digitallearning july 2012

AsiA’s premier monthly mAgAzine on iCt in eduCAtion

volume 8 i issue 07 i july 2012 i issn 0973-4139 i `75

TableTs redefining educaTion delivery

www.digitalLearning.in

k-12conTinuous and comprehensive

evaluaTionp-52

feature sTem educaTion

p-52

tech focus educaTion

erpp-36

sudha gupta Mother’s Pride school

adilakshmi chintalapatioakridge International school

dr rajeev Kumar chauhanraffles International school

g r sivakumarDelhi Public school, surat

suneel galgotia Galgotias educational Institutions

a K shrivastava asia-Pacific Institute of Management

shalini ursMyra Business school

ashok mittal Lovely Professional university (LPu)

devang Khakhar IIt Bombay

23 - 24 July 2012, Le Méridien, New Delhi

Conclave of Global Leaders in Education

Programme chair

Prof. SS ManthaChairman, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)

Programme co-chair

Prof Sudhir K JainDirector, IIT, Gandhinagar

Prof V S RamamurthyDirector, National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS)

Programme co-chair

government

SpEakErS at 2012

Shri E AhamedMinister of State for Human Resource Development, Government of India

Dr Vasant Kumar BunwareeMinister of Education, Ministry of Education and Human Resources, Mauritius

Dr. Narendra JadhavMember, Planning Commission, & Member, National Advisory Council, Government of India

Prof S V RaghavanScientific Secretary, Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser ,Government of India

Dr. Sunil NawaratneSecretary, Ministry of Higher Education, Sri Lanka

Dr. Shashi TharoorMember of Parliament, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala

4 www.digitalLEARNING.in

Contentsvolume 08 issue 07 July 2012issN 0973-4139

10

cover story Industry speak18 suneet singh Tuli, Ceo, Datawind

Rajeev Karwal, Founder and Ceo, milagrow Business & Knowledge solutions

20 Rohit Pande, Ceo, Classteacher

22 Abbishek shikky, Ceo, Kloudpad

soumya Banerjee, Ceo, Attano

24 sanjay Purohit, Founder Ceo, iProf india

26 sundi Natarajan, Chief of strategy, PraZas

milind shah, Chief executive officer, Wishtel

Ajay shukla, vice President and managing Director, mcGraw-Hill education

Ajit Narayanan, Founder and Ceo, invention labs

hIgher educatIon - IntervIew30 shalini urs, executive Director,

myra Business school

cover story

Tablets Redefining education DeliveryBy Pragya Gupta, elets News Network (eNN)

46 Ashok mittal, Chairman of lovely Professional university (lPu)

48 suneel Galgotia, Chairman, Galgotias educational institutions

50 A K shrivastava, Chairman, Asia-Pacific institute of management

my journey32 sudha Gupta, Chairperson of

mother’s Pride school

polIcy matter - IntervIew34 Dr Abhay Wagh, Deputy secretary,

Department of Higher and Technical education

tech focus - erp36 ERP Manages Well!

feature52 From STEM to Innovation

k-1258 CCE: The Poser of Student

Evaluation

specIal feature64 Experiencing New Innovations

in Education

66 uma shankar vishvanath, President, Pearson education services Pvt ltd

Write in your reactions to Education news,

interviews, features and articles. You can either

comment on the individual webpage of a story, or

drop us a mail: [email protected]


President: dr M P narayanan

editor-in-Chief: dr ravi Gupta

ConsultinG editor: Ashis sanyal

Advisory BoArd

editoriAl teAMGroup editor: Anoop Verma

eduCAtionsenior research Analyst: Sheena Josephsenior Correspondent: Pragya Guptaresearch Assistant: Mansi Bansal

GovernAnCeManager – Partnerships & Alliances: Manjushree ReddyAssistant editor: Rachita Jharesearch Assistant: Sunil Kumar

heAlthProduct Manager: Divya Chawla Principal Correspondent: Dhirendra Pratap Singhresearch Assistant: Shally Makin

sAles & MArketinG teAMManager – Marketing: Ragini Shrivastavnational sales Manager – digitalleArninG: Fahimul Haque Associate Manager – Business development: Amit Kumar PundhirAssistant Manager – Business development: Shankar Adaviyar

suBsCriPtion & CirCulAtion teAMsr.Manager – Circulation: Jagwant Kumar, Mobile: +91-8130296484 sr executive – subscription: Gunjan Singh, Mobile: +91-8860635832executive – Circulation: Ashok Kumar

desiGn teAMteam lead - Graphic design: Bishwajeet Kumar Singhsr Graphic designer: Om Prakash Thakursr Web designer: Shyam Kishoretrainee Graphics: Meenakshi Rajput

All indiA distriBution By Ibh Books & Magazines Distributors Pvt. Ltd

editoriAl & MArketinG CorresPondenCedigitalLearning - Stellar IT ParkOffice No: 7A/7B,5th Floor, Annexe Building, C-25, Sector 62, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, Phone: +91-120-4812600 Fax: +91-120-4812660Email: [email protected]

Issue July 20120708Volume

AsiA’s PreMier Monthly MAGAzine on the enterPrise of heAlthCAre

digitalLEARNING is published by Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd. in technical collaboration with Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS).

Owner, Publisher, Printer - Ravi Gupta, Printed at Vinayak Print Media D-320, Sector 10, Noida, U.P. and published from 710, Vasto Mahagun Manor, F-30, Sector - 50, Noida, UP

Editor: Ravi Gupta

© All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic and mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage or retrieval system, without publisher’s permission.

Partner Publications

WeB develoPMent & inforMAtion MAnAGeMent teAM

sr. executive officer - Web: Ishvinder Singh

sr. executive officer – information Management: Gaurav Srivastava

Associate developer: Anil Kumar

inforMAtion teChnoloGy teAM

dy. General Manager – it: Mukesh Sharma

executive-it infrastructure: Zuber Ahmed

finAnCe & oPerAtions teAM

General Manager – finance: Ajit Kumar

legal officer: Ramesh Prasad Verma

sr Manager – events: Vicky Kalra

Associate Manager – hr: Sushma Juyal

Associate Manager – Accounts: Anubhav Rana

executive officer – Accounts: Subhash Chandra Dimri

Write in your reactions to Education news, interviews, features and articles. You can either comment on the individual webpage of a story, or drop us a mail: [email protected]

www.digitalLEARNING.in | www.egovonline.net | www.ehealthonline.org

Prof s s Mantha, Chai rman (Acting), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

Prof. Asha kanwar, Vice President, Commonwealth of Learning

dr. Jyrki Pulkkinen, CEO, Global eSchools & Communities Initiative (GeSCI)

subhash Chandra khuntia, Principal Secretary to Government, Public Works Department, Government of Karnataka

Prof. v n rajasekharan Pillai, Vice Chancellor, Indira GandhiI National Open University (IGNOU)

7digitalLEARNING / juLy 2012

Dr. Ravi Gupta

Editor-in-Chief

[email protected]

EDITORIAL

Major breakthroughs usually happen when what is feasible suddenly meets what is a desperate necessity. We are talking about the Tablet PCs, which have taken the world of education by a storm within a relatively small period of time and we have taken it up as the cover feature for the month

One of the first initiatives of the new elected Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh was to announce free tablets for every student who has completed Class X. Not to be left be-hind, Goa’s new Chief Minister too announced that all Class V and VI students in the state would be given tablet computers. Ministry of Human Resource Development has also been endorsing the Aakash tablet with an objective to close the digital divide.

Many schools, colleges and universities have begun experimenting with tablet com-puters and classroom integration initiatives that vary from campus-wide distributions to small-scale, single-class pilots. These programmes are designed to provide evidence of improved student learning and engagement. We have collected the views of all sec-tions of the Tablets space – the hardware makers, the software solution providers and finally the institutes where the systems are actually being deployed.

There is no doubt that the top-quality Tablets based learning platforms could enable budget-strained institutions in the country to bring vibrancy to their classrooms. Teachers and the students will have the ability to download the best lectures, and all kinds of interesting courseware. When you look at magnitude of the problems that we face in the education space, the Tablets seem to be very good news. Of course, lot of work needs to be done to ensure that the quality of hardware is good, and the content is conducive for better learning outcomes.

Despite the bottlenecks arising out of poor infrastructure and traditional mindsets, the impact of the digital learning industry has been rising steadily. In this issue of digitalLEARNING, we have focussed on some of the core areas of education. We have explored ERP in schools and higher education, CCE in schools, STEM education in schools. To bring out the factual position of the industry in each case, we have inter-acted with a host of stakeholders, who are actively engaged in creating the solutions. We have also collected the views of the institutions where the solutions are being implemented.

There is a need to explore these topics deeper and other fields need to be acknowl-edged. We look forward to continue these discussions in the World Education Summit, the most prestigious education event, scheduled for 23rd and 24th July, 2012, at Le Méridien, New Delhi, where educators, practitioners, service providers, policy makers from around the world will converge on for two days of knowledge sharing and discus-sion. The July issue is part of the special series that is focussed on making an in depth analysis of the education space in the country. It gives me great pleasure to invite all of you to be a part of the World Education Summit, where we will be having an invigorat-ing discussion on the best ways of improving educational outcomes in the country. Finally, I would like to thank Professor S S Mantha, Chairman, AICTE, for being the guest editor of the entire series of issues of digitalLEARNING that have been brought up in the run up to the prestigious World Education Summit.

