HRD Ministry felicitates 35 teachers at CBSE Awards for Teachers-2019

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September 14, 2019

The prestigious CBSE Awards for Teachers-2019 was held in Delhi on Thursday. Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ felicitated the awardees of which only one teacher Vandana Sen from Nagpur’s BVM Ashti was awarded from the state of Maharashtra.

In a statement released by CBSE, the minister thanked the “dedicated teacher community in nation-building through teaching.”

“These awards are a symbol of your hard work,” Pokhriyal said. He emphasized them to promote a positive environment with values and quality that meet the present and future needs of the students.

He also launched CBSE’s portal ‘Vidyadan’ on Diksha App, a Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing’s (National Forum for Teachers) and released the CBSE’s annual activity calendar.

Pokhriyal also released 10 CBSE manuals on varied subjects such as experiential learning, art integration, learning of maths, enjoyable teaching, school quality assessment and assurance, and new initiatives, artificial intelligence, 10+2 post-academic courses, eco-club, water conservation and hubs of learning.

Sanjay Dhotre, MP from Akola, who is also MoS for HRD Ministry, was present at the ceremony as guest of honor. “Since every student is different and unique, education should be according to the individual needs and nature of each student so that children become courageous, confident human beings with strong character and may be able to build their bright future,” Dhotre added.

iCalibrator Improving Education Success Through Technology

Interviews

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digitalLEARNING Network

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September 13, 2019

iCalibrator leverages the power & potential of patented technology in adoption of Outcome Based Education (OBE) Framework through Paperless Assessments and Analytics (PAA), says Pramod Saini, CTO, iCalibrator, in conversation with Elets News Network (ENN).

What was the idea behind setting up the company?

The idea was to create a B2B platform where each candidate’s skillset or caliber could be assessed against highest established industry standards.

Please describe about the innovations of iCalibrator in last two years to improve its products and remain ahead of its competitors?

United States Patent & Trademark office (USPTO) approval on our Patent is a testimonial to our efforts in being innovative and we shall continue this journey, be it for our technology or customer processes. We have designed a complete ecosystem around understanding of a student’s potential and a feedback mechanism to Universities for personalizing the education deliverables.

What are the major products of the organisation and how they are helping in improving the education sector?

Intelligent Paperless Education System (iPES) and Paperless Assessment & Analytics (PAA) are our two main products. The paperless system, comprising subjective examination on tablets with pen, makes the whole experience safer & operationally exceptional. With analytics on formative and summative assessments, it not only enables improved decision making by focusing on patterns that indicate student success but also help universities to strategise assessment methodology and map student’s performance results with program outcome.

What do you think are some futuristic ways that companies like iCalibrator can look forward to contributing towards the education sector?

Research Simulation Labs on Tabs (RSLT) to provide a connected personalised learning experience to students and would use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to coach students into careers that suit their aptitude the best.

What is organization’s vision for upcoming years?

Develop enablers that shall empower education to capitalise technology in delivering comprehensive education eco-system.

FIFA Football for Schools Programme comes to India, to promote life skills in students

News

By

Reetika Bose

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September 13, 2019

In a recent development, FIFA’s new Football for Schools Programme aims to make sports accessible for all children by inculcating football as a part of the extra-curricular activities. The programme will help develop life skills in students thereby engaging young people in sports and empowering them for the future.

In order to initiate the same as a part of the extra-curricular activities, Phillip Zimmerman, technical development services programme manager, and Roma Khanna, tournament director, FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup attended the MGCM Chava League at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Municipal School.

“The programme is using football for development and teaching essential life skills as well. Footballs will be distributed all around the world, but we will distribute them in a way that the biggest country gets the most quantity of balls. We’re already looking at over 2.2 million balls coming to India. Maharashtra being a bigger state will get a large amount,” said Zimmerman.

We’re already looking at over 2.2 million balls coming to India. Maharashtra being a bigger state will get a large amount,” Zimmerman further added.

“We will work on a structure on how we phase the programme. We also know that interaction with local authorities is needed. We will work closely with the state governments and sports and education departments to ensure that we provide these footballs where they’re most needed,” said Khanna

FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup will be held in India in 2020.

