops held around the research topic. ICTs offer a practical solution that may ensure greater inclusion in society, which can wash away feelings of hatred, which crop up due to economic and developmental divisions. An important concept they are exploring is whether the digital divide is really a circumstance of more general social divides that vary from community to community.

 

Open source software training programme to held at Chennai

By
digitalLEARNING Network
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A five-day southern regional training programme on Open Source Software is going to be held from May 22 to 26 in Chennai. < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

The Software Division of Computer Society of India in association with CICC, Singapore, National Resource Centre for Free and Open Source Software of CDAC, Chennai, and RMK Engineering College, will hold the training programme. The training programme will broadly cover the following: free and open source software and GNU/LINUX linux installations; OSS licensing and copyright issues etc. .The speakers and the resource persons for the training programme and the conference are drawn from both academia and industry with extensive experience in OSS. The training programme is free and open to members of the teaching faculty. Persons from industry, Government departments and other organizations are also eligible. 

Newcastle City Council starts ICT managed service for BSF

By
digitalLEARNING Network
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Newcastle City Council is going to provide ICT managed service to the Building Schools for the Future programme (BSF) to support over fifteen thousand pupils and nine-hundred teachers, and protect valuable data ranging from the schools administration, personal learning paths and exam results 24 hours a day. < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

Implementation of the new ICT infrastructure will begin in January 2007 with a target completion of March 2009. The new ICT infrastructure will provide one PC to every three pupils, interactive whiteboards in each teaching area and a notebook for every teacher. The principles underpinning the ICT strategy are equality of access (to equipment and to content) to promote social inclusion, enabling individual competence and improvement, harnessing and developing new technologies, reducing the bureaucratic and administrative burden, facilitating communication, partnership and sharing of best practice and encouraging creativity and innovation.

US President says learn maths, else Indians will take the job

By
digitalLEARNING Network
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Learn your math or watch your job go to China or India. With this modern US version of the Indian parents' nighttime admonition to sleepless kids about Gabbar Singh, president Bush cranked up a new maths initiative in US schools to try and retain US leadership in science and technology.

Bush visited a suburban Washington DC school in an attempt to galvanise interest in math and science even as China's president Hu Jintao began a four-day visit to the US, starting his trip from the western gateway of Seattle, where he first met Microsoft's Bill Gates. Pointedly referring to the visit, Bush said China is a very important strategic friend (to the US) in many ways, and in many ways they pose competition. “It's important to understand if children don't have those skill sets (in maths and science) needed to compete with a child from India, or a child from China, the new jobs will be going there,” Bush told students and teachers at the Parkland Magnet Middle School for Aerospace Technology outside Washington DC.

The US president has increasingly invoked competition from India and China to bestir the American public on issues ranging from energy to education. Urging student to study math and science because they were “cool subjects”, Bush announced the setting up of a National Math Panel which would determine best practices for teaching math in the nation's schools. He also proposed to double federal spending on basic research, piquing student interest by pointing out that both the Internet and iPod were products of government investment in research. Bush's push for maths education came even as the Maharashtra government is pursuing a harebrained scheme of making maths optional after class eight because, according to the state's education minister Vasant Purke, students have a math phobia. Bush's initiatives stems from recent studies that paint a grim picture of declining US competitiveness in the face of the rising number of science and engineering graduates from China and India. 

Universities battling to capture the worldwide market

By
digitalLEARNING Network
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Following the 2003 demise of Fathom, an online venture between prestigious British and American universities offering over 2,000 online courses, recently the acclaimed AllLearn e-learning venture between Yale, Stanford and Oxford Universities collapsed. Founded in 2001, despite offering 110 online courses from three of the world's most prestigious universities to over 10,000 worldwide participants AllLearn failed to attract enough students to make the project viable. AllLearn's president S. Kristin Kim stated the cost of offering top-quality enrichment courses at affordable prices was unsustainable but added that each university would use the experience gained to improve their own online courses. Indeed, barely pausing for breath, the University of Oxford plans on launching a number of new courses over the next 12 months ranging from statistics for health researchers to northern Renaissance art.

When it comes to success, Britain's flagship of distance learning, the indomitable Open University (OU) continues to blaze a trail. In October this year it will become the first institution in the UK to offer free course materials online. These will include all levels from access to postgraduate study and embrace a full range of subject themes, including arts and history, business and management, languages and science and nature. Apart from its own students and later the general public, the project is also aimed at assisting students in countries who are unable to access textbooks or good course material. The Open University is following in the footsteps of its American counterparts such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that offers most of its course materials free online and has plans for further expansion.

Providing even more to its 210,000 students worldwide, the OU recently combined forces with the University of Manchester to develop combined degree programmes targeting the overseas students markets particularly in developing countries such as India and China. Ultimately, overseas students will be able to combine study in the UK with distance learning in their home countries to reduce the cost of international higher education. The Open University's new postgraduate course War, Intervention and Development taught entirely online is proving popular. Partially funded by government the course aptly emphasises a peace building and development approach to dealing with violent conflicts.

Still focusing on targeting the global market and internationalism, the University of Staffordshire (http://www.staffs.ac.uk) is offering a distance-learning MA International Policy and Diplomacy addressing key issues associated with the way countries of the world co-exist in the face of rapid change. It aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of problems associated with developing and implementing global policy, the operation of modern diplomacy and the process of governance in a complex world. The University of Birmingham http://www.idd.bham.ac.uk recently launched a distance-learning version of the Public Service MBA, its first distance-learning programme for public administrators and other managers in the public sector. Intakes are conveniently accepted in September, January and May. Plans are afoot to roll out more distance learning programmes beginning with an MSc in Public Administration and Development for September 2006 followed by a distance learning version of the university's full-time MSc in Poverty Reduction and Development Management in 2007. The latter programme is designed for both development professionals and those seeking to enter the development sector and covers everything on the subject of poverty from the causes to the solutions.