A Tablet for Healthier Education


guest editorial

Research and innovation as a growth vehicleEducation is a paradigm that helps in acquiring knowledge. Research is the heart and innovation the soul. Together the growth vehicle would speed and in the absence of any of these, would sputter and backfire.

Research is a philosophy and needs to be practiced like we practice religion. A knowledge gathering individual would look to putting together the nuts and bolts, the data, metadata and information together and add to the body of knowledge research-ing and innovating as he goes along. Metadata helps in gaining the hindsight, innova-tion the insight and education the far sight. Research provides the vehicle to do this.

How do we explain complex concepts that are beyond the best brains? We do this sometimes through statistical, empirical, and even experimental or most of the times through standard dictionary phrases. A better way I believe could be anecdotal.

The word innovation derives from the Latin word innovatus, which is the noun form of innovare "to renew or change," We all know that any change is difficult and painful and hence innovation too needs a new thought process that constantly chal-lenges the established norms.

Research and innovation, a vast subject, difficult to analyse within the realm of all disciplines is best to steer within the scope of IT as a discipline and hence Information Technology is my chariot to demystify Research and subsequently Innovation.

An interesting analogy that comes to mind is that of Abhimanyu: the warrior prince in mahabharata who was entrusted with the task of penetrating a Chkaravyuh (certain formidable formation) of the enemy. His advantage was that he had learnt this very critical aspect of warfare when still in his mother’s womb through his warrior father who had narrated it to his mother. However, the paradox of his prowess was to be his ignorance of how to exit the same having successfully vanquished the enemy.

That analogy is pertinent to India today. We seem to have arrived riding the wave of IT services without any clue as to the development of IT itself. It is the same way we missed the Industrial revolution. We missed the woods for the trees and today find ourselves stuck between what could have been and what is in recent times.

Even as Governance of the country is challenged, the skill development and education in IT remains firmly hinged to hardware imports and hence the operating systems imports, where no more than 10-12 million PCs arrive in the country annu-ally, though the Country should have made giant strides in creating its own hardware brand and could have been a world leader.

We need to innovate with IT as the backbone of governance especially for a country the size of India that has nearly 18 percent of the world’s population and occupies only 2.4 percent of the world’s geography.

While we engineered the software DNA of the country, it is an apathy that we couldn’t do much with the hardware, given our brain power. IITs continue to catapult the Indian knowledge and sow it on foreign lands but that again is limited to conjoin-ing the dots there, while the return import of that knowledge however is costing us precious revenue outgos even as corporation upon corporation in the US is thriving on the nutrition it derives from the patent laws and IP rights prevalent there and limited-ness of the same here.

The hardware vendors to India whether from Japan, US, china or other countries indeed hold the lock, we may have the key in the form of our software prowess but keys dont sell without locks in India but locks sell everywhere.

Just as Mahabharata, the Panchatantra and Chankyashastra have been universally available for free, we seem to have lost the plot somewhere there when it comes to developing and encouraging enterprise.

The rate of growth today determines the almanac of an Indian Enterprise; more so; the PSUs. This requires a revisit. Profit is indeed a bad word in India and in the Indian psyche,

9digitalLEARNING / JuLy 2012

guest editorial

Prof S S Mantha

Chairman, All India Council for Technical

Education (AICTE)

however we again miss the woods for the trees if we have to look at profit in seclusion and not in conjunction with the right business practices with laws that protect the development and encourage the idea of its propagation through adequate and appropriate controls. Profit is definitely a bad word unless it is supported by the right means and is harvested as a process of great cultivation practices; both of which are fuzzy in India. We seem to have duplicity and a generous sameness of business models that continue to war a common turf.

The copy-paste jobs that the students in IT and technical colleges undertake when developing their projects as part of their curriculum don’t help either. Here is a solution; it is at best a case in point. With the advent of cloud, what if the Ministry of Micro, small and medium enterprise could share its data with AICTE and AICTE were to encourage col-leges to occupy and script their enterprise applications on a piece of cloud that they could acquire to be used as their lab.

There is a good chance that a small nut and bolt manufacturer will turn his attention to where these nuts and bolts go and who knows he may actually end up starting a com-puter manufacturing unit. Yes! it says that, all that we have around ourselves today was once considered impossible; so be it, thus it shall be!!

If industrial growth is indeed vital for the Indian economy, it is a matter of time that the MSMEs will get connected to the Government, their buyers and bankers and a global marketplace and set in motion a sustainable juggernaut that would thrive on research and innovation.

I realise that the opportunity and the responsibility that this note as the guest editor imposes on me is immense and while I am at liberty to expound my views on Research and Innovation involving boiling of the oceans and world hunger and poverty, at my best, however, I can only offer a perspective.

I share the above as a small blueprint of an idea that has potential of enabling us to crank our own engines rather than remain subservient to a limited vision and as consec-quence to economies of the west. We have an opportunity to learn from them!

So in a nutshell:1. Shall we start a debate on the patent and IP laws and developing the right tools and

implements to develop, propagate and protect our GDP growth. Our hardware shall grow out of that reason.

2. Study profits as both an end and a means to development and progress, given the right environment, tools and implements. There is need to revisit our rate of growth that at best rides a turnpike of inflation to at best reverse itself.

3. Let each college buy a piece of the cloud that propagates millions of nurseries with a potential to raise the MSMEs and spur innovation to deliver quicker, better and more competitive products from the MSMEs!

Let me make a different pitch: Object oriented languages that form the backbone of modern computing, came out of a great innovation. Dennis Ritchie the developer of UNIX, who helped shape the digital era and a great innovator by any standard, said that though there were technical and semi-technical aspects of using C family of languages, they turned out to be well-placed both for describing things at a high enough level so that portability across hardware was feasible, but simple enough in its requirements to make it cheap to implement. The entire modern computing today is based on this one innovation.

We need innovators and innovations of that standard. Innovation comes out of em-powering individuals to out beat and outperform mediocrity. We need radicals and maver-icks to promote innovation and systems to identify such individuals and protect them from the mediocrity and banality around.

We need to create ecosystems that enable environments to flourish in research and in-novation in our institutions. We need to define dynamic structures that bring out the best in our youth.

Kaun kehta hai ki assman mein surakh nahi hota, koi tabiyat se paththar to uchchalo yaro!!(who says, you can’t drill a hole in the sky, have you tried lobbing a stone at it with zest)


cover story

Tablets have become the vehicle for a new trend in education, where students use handheld devices

to interact with courseware. When the iconic iPad was launched, most ana-lysts were of the opinion that this device would remain confined to the luxury segment, primarily because of its high price. But now a wide range of cheaper models have become available. For in-stance, there is Aakash.

Aakash has been promoted by the Gov-ernment as a device that can bridge the digital divide across the country. However, it was not a great sucess but it inspired many other players to come up with their low priced tablets. Now the Govern-ment has launch its second version of the Aakash tablet, which boasts fbetter hard-ware features.

According to market reports, the country saw sales of about 475,000 units of media tablets in the last cal-endar year. Report from research firm

Frost & Sullivan says the tablet PC user base in India has increased from 60,000 units in 2010 to 300,000 in 2011. The report further says that overall Tablet PC user base is likely to grow at a CAGR of 107 per cent to reach 23.38 million by 2017.

Adoption of tablets in education is like-ly to grow at fast pace. “In terms of sales, the market size in India is expected to grow to 500,000 units by end of this year. How-ever, even with such high numbers, we will not be reaching even the Five percent of the education space and that is why this is a huge opportunity. Tablet market is set to keep growing at a rapid pace,” informs Abbhishek, CEO, Kloudpad.

Heavy bags, personalised learn-ing, interactivity and reservation to the classroom have always been a challenge in conventional classroom learning en-vironment, which is answered by tablet to a large extent. Still, lot more innova-tions and improvements are required

and these will be addressed by upgrada-tion of tablets.

Computerisation started with heavy desktops in computer labs and then we had the advent of laptops. Now there is a unified learning wherein desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones are playing their role in imparting educa-tion. Tablet is usually a 7 to 10 inches form factor and it works on different mo-bile operating Systems like iOs, Android, and Microsoft Windows. It is now well accepted as platform for interactive and personalised learning.

The teacher can easily explain con-cepts using the digital whiteboard that is set up in the Tablet PC. Using learning tablets the students can access what was taught in the classroom and can also ac-cess the collaborative learning platform for discussions on relevant topics taught in the classroom. Students can have the benefits of studying from the best facul-ties fromacross the globe.

tablets

redefining

education

Delivery

Tablets hold great promise in delivering education more effectively as they feature innovative hardware and also interactive content both of which are key to superior learning

By Pragya Gupta, Elets News Network (ENN)


cover story

Key PlayersThere are two segments of tablets in the market, one is high end fea-ture rich tablet and other is low cost budget tablets. Suneet Tuli, CEO , Datawind and manufacturer of Aakash one tablet, says, “There are three different segments on how purchasing is done in the In-dian education scenario. One is the high end segment, which is pro-viding sophisticated solution, but that portion of the market in this case is small, about 3-4 percent. The big portion is 40-45 that is government segment spending on low cost tablet. Other big market is made out of those people who buy feature rich tablets for children to provide them a support for quality education with access to Internet and good content.”