Andhra Pradesh Government to introduce English Medium from Class 1 to 8

Government News

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digitalLEARNING Network

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September 12, 2019

Andhra Pradesh government has decided to introduce English medium from Class 1 to Class 8 from the next academic year for which the teachers will be given the required training.

At a review meeting on education, Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy said, “Nearly 70,000 teachers would be trained for teaching in English medium in the District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs).

He also mentioned that every year in January, the vacant posts for teachers would be filled up. Also, the teacher-student ratio will be maintained at all times. Climate Change, Road Safety and Environment would be also a part of the curriculum.

“An action plan should be prepared to ensure that every Mandal has one Junior College and wherever possible high schools should be upgraded to junior colleges and an elaborate exercise should be carried out to identify the places where they should be set up. In the same manner, every assembly constituency should have one Degree College,” the Chief Minister added.

The state has a plan to remodel 44.512 schools under the ‘Then and Now’ scheme. The first phase aims to cover 15,410 schools.

“Every phase should cover Panchayatraj, Municipal, Tribal, Social, BC Welfare and other schools. The first phase should be completed by March 14, 2020 and there will also be a social audit,” said the Chief Minister.

He also urged the parents to be involved in the education of children and instructed the officials to improve the quality of mid-day meals and eggs being provided to the students.

MHRD’s Innovation Cell organized the first Annual Innovation Festival in coordination with AICTE on 11th Sept 2019

Government News

By

Reetika Bose

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September 12, 2019

In order to foster the culture of innovation in all educational institutions of India, the Ministry of MHRD’s Innovation Cell organised the first Annual Innovation Festival in coordination with AICTE on 11th September 2019.

The event also witnessed the release of the Start-Up Policy Document and SIH Report, launch of Technical Teacher’s Training Module, ATAL Academies, Protsahan Mudra Scheme, and Vishwakarma Award. Vice Chancellors’ Meet on Student Induction Programme was also organized.

The HRD Ministry also launched the Smart India Hackathon 2020, Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) 2020, and Institution’s Innovation Council 2.0.

Considering India’s current demography, youngsters need to be in the forefront of this innovative movement and Indian higher education institutes need to play a key role and emerge as center of excellence producing global quality research and innovation.

All India Council for Technical Education, in its endeavor to bring quality revolution in the standard of technical education of India has undertaken a plethora of activities which includes various schemes, policies, programs and regulations that have evolved to shape the educational domain of India as the ultimate in every sphere and has come forward as emerging giants of global technological warriors.

The Chief Guest for the event, Hon’ble Minister of HRD, Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal, ‘Nishank’ addressed the various implementations that have been devised and have led to the phenomenal growth of India’s educational domain. Hon’ble MoS, MHRD – Shri Dhotre Sanjay Shamrao, Shri R. Subrahmanyam, Secretary (HE), MHRD and Shri Madhu Rajan Kumar, JS, MHRD also addressed the gathering with their valuable inputs on enhancing the quality of education in India. The event saw the participation of the Vice Chancellors of Central, State and Private Universities, Directors and Faculty of Institutions and research organizations.

Since its inception, MHRD’s Innovation Cell, with the support of AICTE has undertaken multiple initiatives to ensure that innovation becomes the primary fulcrum of our technical education.

JEE Main 2020 BPlan Exam: NTA releases sample question paper, exam pattern

Higher Education

By

Rumani Arora

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September 12, 2019

JEE Main 2020 BPlan | The National Testing Agency (NTA) has released the exam pattern and sample question paper for the JEE Main 2020 BPlan exam on its official website, jeemain.nic.in.

Notably, starting this year, NTA introduced a separate exam for Bachelors in Planning (BPlan) aspirants in the JEE Main Examination, which was so far being conducted for BTech and BArch aspirants only.

As per NTA, the JEE Main 2020 B.Planning examination will comprise questions based on general awareness regarding development issues, government programs/schemes.

The agency further informed that the exam will include comprehension, questions on analytical skills and critical thinking, charts, graphs and map reading skills, besides the simple statistics.