Diplomas and certificates will also be offered for those who don't want to commit to the entire MSc. Always offering innovative courses, Oxford Distance Learning (http://www.oxfordcollege.ac.uk) has introduced a Life Coaching Diploma that can lead to a rewarding and lucrative career option in a fast growing field. The Oxford Distance Learning certification includes topics such as interviewing clients, relationships, addiction, career and business coaching and will enable students to be able to coach on an individual, group or corporate level. Depending on the speed at which students learn, the course involves around 125 hours of study time. For anyone who wants to realise their dream of owning their own business or improving their existing efforts, Learning at Home (http://www.learning-at-home.co.uk) is offering a new course is Profit for Business. Encompassing everything from a business plan to accounting, the course leads to the award of the Introduction to self-employment National Award from ASET, a leading UK awarding body recognised by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. For aspiring entrepreneurs who need a business idea, there are a whole host of training courses via distance learning. One of the latest offerings from Learning at Home is an accredited Wedding Planner Diploma.

Indian students to study in Bangkok

By
digitalLEARNING Network
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A new chapter was opened in the history of engineering education in the Indian state Karnataka when an international university announced its decision to tie up with Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU). Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Bangkok, will have tie up with VTU from the next academic year commencing in August. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will be signed with VTU soon.

The understanding between the two Universities will provide an opportunity for VTU graduates to pursue their post-graduation in AIT and the AIT students belonging to 50 countries will study in engineering colleges of Karnataka. The understanding covers two-stage master's programme, integrated engineering and joint research. There are 2,000 students in AIT and 80 among them are Indians. The University has teachers from 30 countries.

The Information and Communication Technology-related (ICT) courses cover software technology, telecom engineering, geographical information system and remote sensing. VTU was the first institution in India to tie up with AIT, which is internationally acclaimed as a centre of excellence. 110 engineering colleges had affiliation with VTU and there were 1.5 lakh students studying in these colleges.

Sun Microsystems partners with Unicon to promote Sakai environment to higher education

By
digitalLEARNING Network
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Unicon, Inc., the leading independent provider of open source-based enterprise portal, collaboration, learning, and integration technology for higher education institutions, announced a partnership with Sun Microsystems to power the Academus Open Campus portal with a high performance Sun Fire Server running the Solaris 10 open source operating system.

Unicon's Academus Open Campus (www.academusopencampus.com) is a portal that allows academic institutions to evaluate the latest teaching and learning technologies with no/minimal investment of software licenses or IT resources. Unicon and Sun Microsystems are promoting the Sakai Collaborative and Learning Environment with a free Sakai Test Drive and Sakai Pilot Programme. Sun Microsystems and Unicon are supporting the promotion and implementation of the Sakai Collaborative and Learning Environment through numerous sales, marketing, and educational industry events. Both companies are also strong contributors to the open source and community source movements in higher education with technologies from JA-SIG (Java Administration Special Interest Group.), and uPortal. Future areas of cooperation between Sun Microsystems and Unicon will include performance and scalability testing in Sun's labs and recommending application bundles for small and medium-sized institutions.

Sun was formed in 1982 out of research at Stanford University and the University of California and strongly supports open systems, open source, and communities to help create new markets and new opportunities. Sun's educational programs range from providing free software to centers-of-excellence to giving away training/educational materials to higher education at no charge. The Sakai (www.sakaiproject.org) software is a community source effort to develop a platform for innovation in collaboration, teaching and learning, and research support software. Unicon has been designing, building and managing technology solutions for colleges, universities, schools, and corporations worldwide. Unicon (www.unicon.net) also maintains and supports applications for the Cisco Networking Academy Program.

Cisco invests USD 275 million in Saudi Arabia

By
digitalLEARNING Network
-

Cisco Systems is investing USD 265 million to expand its operations in Saudi Arabia. The company plans to establish network training centers and sponsor a technology innovation institute to incubate Saudi start-ups. It plans to help provide network infrastructure to 2,000 Saudi homes in poor communities.

This is not Cisco's first investment in the Middle East. The company has been working closely with the king of Jordan since 2003 to develop the Jordan Education Initiative (JEI), an ambitious e-learning project. Cisco is linking hundreds of primary and secondary schools to universities and community centers and research institutions around the country via the Net. The company has also created 12 Cisco academies which focus primarily on preparing young women in Jordan for careers in the high-tech job market. These academies are teaching math and science and information technology. They've produced 600 graduates so far. Last year, Cisco was awarded a corporate excellence award by the U.S. State Department for its educational efforts in Jordan.

Respondus releases Browser for secure testing in Blackboard and WebCT

By
digitalLEARNING Network
-

Respondus, Inc. announces the release of Respondus LockDown Browser, a custom browser that creates a secure testing environment within the WebCT and Blackboard e-learning platforms.

When students use Respondus LockDown Browser (http://www.respondus.com) they are unable to print, copy, go to another URL, or access other applications. When an assessment is started, students are locked into it until they submit it for grading. The Respondus LockDown Browser software is designed for use with WebCT Vista, WebCT CE 4, and the Blackboard Learning System 6.0 and higher. Educational institutions can obtain a free pilot license through August 1, 2006.

Respondus, Inc. develops testing, survey, and game applications for the leading e-learning platforms, including the Blackboard Learning System(TM), WebCT, ANGEL LMS, and eCollege, among others. Respondus also partners with publishers, including Thomson Higher Education and Pearson Education, to distribute question banks for over 900 of the leading textbooks in higher education. Thousands of faculty at over 2,000 colleges and universities in over 50 countries use Respondus software to enhance their e-learning offerings.

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