Here are the companies those have visibility in education space.

AppleApple offers user-friendly interface and apps for education in iPad and iPhone. iPad apps are expanding the learning experience both inside and outside the classroom. From interactive lessons to study aids to productivity tools, there’s an app for every learner such as English, Maths, Science, Arts , music, cre-ativity and much else.

AsusAsus has plans to enter into the education segment. Asus designs and manufactures laptops, tablets, desktops, motherboards, and mo-bile phones, etc.

Across WorldAcrossWorld Education, the global SaaS company, offers tablet called ATab at Rs 5000.

Classteacher Learning SystemsClassteacher Learning Systems of-

fers interactive classroom technol-ogy offering digital classrooms so-lutions. Classteacher has launched its latest innovation Classpad for Indian education segment.

DatawindDatawind is a provider of wireless web access products and services. Datawind has launched Aakash one tablet with the MHRD and of-fers its tablet under Ubislate series.They develop and license content for education.

DellDell is one of the leading PC manu-facturer has its tablet called Streak. Dells tablet can be utilised by the education segment.

Edutor TechnologiesEdutor’s Classroom Solution en-ables schools and coaching Insti-tutes to leverage the power of Tab-lets in engaging students within the classroom and at home.

eTutorSam Pitroda, advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has launched the cloud-based tablet solution for school students called ‘e-tutor tablet’. This can be used by students from Class 1 to 12and price at Rs 7,500

HCLHCL recently launched its MyEdu tab. Based on Cloud based learning eco-system, it brings together students, teachers, parents, institutions on an integrated education platform.

MyEduTab K12 version is priced at Rs 11, 499 and higher educa-tion version priced at R9, 999.

iProfiProf offers test preparatory content for Entrance Exams. From Engineering to Medical, Civil Services to Management, iProf

content is available in multiple formats like lectures in 2D and 3D animations, e-Book and practice tests that can be accessed on any Android powered tablet. The company also provide tablets bundled with its content. Price varies with the content opted.

Micromax Informatics LtdMicromax has launched the an-droid based edutainment device- Funbook. Micromax has partnered with Pearson and Everonn to make available relevant content for the students. It is available at a price of Rs 6,499.

SamsungSamsung is targeting the high end market like Apple. Samsung offers Android based Galaxy Tabs. But at this given point of time, Samsung do not have anything more than a device for the educa-tion segment.

KloudPadKloudPad has launched its An-droid 4 tablet with 3G connectiv-ity. The compa ny has tie-up with Attano for receiving educational course related content like sample test papers for Medical and Engi-neering , etc.

MilagrowMilgrow customises its tablet ac-cording to the educational insti-tutes demand. Customisation is possible with the minimum order of 500 tablets.

Telmoco Development Labs Pvt LtdTelmoco Development Labs Pvt has come out with a Tablet PC – Atti-tude Daksha for Rs 5,399.

WishTelWishtel has launched its tablets IRA and IRA Thing tablet PCs.


cover story TableTs


cover story

As Head of one of the first schools in Andhra Pradesh to intro-duce Technology in Teaching and bring in the concept of a Smart school, I believe that tablets have helped to bring a paradigm shift in the Teaching and Learning process. The 21st century learners need to be a critical and creative thinker who can work collab-oratively towards designing and solving problems. Easy access to content and information has reduced the relevance of memoris-ing facts and figures. Students today need to connect their learn-ing to real world situations and apply what they learn.

From desktop PC to laptop and now Tablets, the medium is only

getting better. In a classroom where every child and the teacher have a Tablet that is connected to the WiFi, learning becomes both independent and collaborative. Teachers can both differentiate as well as teach to the group. It supports all kinds of learners and frees up a lot of space besides reducing paper. With all the content of the textbooks and more available on the Tablet, school bags will be lighter and children happier.

As students are introduced to technological tools in classrooms and beyond, the first and most important quality that we need to imbibe is integrity and academic honesty. There is always the temptation to stray away from the task on hand and get lost in the maze of the web. Most equipments designed for usage in schools have features that restrict browsing to only what is relevant for learning. School firewalls also take care of controlling visits to un-wanted sites. However the quality of internal discipline needs to be built.

At Oakridge International School, we have multimedia enabled classrooms with smart boards and internet connectivity. We are currently exploring the option of introducing tablets in our class-rooms. We did a pilot programme during the summer camp this year and were amazed to see how well children who are only three or four years old take to these devices.

Adilakshmi chintalapati, Principal, oakridge International school

tabletising Learning

In a very short span of time, tablets have carved a niche for themselves in the modern education space. digitalLEARNING interacted with a host of schools and higher education leaders to gain insight into the real potential of tablets in education space


cover story

At DPS Surat, we have tried all options over the last nine years: Projectors, Interac-tive boards with Projectors and a whole host of variants of the interactive board. However, on the ground our research shows that teachers are quite comfortable with operating the television. So we have given all our teachers iPads. In our class-rooms, we have 50 inch televisions, in which the teachers can plug in their input devices. The iPad makes up for the interactivity in an excellent way. This can be pro-jected onto the TV with sound and without loss of resolution to a large extent.”

Education is a wide term; it starts with birth and ends with death. In ancient time, knowledge was transferred from Guru to disciple ver-bally and it was learnt by heart. Later on text came and it underwent lot of change by revolution in print media. Twenty first century is all about e-learning, e-library, e-book, e-governance, e-news letter, etc.

Apple made a great push in to education when the company intro-duced text book for iPad. Tablets are no longer only a fun device, they are clearly an efficient device for education. Recently the middle school students proficiency test was measured to test the difference in abilities of students using the traditional text books and students using Tablets. Among those who used the text book 59 percent were proficient and 78 percent were proficient. those used Tablets.

In 21st century keeping the child away from the technology is not justified. We should be logical and have pace with modern age. As an educator, I feel Tablets are essential part of joyful and creative teaching learning process. Now educational and technological links are warm-ing up and are being rapidly backed by best academicians and top IT professionals.

Tablets are most student friendly device. Through use of tablets in-credible amount of interest can be brought into the process of learning. We at Raffles have de-veloped Tablet classrooms for our students.

G r sivakumar, Principal, Delhi Public school, surat

rK sharma, Principal, somany vidyapeeth Public school

Low cost tablet computers can have many uses in school and college education. For a start, all textbooks could be made available on tablets reducing the costs of printing and distribution and also reducing the weight of school bags. Tablets would enable interactive lessons for self-learning as well as for viewing recorded lec-tures. They could be used to access educational content on the internet. The small size of the tablets and their low cost enables them to be car-ried to the classroom by each student and they could be used for conducting mini in-class quizzes. Finally, they could be used as a computer for small scientific and engineering calculations.

It is important to have sufficient free and open source content available for wide and effective use of tablets in education. We need open repositories where such content can be shared and simple frameworks to enable teachers and students to develop the content and contribute to the reposi-tory. Equally important to creating content is the integration of such material into the teaching and learning programmes of schools and colleges. Un-less this is done, even if excellent content is gener-ated, it will not be used.

Devang Khakhar, Director, IIt Bombay

Dr Rajeev Kumar Chauhan, Principal, Raffles International School, Behror Campus

0

5

25

75

95

100

0

5

25

75

95

100

0

5

25

75

95

100

0

5

25

75

95

100

13 new ad_3july with marks

Tuesday, July 03, 2012 2:42:36 PM

cover story


Industry Speak

The manufacturer of Aakash One tablet, Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO, Datawind, talks about how the company has created a new market for low cost tablets in India

connectivity is still a challenge for tablets

“Free schooling till Grade eight can be done through tablets”

content wide area network is essential. Wide area connectivity and cellular con-nective is essential to utilise the full po-tential of tablets.

Aakash One and UBI slate have set a new benchmark in low cost segment. It has led to collapse in pricing and that is a good thing for education in this coun-try. The price pressure was really essen-tial and now market is expanding. The demand is enormous. The struggle for awareness and demands is not the same.

What about applications?The apps are broken into three areas, one of which is the area of ebooks. The ebook content is CBSE curriculum, NCERT books, etc. and that is the big portion of the market. There are lot of video based learning tools in the mar-ket. People like the Khan Academy and

government under NMEICT, have huge amount of online video based courses which are useful in tablets. Third you need games based that are being created for interactive learning environment for students.

ChallengesOne of the biggest challenges is connec-tivity. There are lot of entry level tablets, but these tablets are connected only by WiFi. Now the problem is that in India there are 13 million broadband con-nection addressing 13 million families in a country of 1.2 billion population. Majority of population does not have access to WiFi. For the dissemination of

Tablets have a huge potential in digital learning and distance learning. These devices are uniquely capable of fostering diverse kinds of interac-tions between students, teachers and administrators. However, it is also true that in India internet speeds are not very good also no free roaming is available. It will take some time, before our institutions are able to take maximum advantage of the tablet technology. Tablets, which enable on-line education, are the ultimate educational solution for a country like India, where there is lack of quality teachers and schools.