The exam will be based on CBSE Class 10 Social Sciences. All the questions, except for a written passage, will be multiple-choice (MCQs) and will have negative marking.

According to the norms, each question in JEE Main 2020 carries four marks and one mark is deducted for every wrong answer. Interestingly, from this year on, the NTA introduced numerical-type questions for BTech candidates, which will not have any negative marking.

Eligibility to apply for JEE Main 2020 BPlan exam

In order to be eligible to apply for the JEE Main 2020 B.Planning exam, the candidate must have passed the qualifying examination with 50 per cent marks in Mathematics and 50 per cent marks in aggregate of the qualifying examination. It translates to the fact that candidates having commerce or Arts with Maths are also eligible to apply, something that is happening for the first time.

Besides, other key changes that have in inducted in the JEE Main 2020 are – reduction in number of questions in each section from 30 to 25 and the 100-marks drawing test, which comprised three questions, will now have only two questions.

India drops out of Top 300 World University Rankings 2020 list, Here is the list!

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By

Reetika Bose

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September 12, 2019

According to the latest Times Higher Education Rankings, India has dropped out from the top 300 World University Rankings 2020, with 56 entries this year. In the past few years, India has been the fifth most-represented nation with 49 entries earlier.

Surprisingly, India’s best represented University, the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore has dropped from the 251-300 margin to 301-350, due to a significant fall in its citation impact. Nonetheless, there were improvements made in research environment, teaching environment and industry income.

IIT Ropar made its debut in the ranking with a joint position of 301-350 with Indian Institute of Science Bangalore (IISc).

While some of the institutions remained steady with the rankings, around seven Indian Universities fell into a lower band this year. Institutions like IIT-Delhi, IIT Kharagpur and Jamia Millia Islamia have risen from their earlier positions.

With its 16^th edition of Times Higher Education Rankings 2020, there are over 1,300 entries from 92 countries, making it the largest higher education analysis.

As per the Indian table, there was a jump in the number of entries from 49 to 56 this year.

According to THE, the best Indian institutions are generally characterised by relatively strong scores for teaching environment and industry income, but perform poorly when it comes to international outlook.

Institute	2020	2019
IISc Bangalore	301-350	251-300
IIT-Ropar	301-350	NR
IIT-Indore	351-400	351-400
IIT-Bombay	401-500	401-500
IIT-Delhi	401-500	501-600
IIT-Kharagpur	401-500	501-600
ICT, Mumbai	501-600	NR
IIT-Gandhinagar	501-600	NR
IIT-Roorkee	501-600	401-500
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham	501-600	601-800

Read: QS Ranking 2020: IIT-Bombay, IIT-Delhi and IISc among top 200

Edtech platform Tinkerly signs an agreement with CIE, Delhi University

By

Reetika Bose

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September 11, 2019

In order to promote creative mindset in schools, Tinkerly, a Jaipur based edtech startup has signed an agreement with the Department of Education, University of Delhi, formerly known as the Central Institute of Education.

According to the MoU, Tinkerly will support CIE by providing a tech platform that consists of innovative teaching aides, equipment to establish an Innovation Lab on campus. Likewise, to measure the scope in schools, CIE will provide its academic expertise and resources to edtech platform.

The Memorandum of Understanding was signed by Dr Namita Ranganathan, Dean & Head of Department and Vivek Pathak, Managing Director, Tinkerly. Representatives from Tinkerly were also present along with Dr. Alka Behari, Assoiate Professor, Delhi University at the time of signing.

The pact will strengthen the relationship between Tinkerly and CIE at the strategic and working level, focusing on the development of students, the interaction between students and teachers and the manner in which innovation lab is set up in schools by Tinkerly to establish and promote the ecosystem of innovation at various levels – schools, education research institutes etc.

“We are very happy at the Department of Education that we have been able to get into an alliance with Tinkerly. Both our organisations seem to be working towards a common goal – making science learning and teaching more effective and process-based. The pedagogic stance of STEM (An acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths), when combined with the constructivist approach of Science teaching, would it is expected to create more enriched learning experiences for students in science classrooms”, said Dr Ranganathan.