What about Content?We have loaded a lot of digital content, which is available for free on the Internet. We have loaded Autodesk, AutoCad, and lot of dental, medical, and online MBA content is provided with our tablet. Much of our educational content is for primary schools. Lots of people want to profit out of it. I don’t think in the same direction. If content is avail-able online for free, then the same can be placed inside the tablet and offered free to consumers. Completely free schools till grade eight can be done in tablet.

rajeev Karwal, Founder and CEO, Milagrow Business & Knowledge Solutions on education content for tablets


Cover story

Rohit Pande, CEO, Classteacher, speaks about the of acceptance of tablets in the modern education system

gory might be not more than 10 percent, those in the fence might be the major-ity because they have heard about such devices, they have experienced some of them, so I would say 60 percent of the teachers are waiting on the fence. Once the adoption occurs, I think they will be-come supportive of tablets in schools. 30 percent of the teachers might be vocally opposed to tablets. But what is encour-aging is that the adoption rate of parents is very high. Second point is that school managements, when they work with whiteboards, have seen the constraints of depending on a single model and that too totally dependent on teachers. So managements in schools are not sure whether this model will work or not, but they are dissatisfied with the previous model’s outcomes.

What is the ideal way of utilising Tablet in classroom?When we say educational setting we are referring to a connect between school and the home. One powerful applications that we are developing al-lows teachers to keep track of what the students are doing at home. So if the student is working on a test at home, teachers will get the data through on-line systems and when they come to the classroom, the teachers are already aware of where the specific learning gaps are. So they are able to customise their lecture to bring fulfilment to those learning gaps. This is not a usage only in the classroom but I would say it is a hybrid. I think it is not about how to use it, but like one of our board members said, you have no child left behind in US, now it will be like no teacher is left behind where every child has a tablet in their hands.

In your opinion what kind of role do tablets play in education space?We are positive that the tablet is going to play a prime role in the education space. The most important thing in favour of the tablet is that it is uniquely capable of leading to more personalised system of learning in schools. Lot of people who are not our competitors often end up believing that we are their competitors. We are not competitors to Aakash, Sam-sung or Apple, we are perhaps the col-laborators, because we use those devices in the classrooms. We focus on the ‘after that’, on readability, which is various kinds of content books, on assessments which happen both at home and class-room, on the flow of assignments. So basically we have put together a virtual learning environment that can be called cloud. An important system of connec-tivity for us is through the whiteboard. We have a connectivity module with the whiteboards, where the content from the whiteboard goes to the tablet and vice versa.

How has been your experience with schools?The children are excited. However, the teachers fall into three categories, some are excited, some are lukewarm, and there is the small bunch who are com-pletely against usage of new technology. This is a very normal state of affairs, and it happens in all the schools.

What kind of response do you receive from schools?Schools are welcoming a new way of learning. When I look at schools, I look at them not as one thing but as three things – teachers, school manage-

Low Cost tablets on Adoption Curve

ment and parents. Here the parents are more directly involved, so people are welcoming. Yes the issues are humon-gous; there is a whole lot of confusion in parents’ minds. We provide a device, which is high end device, but there are cheaper devices available in the market. So which device do they chose? We are very flexible, so we end up telling schools that no matter what is the device, you can bring your own device. But make sure that when the child enters the school there is some working device. We give our own device, but many times we work on other devices. So I think the pri-mary issue that parents have is- ‘Don’t force anything through our throat, we have the right to make our own choices’. Once results come out and it becomes obvious that tablets are leading to better educational outcomes, the device will be welcomed in larger number of schools. The parents, the teachers, the school administration, will become supportive.

Can you tell us about the percentage of these three categories of teachers in schools?At this moment the overtly excited cate-

Industry Speak

MORE INTELLIGENT. MORE POWERFUL. SUPERB VALUE. BEST-IN-CLASS.Zebra® ZXP Series 3™ card printer – Packed With Features At A Compact Price.

Compact enough to fit into any workspace, this powerhouse printer is packed with advanced features to enable you to punch above your business weight. Maximise productivity and enjoy greater reliability with minimal downtime affecting your day-to-day operations. Perform critical printing processes reliably, quickly and cost-efficiently with this innovative, yet highly-affordable direct-to-card printer.

Key Benefits• Maximise efficiency with best-in-class high-speed, high-performance printing• Intuitive design reduces user training requirements• Enhance security with smart card and magnetic stripe encoding• Superior image quality with ZRaster™ host-based image processing technology• Optimise ease-of-use with quick-replace, Load-N-Go™ ribbon cartridges• Enjoy greater flexibility through better connectivity, easy system integration and single or dual-sided direct-to-card printing options

Watch the video at www.zebra.com/zxpseries3/productvideo now

To find out more, please email [email protected]

Zebra Technologies India Pvt Ltd Boomerang A202 Near Chandivali StudioMain Chandivali Farm Road Main Andheri E Mumbai 400072 T: 022 67275555

MORE INTELLIGENT. MORE POWERFUL. SUPERB VALUE. BEST-IN-CLASS.Zebra® ZXP Series 3™ card printer – Packed With Features At A Compact Price.

Compact enough to fit into any workspace, this powerhouse printer is packed with advanced features to enable you to punch above your business weight. Maximise productivity and enjoy greater reliability with minimal downtime affecting your day-to-day operations. Perform critical printing processes reliably, quickly and cost-efficiently with this innovative, yet highly-affordable direct-to-card printer.

Key Benefits• Maximise efficiency with best-in-class high-speed, high-performance printing• Intuitive design reduces user training requirements• Enhance security with smart card and magnetic stripe encoding• Superior image quality with ZRaster™ host-based image processing technology• Optimise ease-of-use with quick-replace, Load-N-Go™ ribbon cartridges• Enjoy greater flexibility through better connectivity, easy system integration and single or dual-sided direct-to-card printing options

Watch the video at www.zebra.com/zxpseries3/productvideo now

To find out more, please email [email protected]

Zebra Technologies India Pvt Ltd Boomerang A202 Near Chandivali StudioMain Chandivali Farm Road Main Andheri E Mumbai 400072 T: 022 67275555


cover story

What kind of role are tablets playing in education space for better learning delivery outcomes?Tablets present a unique op-portunity to deliver assisted learning to students across the educational ecosystem. With ad-vancements in mobile comput-ing, tablets will evolve to become the most effective learning con-vergence medium. Traditionally teaching and learning have been seen through the prism of “one size fits all” ideal. This needs to

change. Modern technology is bringing vast changes in the educational landscape. An interactive touch based device can lead to better learning outcomes. There is also a huge op-portunity to make education a custom experience by offering content that interacts with the learner based on his interests.

What kind of content for tablets are you offering to education institutes?We currently partner with Attano India to deliver almost all cur-riculum books for CSBE, ICSE syllabus. There are model test pa-pers available digitally for medical engineering students as well. We are also working with state governments to digitize their educational content as well. We also offer pre-school and prima-ry education content focusing on language learning and early concept introduction in an interactive format targeting 2-8 yrs.

Please throw some light on the latest trends and futuristic solutions for tablets in education. Well the future is all about “adaptive learning”, no two stu-dents learn the same way.

Using technology the “eSLATE” will deliver custom lessons to students based on their individual learning patterns and in near future students will be able to control or dictate how their lesson plans are delivered.

For instance, imagine putting the power in the hands of the students about what they want to learn in the next class. The tutor will be a mere facilitator of the learning process, because all content will be digitally available, it is just a matter of moni-toring the “touch” driven access to education.

“the tutor will be a Mere Facilitator of the Learning Process”

Abbishek ShikkyCEO, Kloudpad on tablets trend in education

Tell us about the ways in which tablets can serve as a tool for learning. The tablets possess the unique power of making learning a much more immersive and personal experience. Unlike the PC or laptop, a tablet can facilitate anywhere and anytime learning. In case of tablets one can touch and rotate the content.

What are the best ways of creating content for tablets?Moving PC content on to the tablet doesn’t make sense. Having content according to device’s user interface is very important. It is also the uniqueness of the content that is available on the tablet that is driving the demand for these devices. Parents and students want to use tablets to further their learning. No school wants to be left behind.

Tell us about the role that Attano is playing.Attano is engaged in introducing education applications in the tablet system. There is crunch of content that is custom made for tablets. Our belief is that the books that students use are full of huge amount of content lying with publish-ers. This content can easily be converted into interactive digital content. Attano specialises in interactive education.

How big is online educational content market perceived to be in India?The textbook market in India is estimated to be at ap-proximately 10000 crore/year. Attano is pioneering edu-cational eBooks in India. India has an installed based of approximately 60 million PCs, the number is growing at around 15 percent year on year. The country is also the home to large number of tablets, as of now iPad rules the tablet space. Aakash, other Android Tablets and Windows 8 are bound to change the game in the coming months as these devices are much cheaper.

Beyond click click!

Soumya Banerjee, CEO, Attano, is of opinion that tablets can prove to be a potent tool for education of the content they carry has been optimised for the unique touch based user interface

Industry Speak


cover story

Sanjay Purohit, Founder CEO, iProf India, launched tablets much before the iconic iPad came into being. He explains innovation that Tablets are bringing into the education space. Excerpts:

“this is the year of tablets in education”

What was the response to tablets in 2009?We had very encouraging response, ev-erybody was thrilled to see that product. People were impressed by the audio-visual content, because those where the days when mobile devices had very small screen, and the computers were too ex-pensive and also too bulky to carry.

Revolution of low cost tablets started with Aakash1. What are your views on Aakash 1 tablet?I tested the Aakash 1 tablet and found technical specifications were much low-er. Today’s younger generation is habit-uated to much powerful device, so they are not going to accept such mediocre performance. Although the cost was cut to bare minimum it was great, but us-ability is too difficult with the very small processer. Specification of Aakash 2 is pretty good and is comparable to tablets like Pantel and Wistel and others, which are pretty good and are in the range of Rs 3000 to Rs 5000.

Thanks to government of India for huge publicity of Aakash, students and parents have accepted that tablet is a way to learn.

When do you see tablet boom coming in education?I am expecting quarter four of this year to be a big, because UP government is planning to give outh 25 lakh tablets for free. They made provision for the same in budget for 2007 for 21 crore. Tenders are likely next month in July. I expect by Q4 this year, Indians will start seeing a big ex-plosion in the market for tablets.

You have approached many schools. What kind of response have you received from them?We are having very encouraging response from schools. About 80 percent students

have opted for tablets. We started ap-proaching schools this year only when tablet came effective. As of now around 250-300 schools are evaluating it and 21 schools have already signed the agreement so in July 2012 we will start deploying it. In places like Maharani Gayatri Devi School, Jaipur 79 girls out 100 girls have opted for tablets. Schools in Boondi, Sawai Madhopur and other far flung towns have also started using tablets for educational usage.

How can we ensure that the educational content available on the tablet is of good quality?There are three ways to assure the quality of content. One way is that if there can be a quality monitoring institute that certifies the content from one star to five stars. For instance, the Government of India, has developed the Shakshar website where they are putting lot of digital content, which can meet the basic requirement of students. Second way is the community driven. People can themselves comment on the content. If twenty thousand peo-ple like that content it means that it is of good quality. Market itself drives some winners. Those who are providing good content will become stronger and stron-ger as market is liking their product.

Please share with us your plans for offering new solutions to the learner community.We are coming up with a new product next month called digiLibrary, which is the largest collection of tablet content in online space. So it will become a destina-tion point. Online it is free, but download incurs charge. Lot of people have tablets, but they don’t know where to go therefore, we are offering them a destination point. We are also launching 24X7 Teacher on Call. We are targeting to become100 crore company by 2014.

Please share the genesis of iProf India.It was in 2009 that I saw for the first time the form factor that we call tablets. I was impressed by the 7 inch form factor with a touch screen, and I realized that finally we have something, which can help in education delivery, because it is very easy to use and to carry, so we started working on it. We were the first company in India to launch Tablets for education. The iProf tablet came into being in 2009. During those days we were also creating the con-tent for the tablet.

Industry Speak


cover story

The online learning company, PraZas, has launched its new math worksheet program called Tabtor for Tablets. Sundi Natarajan, Chief of Strategy, speaks about the need of tablets in today’s classroom

A low cost tablet, Avaz gives voice to people with cerebral palsy. Ajit Narayanan, Founder and CEO, Invention Labs talks about how Avaz caters to communication needs of children with special needs

“Why classrooms of today are Failing?”

Avaj for Inclusive education

The current system of multiple choice questions will tell you if somebody has got the answer right or wrong, but it will not tell you if that somebody has understood something correctly or not. To fix this problem we delved into technology, and came up with a solution that entails a mix of tablets and tutoring.

Taking teacher out of the situation will not solve the problem; a teacher is so definitely needed to en-sure that the kid is benefitting from the education process.

Tabtor is tailored to meet an array of educational needs as it uses a combination of patent-pending Real-Paper technology that allows sharing and review of handwritten work, automatic grading, video tutorials and adaptive analytics.

Industry Speak

Digital education platform provider, Wishtel, has launched its tablet in the Indian market. Milind Shah, Chief Executive Officer, Wishtel, speaks on tablet as a tool for education delivery

tablets Bring Learning to Home

Tablets are a very effective tool for education, as they re-duce the number of books a student has to carry in his bag. Tablets also lead to better opportunities for search, writing, quick noting, as a feature to the child. Tablets are compact and can be easily carried in the classroom unlike laptops and desktops. The multimedia option they offer are conducive for better learning. Currently digital education has turned into projector based sys-tem, which does not allow a child to take learning to home. Tablets offer them a platform to practice every-thing they learn in schools.

Ajay Shukla, Vice President and Managing Director, McGraw-Hill Education, on the role of tablets and e-content in pedagogy

enormous opportunity exists for e-content companies

We see tablets, as a major change agent in the education worldwide. The key drivers for current and future growth in our view are advent of low cost tablets, falling bandwidth prices, increasing telecom network reach, growing popula-tion of technology natives. Unlike smart boards and web based learning tools, tablets will find greater acceptance and adoption within institutions and teachers, as lot of heavy books can be carried as e-content inside the tablets. Enor-mous opportunity exists for e-content companies like ours, as content is at the heart of the learning process, while technol-ogy is just an enabler. We are partnering with device manu-facturers and technology providers for distribution, market-ing and consumer insights.

Some four million people in India suffer from cerebral palsy that makes it difficult or impossible for them to speak. Tablets provide particular advan-tages to children with special needs because they minimise abstraction. Unlike computers, which require multiple levels of association with ab-straction (understanding the motor movement of the mouse, and trans-lating its movement on a screen), tablets avoid these complicated inter-faces. You touch an icon, and it opens up: it is simple and easier to process. The cognitive gap that is faced with is significantly reduced. Along with the move to tablets, there has been a parallel surge in the app ecosystem to cater to children with mainstream as well as varied needs. The boom in the number and breadth of ideas out there is highly promising. Avaz is a tablet app that caters to the communicative needs of children with autism and cerebral palsy; about 500 children are using Avaz in India. They are easily able to navigate the customised touch screen, to speak out words, sentences or paragraphs. I have seen non-verbal children around India be able to join classrooms of verbal children because they have an enabling device. By allowing children to give voice to their thoughts and feelings, Avaz has unveiled new horizons of expression and thought for them.

The international standard of excellencein achievement testing for over 80 years is now available in India - Stanford 10

The Stanford Achievement Test Series, Tenth Edition (India) measures student progress towards high academic standards.

A range of user-friendly score reports, designed with the input of administrators and teachers across the country, supports teaching, learning, and accountability requirements.

School Administrators obtain critical data to document and monitor the progress of all children.

Teachers receive specific information to support instructional planning for individual students and the class as well as to improve their teaching.

Parents better understand their child’s achievement level and get direction for home involvement.

Features of Stanford 10:l India norms available from schools across Indial Comprehensive assessment of achievement from students tested on English, Mathematics and Sciencel Wide age range covered through eight test levels, from classes 3 to 10l Detailed reports result in accurate measurement of a student’s progress and growthl Full-colour testing materials & Easy-to-navigate test documents

For further information on the Stanford 10, please contact: Krishnendu DuttaLandline: 0120 4190100 (Extension 181), Mobile: 09810669678, Email: [email protected]

Trusted, Reliable & Comprehensive Testing

Hi,

The Golden Ad is good to go. Plz send high res file.

SAT 10 ad: Please use a milder font for the headline and lets not keepit Centre aligned.In the first sentence replace (Stanford 10) in brackets with (India) inbrackets.

Golden ad dimension - Same a SOSIE

SAT 10 Ad dimensionThe smaller Ad dimension is 1. Mentor magazine: 160mm by 230mm (In case we go ahead)2. Digital Learning magazine: 195mm width x 272mm height with 5mmbleed margin. (current artwork)


cover story

“Content will continue to play a differentiator whatever be the medium of consumption – books, internet or tablet. Pearson has a distinct advantage of being an education company with firm publishing credentials, both in the education and consumer space and that sets us apart from others in the education market. While content in any form ought to be a rich experience for its consumer, tablet content specifically must be interactive and in the context of education must offer a compelling learning experience.”

[www.khanacademy.org]

[www.youtube.com/education]

Max Gabriel, senior vice President and chief technology officer, Pearson India

content is aDifferentiator

The most important part in a Tablet is its content. Almost every e-Content company offers content for Tablets but the interactivity and personalisation is important differentiator in tablets. Content should be so powerful that it makes learner independent of teacher. Many Tablet manufactures are going for tie ups with content providers for providing best learning experience to students

Khan AcademyKhan Academy offers over 3,200 videos on everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and hundreds of skills to practice. Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organisa-tion with the goal of changing education for the better by pro-viding a free world-class education to anyone, anywhere. “All of the site’s resources are available to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooled, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Acad-emy’s materials and resources are available to you completely

free of charge.” claims Khan Academy

YouTube EducationYouTube EDU brings learners and educators together in a glob-al video classroom. YouTube EDU provides access to a broad set of educational videos that range from academic lectures to inspirational speeches and everything in between. It offers a learner quick lessons from top teachers around the world, course lectures from top-tier universities, or inspiring videos to spark your imagination.