“We are thankful to team Tinkerly for engaging with our students & teachers and our community of science pedagogues. We hope this alliance will be mutually beneficial to both parties. Our science teachers were very happy with the training inputs given by the team. We will fulfill the mandate given to us to the best of our ability”, she added.

Tinkerly is an education technology company, benefitting 75,000 plus students across 180 plus schools in India via its various STEM solutions such as Innovation Lab, Tinkering Lab, STEM education Kits, etc.

ABB India and NITTTR signs MoU to set up digital simulation lab in Chandigarh

By

Reetika Bose

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September 11, 2019

With an aim to impart better training quality for the large scale industralisation of the country, the National Institute of Technical Teachers Training and Research (NITTTR) and Swiss power major ABB India on Tuesday have signed the MoU to set up a digital simulation lab in Chandigarh.

‘Simulation Center of Excellence’ (SCoE) is a first-of-its-kind multi-physics center in the country that aims to enhance skill development for electro-mechanical equipment design and manufacturing, catalyzing ‘Make in India’ for the students and the faculty members of the institute, said in a statement by ABB India.

“A combination of knowledge and expertise developed through the right skilling initiatives would be key to take the Indian economy to the next level of growth. ABB India over decades has been working on various initiatives to catalyze teaching, learning and skill development on best in class global technology and practices,” said Sanjeev Sharma, Managing Director, ABB India.

Delighted with the partnership with NITTTR, Sharma further added, “We are happy that our partnership with NITTTR, one of the oldest institutes of technical training in the country, has made the first of its kind digital simulation lab operational in the emerging educational hub of Chandigarh. Such digital infrastructure in the academia will be the stepping stone to prepare future generations to navigate technology disruptions across the industry.”

“The upgraded computing, simulation and analysis facilities available in SCoE have brought opportunities for NITTTR students and faculty for research of complex industrial systems. With the availability of SCoE infrastructure, NITTTR faculty has been able to introduce new short-term courses in the domain of Finite Element Analysis for the technical teachers,” said Prof. Shyam Sundar Pattnaik, Director, NITTTR.

“Thus, SCoE has a cascading effect in improving the quality of technical education system through state-of-the-art learning tools. NITTTR, Chandigarh through SCoE will address the industrial requirements as well as provide an opportunity to the faculty and research scholars to work on real-life for industrial projects and latest technologies of digitalisation like machine learning and latest computer-aided engineering software,” he added.

Students studying in the electrical and mechanical engineering department of the institute have been working with ABB on issues of motor castings and online remote condition monitoring of motors. Though the SCoE was established earlier to focus on electromechanical systems, the high-performance computing feature of workstations in SCoE has also been in use by the students of the Computer Science Department of NITTTR for their post-graduate thesis work in the domain of Machine Learning.

The funding of the project comes as a part of ABB India’s CSR initiative.

CBSE partners with IBM to introduce Artificial Intelligence in curriculum

News

By

Reetika Bose

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September 11, 2019

In a recent development, the Central Board of Secondary Education plans to introduce Artificial Intelligence as an elective subject for Class 9 students from the upcoming academic year onwards. In order to design the curriculum, they have partnered with IBM India with experts from the global team as well.

Starting from the scratch, IBM India is developing the curriculum for Artificial Intelligence, keeping in mind the learning capabilities and requirements of the students.

In order to test the syllabus, IBM has launched a pilot project in over 1000 schools based in Delhi, Bengaluru Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, Chennai and Hyderabad, where along with CBSE, the performance of the students will be jointly evaluated for the new syllabus.

The initiative will only implemented in the CBSE curriculum only after the successful completion of the pilot project and receiving positive results for the same, The pilot project to test newly developed AI syllabus was launched on 11th September 2019 in Delhi.

The pilot project will also launch an awareness drive for school principals which will be followed by a teacher training of the subject over two and half days.

CBSE’s idea of introducing Artificial Intelligence in the course syllabus was directed by from NITI Aayog, the policy think tank of the government.

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