Free Content Resources Available Online

29digitalLEARNING / juLY 2012

cover story

Quick tips for choosing tablet for educational usage

Go for right mix of 3Cs and 1PTablets are available in the price range of Rs 2000 to 40,000. It is difficult to choose the right one for your institution. It should be a right mix of 3Cs and 1P that is Configuration, Content, Connectiv-ity, and Price. Here are some points that a procurement manager should keep in mind while zeroing on the one

• Purposeorusageshouldbeanal-ysed for the scalability. It should be analysed if you are buying for high end function or just basic learning.

• Howmuchmoneyyouwanttoputin?

• Whatkindofaftersalesserviceisavailable? In school environment with kids handling the device, fre-quent repairs are going to be order of the day.

• Alsolookforthehardwaredurabilityand accessories that can enhance its durability.

• Lookforthehardwareconfigurationlike processor, RAM, graphics, vari-ous ports, etc. for seamless experi-ence

• Connectivityismostimportantintablet, almost everything is offered on cloud therefore it should support connectivityoptionslikeWiFi,3Gand 2G.

• Contentisthekingintablet.Whileselecting the solution provider ensure that to know what after that hardware. Ask for the best available content not just e-books. Check it for interactivity in curricu-lum they offer. Content should not be like nugget consumption.

• Askfordemoandtrainingtoyourstaff

• Tabletshouldprovidethecontentto make learners independent of teacher to greater extent

cover story

YouTube for Schools allows access to thousands of educational videos on YouTube EDU from within a school network by signing up for YouTube for Schools.

SakshatSakshat is a one-stop education portal developed under National Mis-sion on Education through ICT. Sakshat portal addresses the educational requirements of learners from Kindergarten to PhD. All the e-learning content will be disseminated through Sakshat portal free of cost

NCERTNCERT has made all of its textbooks available online in PDF form. They are in a reasonably navigable form with each chapter available as a separate PDF and a chapter can be opened by clicking through the table of contents. Kapil Sibal, Union HRD minister in the 59th CABE meeting has announced that NCERT is also working towards customising the content for tablets.

National Knowledge Network (NKN)NKN would help stakeholders transfer knowledge using specialised applications, which permit sharing of high performance computing facilities, e-libraries, virtual classrooms and huge database.

ChallengesSome of the challenges are management complacency towards change, acquisition cost of the solution deployment, customisation and regionalised development of content to meet the demands of the tutors. Training of teachers and staff to adopt the solution and use it effectively as a management delivery tool can also be counted as a challenge at this point of time. Technical hardware durability in a highly task intensive environment is another challenge vendors face in educational scenario.

The ability to leverage the existing investment of the educational institution in their respective school or higher education manage-ment system also throws a challenge.

Various innovation and development in the hardware and content are coming in to answer some of these challenges. Tablets have the potential to bridge the educational divide, as they enable students from all parts of the country and the world to access quality educa-tional content on an anywhere, anytime basis.

[www.sakshat.ac.in]

[ncert.nic.in/NCERTS/textbook/textbook.htm]


interviewhigher education

Bringing Class Education to the Mass

Shalini Urs, Executive Director, Myra Business School, in conversation with Sheena Joseph Cherian, shares her vision for furthering the goals of education through her institution

Tell us about the mission and vision of Myra Business Institute.The institute’s founders, including me, have been in the academia for the last 35 years. I have also founded another institute and my husband has also been associated with the National Ac-creditation Assessment Council for the past 15 years. We were inspired by the idea of improving the quality of educa-tion and hence Myra Business Institute came into being. I would like to quote Mahatma Gandhi here, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” So, we thought of starting and setting up of this Institute. Apart from the quality en-gine in it, we also have world class facul-ties. Today Myra is a globally recognised B-School with world class faculty and infrastructure.

Tell us about your employee training programme for companies. We are in touch with companies like In-tel, Infosys and Dell. We are talking to them in terms of their requirements and accordingly some of the programmes have been customised. The state uni-versity is collaborating with Myra School of Business to offer these execu-tive education programmes. So these are jointly organised and jointly certi-fied. The centre for executive educa-tion at Eastern Illinois State University (EISU) and our centre have collaborated to come up with these corporate train-ing programmes.

What is the major ICT Initiative taken in Myra? ICT is interwoven in all we do. For exam-ple, our admission process is completely online. So the one showing interest to

regulatory body. As I see it, whether it is AICTE or any regulatory body, they are basically setting up minimum stan-dards so that every institution caters to it and ensures the provision of such minimum standards whether it is infra-structure or faculty or any other thing, in terms of library, books and other resources, like labs. So the regulatory bodies set up the minimum benchmark. Once we have satisfied this benchmark, we can start aspiring for global bench-marks. For example, as per the regula-tion set by AICTE, you need to have a particular classroom size. I think the regulatory bodies set up a standard to ensure the delivery of education. I do not think that they are actually ham-pering education.

Are there any unique innovations going on in Myra School?Besides the world class faculties and rea-sonable fee structure there is lot of in-novative ideas that we use in our system of education. Based on the educational psychology concept called ‘Absolute En-gagement’, which means that a person will be engaged only on one object at a time, the absolute engagement has been designed. The retention, absorption and the detention are high. The second in-novation is the research based learning model. This model encourages our stu-dents to think. Beyond the classrooms, we are giving opportunities to our stu-dents to interact with industry leaders. We are also developing a ‘Network of Mentors’. Every alternate Friday, or once in 2 weeks, we bring one mentor to Myra institute for a face to face interaction with students. This mentor spends one and a half days with the students in very informal settings.

Myra School can apply online and sub-mit the application. We have an online application system through which one can complete the admission process, and upload their documents and make the payments.

Secondly, for our day to day activities, like news updates we are using Face-book. Many of the students get to know what we are doing through Facebook updates. Apart from our all inclusive website, we also use YouTube channel.

Do you think regulations and regulatory bodies are hampering/promoting the cause of education in India? I don’t think that the regulatory bodies are hampering the growth of educa-tion sector as such. We need to have a

http://myra.ac.in

Dry wipe Marker

Boardwriting cum ProjectionSurface: Non-Magnetic, Magnetic & Enamel coaredSize: 2x3, 3x4,5x4,6x4,8x4,10x4,12x4 and customizes

Chalk writing Green Board

Surface: Non-Magnetic, Magnetic & Ceramic

Size: 2x3, 3x4,5x4,6x4,8x4,10x4,12x4 and customizes *

*


TECH foCus WIRELESS CAMPUS

The Education Diva

By Sheena Joseph Cherian, Sharmila Das, and Mansi Bansal

Daughter of an NCERT professor, Sudha Gupta used to find solace in the NCERT campus libraries. The cam-pus was her home for 17 long years. From there, the

ardour for education came naturally to her. The entrepre-neurial hat was not crown her until the year 1990, when to her chagrin she found that the standard of her son’s school was not up to the mark.

That is when she decided that she must do something in the early education space. She did some research and approached

Vinita Kaul who was then heading the NCERT, Early Child Ed-ucation Department. Benefiting hugely from the insights she got from Vinita Kaul, Sudha Gupta did her Nursery Teachers Training course and came up with Mother’s Pride in 1996.

Sudha Gupta pursued her B.Ed from Jamia Miliya Islamia (1987) and Post Graduation in Mathematics from Delhi Uni-versity (1986).

Today an eminent personality in the education space, Sudha Gupta reminisces about her long journey with these words, “I

A woman of multifarious capabilities, an educationist, a visionary and

also a successful entrepreneur, Sudha Gupta, Chairperson of Mother’s

Pride Pre-School and Presidium Senior Secondary School endeavoured

to evolve a novel definition of education during her journey through life

Sudha GuptaChairperson of Mother’s

Pride School


my journEy


TECH foCusWIRELESS CAMPUS

started Mother’s Pride in Paschim Vihar in 1996 with a small setup of three rooms and a very few students. I stressed on the needs of this age group, their emotional, physical and social capabilities, how they learn, and so on. So I created something which was very different from what other play schools had”.

USP that sets Mother’s Pride apartThe present early child education do-main is crowded with a slew of pre-schools in every nook and corner of the country, but Mother’s Pride has managed to carve niche for itself and endear itself to the community of discerning parents because of its un-wavering focus on quality education. The school has a system in place for constantly upgrading the quality of learning. There is a customised teach-ing/learning methodology in place and the teachers are highly trained and motivated.

Mrs. Gupta says, “Very early on I re-alised the importance of having an ex-traordinary manpower. You can have dreams, you can fix a target, but to make it a reality, you need to have a team of highly talented people. You have to de-velop, nurture and motivate the team. Basically you have to have the talent for managing people. We have 2500 people + 1500 helpers working at Mother’s Pride. Everybody is so well connected and we all are marching ahead togeth-


my journEy

er for the transformation and for the achievement of the goals of the organ-isation”.

To inspire its sizeable workforce of teachers iwith the school’s vision, Mother’s Pride designed The Knowledge Tree - an in-house training academy for teachers. Mother’s Pride is the first of its kind of school to introduce a ball room and a doll room for little ones. They were the first to bring computers for toddlers as well. 16 years back this was quite an innovation; people used to ask whether there is any need for computers for three year old kids. However Mrs Gupta could see the real benefit behind this and she re-calls “Children used to enjoy a lot as what they used to learn in the classrooms, could now be done with computers.”

Besides computers, bright colours and cartoons in the classroom ambiance did its magic too. An interactive learn-ing infrastructure was also put in place. Eventually parents too were delighted with the end result. For Sudha Gupta that was the initial milestone achieved. The ed-entrepreneur was getting won-derful responses from the parent com-munity and by that time she knew that Mother’s Pride can expand its footprint further. With this vision they started looking for likeminded souls to partner with and become franchisees. The entire Mother’s Pride schools are operated by the Franchise Owned Company Oper-ated (FOCO) model.

The three mantrasMother’s Pride has three mechanisms in its curricu-lum. They are: life skills, academics, and talent. Mrs. Gupta believes that for the betterment of life these three components are critical for enabling the students to grow up into successful and happy individuals. She ex-plains, “Who we are today as a successful, happy indi-vidual is not only because of the knowledge that we have, but because of the life skills as well. A positive attitude, courage, decision-making skills, good communication

and expression - each element is more important than the academic knowl-edge that you might have.”

ChallengesA journey is not acomplished if the trav-eller has not overcome any challenge. Sudha Gupta fought two such challeng-es. As she says in her words, “If I look back, there had been two challenges: firstly, finding the good manpower so that you are free to follow your own dreams. Second, aligning your own goals with that of the parents whose children you are teaching. Are we focus-ing on the score card of the children at the cost of neglecting the self expression of the child? Are we putting too much pressure on the child?Are we ensuring that the child does not feel depressed? We need to take all this into account and create a balance. Along with the train-ing of teachers, I have created a parallel line - parenting. I created the concept of positive parenting and me and my team work closely with a lot with the parents”.

Presidium, the school for future leadersSetting up Presidium, a school devoted to creating the leaders of tomorrow was a natural progression for Mrs. Sudha Gupta. Today in just five years, Presidi-um has five brances, more than 15,000 students and is the fastest-growing ed-ucational institution in Delhi-NCR.

Venturing into higher educationAlready known as a trendsetter in the pre-school segment of the country, Mother’s Pride today wants to enter the higher education space too. Sudha Gupta says, “Education doesn’t end with the 12th standard. Higher educa-tion is the natural progression. There are lots of institutions that are doing well. I don’t intend to compete with them;my dream is to set up an insti-tute for creating entrepreneurs. As far as Presidium and Mothers Pride are concerned, I want to expand it to as much as I can in the country and way beyond”.

We wish all the best in her future en-deavour.


policy matter interview

Dr Abhay Wagh, Deputy Secretary, Department of Higher and technical education, Government of Maharashtra, shares his views on how technology is becoming the vital component of the state’s educational roadmap

“last year, 4 lakh Students Filled admission Forms from Home”

selected institutes have invested in and developed of e-learning resources, e-books, online journals and other e-content from na-tional / international sources. These facilities are provided online and can be availed by students and faculty anytime.

Other technological solutions that we use include - Online Feedback & Students Grievance Redressal system , Online ap-proval for educational institutions, Video conferencing systems for greater participation in administration, Online Management Information system for Technical Institutes in Maharashtra.

Are any step being taken for connecting higher education institutes to enable knowledge sharing?Great progress has been made for connecting Institutes of High-er Learning for developing a knowledge network to share, dis-seminate, collaborate and generate information. High Capac-ity Internet Bandwidth is being provided at subsidised rates to universities and Institutes of Higher Learning and about 1400 Institutes (including Universities) of Higher Learning in Maha-rashtra have availed such connections under National Mission on Education through Information and communication Tech-nology (NMEICT) till date. Further, National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) has been launched to provide e-learning through online web and video courses in engineering, science and humanities. Through Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP), selected institutes have been provided funds for Campus Wide Network-ing, Networking between institutions for enhancing access to and sharing of Learning Resources available in a cluster and of course provision of Internet. Further, Information Exchange Network has been established in Non – Agricultural Universi-ties for Information Exchange between these Universities, Col-leges and State Government.

Do you think technology can be used to enhance access in higher education?Technology can be used to increase accessibility to higher edu-cation, especially to the vulnerable and disadvantaged sections of society who couldn’t join regular education. In Maharash-tra, Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University (YC-MOU) has launched EduSat-based education, supported by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The university has established several Virtual Learning Centres (VLCs) in the State, each having two-way audio and video communication facilities. The students registered for programmes at the VLC attend lectures there. The experts deliver their lectures from the main hub at the university headquarters or from the sub-studio at Pune.

What are the future plans of the department?One of the most important initiatives being planned by the de-partment is integration with Aadhaar project. The financial disbursements like salaries of teachers, scholarships of stu-dents. shall be linked to Aadhaar, ensuring guaranteed and targeted delivery of services to unique and genuine beneficia-ries. It shall greatly help in weeding out duplicate and fake ben-eficiaries from the system.

What initiatives have been taken by your department to make optimal usage of technology?We recognise the fact that technology is an important tool for achieving good governance and improving the quality of services. In the department, there are numerous outstanding examples of e-Governance solutions running successfully. We have online admission system for technical education, through which the ad-mission process has become fully automated. Last year, about 4 lakh students and their parents could sit at home and fill the ad-mission form instead of waiting in long queues. It not only saved their travel cost and time, it also reduced errors associated with manual processing. Then there is the e - Library:, through which


tech focus erp

Education in today’s world has be-come highly competitive. In order to be different and ready for ac-

tion the institutions need a central re-source planning that can manage the entire information and operations of the institutions.

How does it work?ERP brings cohesion to the administra-tive culture of the education institutes, by creating a system for management of data in a seamless and efficient manner. The information can be stored and retrieved in different ways. Wheth-er it is keeping attendance of student, teacher and administrative staff or informing the student about the date of new session to be started, ERP does it all.

Benefits of Education ERPThe future integration of Internet tech-nologies, Application Service Provider (ASP) hosting services, and expanded ERP systems can help transform the way

education institutions operate in the 21st century and move closer to realising the goal of anytime, anywhere computing. Here are some benefits of using the Edu-cation ERP solution.

Benefits for Management• Easyaccessof allrecordsatoneplace• Channeltointeractwithstaff,teach-

ers, parents, students• Saving man hours and increasing

productivity• Unhindered,smoothmanagement

Benefits for Faculty• Manage class reports, attendance,

and performance• Makingonlineexams• Interactionwithparents• Effectiveplanning• Online projects and forums for stu-

dents

Benefits for Administration• Easyaccesstoreports• Gettingaccurateandtimelydata

• Publication&circulationof reports• Saving man hours for productive

work

Benefits for Students• Platformtointeract• Shareknowledge,experience,

views• Accesslibrary• Onlineexams• Participateinprojects• Contributetoschoolinoutof school

hours

Benefits for Parents• Reports&Updatesregardingward• EffectiveandTimelycommunication

of school activities• Knowledge Interaction with other

guardians

To make our readers aware of the actu-al scenario of education ERP deployment in India, we contacted some of the ERP solution providers and have noted their excerpts in the following pages.

To make the education infrastructure more aligned towards taking care of the best interests of the students, the education

institutions have marched an extra mile and adopted Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

With ERP the game has changed a lot

eRP Manages

Well!

37digitalLEARNING / juLY 2012

tech focuserp

What benefits do you think education institutes can have in embracing ERP solutions? These ERP systems are totally automated, they come with inherent benefits such as transparency in operations, seamless in-tegration of discrete processes, database management and archive facilities, admis-sion to alumni management systems, to knowledge management. The single most challenge so far is a mind set of schools from the investment perspective. Hence, services model can be the best fit to start

with. Schools are reluctant to invest in sys-tems; infrastructure. Also skilled resources to manage these systems are also a chal-lenge faced by schools.

What is your opinion on the level of ERP adoption in Indian schools? Currently the penetration is too low. Onlyfew schools with international tie ups have adopted such systems, but in such cases also adoption has not been done across all the modules. Government schools are far awayfrom such systems.

Who forms the largest group of ERP adopters in schools? When it comes to adopting an Educational ERP Software to run the day to day opera-tions, the private schools are way ahead of government schools. From my understand-ing as on date the usage of ERP is primarily limited to the schools in the urban areas and large chains of schools.

What ERP solution do you give to schools?MyClassboardFullyOnlineSchoolManage-ment System is an end to end web-based School Management System that can bedeployed for single schools or groups of schools without the need for a great deal of configuration. The application has a vast amount of built-in functionality and can handle everything including student records, elementary and secondary stu-dent report cards, fee collections, daily at-tendance, timetable scheduling, budgeting and accounting needs (Tally integration), admissions, library, learning management, online examinations, transport manage-ment and much more.

What is the investment required in deploying the solution in any educational infrastructure? MyClassboard works on the cloud model,

the initial investment on purchasing soft-ware or hardware that the client needs invest is absolutely zero. The client needs to pay a monthly subscription charge of `5999andMyClassboardwilltakecareof the rest.

What is your opinion on the level of ERP adoption in Indian schools and higher education institutes?We feel that until now only less than 5 percent of school and colleges actually use ERP in their organisations. And cur-rently we can observe that the usage of ERP solutions in the India education sec-tor is increasing rapidly. I believe with the next three years Indian education system will see considerable amount of changes and it will become mandatory for every or-ganisation to go for ERP System to manage all their academic and administrative operations.

However, schools generally tend to make wrong choices while picking an ERP solution provider. Before picking an ERP solution the educational institution must do a lot of analysis and then pick the ven-dor. The primary reason for this could be that there are very few players across India who has the funding, long term vision and passion to work in the education technol-ogy space.

smooth Working with eRP

eRP for Better Management

Sanjeev Phatak, VP, Training and Assessment Solutions Practice of Aptech Computer Education shares his insights on ERP in education infrastructure.

Ajay Sakhamuri, CEO, MyClassboard Educational Solutions Pvt Ltd feels the country’s education eco-

system has started getting the benefits of utilising ERP


tech focus erp

Who forms the largest group of ERP adopters in schools? Private schools are the major adopt-ers of ERP. This is because the private schools are more concerned about the systematic accounting of 3Ms(man,money and material) and activities (stu-dents, staff, fund, exam and co-curricu-lar, inventory and the library). There is a competition prevailing among the pri-vate schools to perform better to bring out best results, hence they are willing to accept technology to automate their day to day activities.

What ERP solution you give to schools? Our software products name is Campus-care. We provide solution starting from enquiry for admission to arrange transfer certificate of the students. Assessment of the students to preparing report cards, fund accounting, purchase order to material handling to scrap- inventory, taking care of daily transactions as well.

What is the investment involved in deploying the solution in any education infrastructure? A full-fledged ERP implementation en-suring high level of automation can be achieved by 15-20 lacs expense and re-curring expense of leased line to host the web server. What benefits do you think education institutes can have embracing ERP solutions?As we all are aware many institutions

do not have all the documents properly maintained, and there is lot of duplicity in admission number. The fees collection never gets tallied, and those who are not authorised for concession some time en-joyconcession.Thetabulationmistakesare also there in report cards, salary sheet. PF returns are a tedious task and we are depending on external agencies for accuracy, library does not have prop-er records, library books stock check is a tedious task.

Solution: ERP software can resolve issues at institu-tions by:1. Automating the repeated process by

simple steps.2. Providing provision for verifying the

inputs 3. The dependability on staff has reduced

for the management for information.4. Enhances work flow, increases the

efficiency, reduce the reliance on paper.

eRP Makes You Work fasterLawrence Zacharias, Founder Director of Entab Infotech Pvt Ltd sees that ERP utility in education will grow expediently.

What are the challenges associated with implementing ERP solutions, please tell us from yours and your client’s point of view.At Ellucian our key forte lies in deploy-ing ICT solutions for higher education.From our point of view, we take pride in the fact that we focus on a solution based approach tailored to suit our cus-tomer needs. Our success lies in com-municating the value proposition of Ellucian’s ERP solutions enabling our customers to migrate from the paper based legacy systems to the new system. This would be the major challenge forERP vendors at the beginning of every customerjourney.Apartfromthisfamil-iarizing the staff and student with the new system will be challenging. Estab-

lishing a unique set of best practices by leveraging our international and local expertise is what we consider the biggest challenge.

What is your opinion on the level of ERP adoption in Indian higher education institutes? IT now is considered as a strategic element to make changes & growth in associatedpolicies across all segments in India Inc., and education is not far behind. Earlier, majorityof IndianInstitutesdeployedsoft-ware solutions on a very small scale but we are witnessing a gradual change in this ap-proach. Indian universities are now open to the idea of adopting ERP for procedures related to admission, teaching, examina-tion, and interaction with students.

Institutes Work Better With eRPVinod P John, Senior Director (Sales), Ellucian feels the 21st century education infrastructure must include education ERP in its work management infrastructure



tech focus erp

Tell us about the investment involved in deploying the solution in any education infrastructure? There are two types of investments that will be needed. One is monetary andother is in terms of resource allocation. Institutions need to have a clear idea of their expectations from technology in-vestments and a clear road map defined in association with a consultant or a vendor will help.

What benefits do you think education institutes can have from embracing ERP solutions? Today, campuses are operating in an immensely competitive environment. In order to attract, retain and nurture talent, universities need to offer flexible and engaging distant education courses, enriching student services, smart class-

rooms, learning analytics, comprehen-sive placement service, alumni relation management etc. Talisma can help cam-puses in all these areas. We are already partnering education institutions in var-ious parts of the globe in their endeavour to become agile campuses that are pow-ered by benchmark student services. In a hyper competitive scenario, our ERP and CRMsolutionscanhelpcampusesfocus

on students and the student eco system without worrying about competition. ERP helps reaping the benefits of tech-nology in areas such as revenue growth, brand equity management, student life-cycle management, faculty and adminis-tration management and operations.

What is your opinion on the level of ERP adoption in Indian schools/higher education institutes?We are seeing plenty of traction in the Indian market. Many institutions havealready defined or are in the process of defining an IT roadmap for transform-ing into agile campuses. The adoption rates are low as of now due to a variety of reasons. But the next few years will see many Indian campuses turning agile and emerging into role models for cam-puses in the Asia pacific region.

education eRP streamlines ManagementRajendra CM, MD, APAC and EMEA, Talisma, talks about the ERP solutions they offer

Who form the largest group of ERP adopters in Schools?Private schools especially tier I city schools are major adopters and activeusers of ERP solutions because of the easy access to information.

What ERP solution you give to schools? We offer complete school automation

processes from enquiries to staffing and marksheets with various user access levels.

Our Iken ERP platform connects 8core school activities. It felicitates inqui-ries, admissions, student information andrecords, fees,subjectplanning,stu-dent performance and progress, payrolls and staffing.

Over150+schoolshaveadoptedIkenERP across India.

What benefits do you think education institutes can have embracing ERP solutions? What are the challenges associated with it? Iken ERP is designed to ensure –• Data Security with pre-defined user

access levels• Grade-wiseSubjectandExamPlan-

ning• Synchronizeallinformationforbet-

ter planning & resource manage-ment

• Scalable to match growth of theschools

The concept of ERP is novel to Indian School, thereby, connecting with the schools and educating them on the po-tential benefits of using technology for organising processes and resources is a roadblock that is holding back the real-ization of full potential of this demand.Automation of existing physical data is constantly a challenge for deploying the software and the systems. A complete support cycle of training, monitoring and refresher training brings in the nec-essary understanding and acceptance of the software, at a macro level.

What is your opinion on the level of ERP adoption in Indian Schools?With the scope of education widening, there is a strong underlying need to align the process and manage resources optimally. Yet the adoption levels of Iken ERP remain abysmal till date.

Work smart with eD-eRPAnil Goyal, Director-Strategy & Business Development, Mexus Education Pvt Ltd offers education ERP for education institutes


tech focus erp

– students, teachers, principals, school management and parents. The product empowers schools to strengthen their services to students and parents, thus enhancing their competitive advantage many fold. NIIT has implemented Quick School in 6000+ government and pri-vate schools.

What is the investment involved in deploying the solution in any education infrastructure?Although it depends on the school re-quirement, the student strength and what all functions that school wants to automate, the price ranges from `1.5 lakh to ` 7 lakh.

What benefits do you think education institutes can have embracing ERP solutions? Quick school standardises and stream-lines the various processes in the school through the following:

Support For Evaluationa) Evaluation plan,b) Multipleevaluationtypes,c) Scholastic,d) Co-scholastic,e) Formative,f) Summative

Data Managementa) Students data,b) Teacher’s data,c) Examination data,d) Health Status,e) Attendance data

Reportinga) Report card generation,b) Analysis that can lead to remedial

action,c) Information to parents,d) Involving parents in the teaching-

learning process.

Where do you see the need of Education ERP?Schools of today are complex organiza-tions with hundreds of people working in tandem to create an ever-evolving insti-tution.Oneof thekeystothesuccessof aschool is in the way it manages the deluge of information amongst other things.

Most schools use information man-agement one way or the other, whether it is Excel or function-specific informa-tion systems like Library Management

offering seamless eRPHemant Sethi, President, School Learning Solutions (SLS), NIIT Ltd says his company has been offering seamless ERP solutions to education institutes over the years

System, Fee Receipt Generation etc.These are mostly stop-gap solutions rather than scalable, comprehensive and long term solution. Since most of these systems are outdated, the generic school staff (Teaching and Non-Teach-ing) waste their time on mundane tasks and the school management lacks a de-cision support system. The education ERP solution comes handy to address these issues.

Who form the largest group of ERP adopters in schools? The major adopters of ERP are privateschools. Private schools adopt ERP to streamline their functions like fees col-lection, report card generation, payroll, admissions, inventory management, transportation etc. However, in new IT initiatives all state governments are coming up with requirement for ERP in

the state schools.

What ERP solution you offer to schools? So far how many schools/higher education institutes have deployed ERP solution from you?Quick School is integrated and comprehensive educa-tion resource planning soft-ware developed for schools to manage information spanning all functional re-quirements like fees collec-tion, report card genera-tion, payroll, admissions, inventory management, transportation etc. It also has the unique feature of modules that facilitate the implementation of

CCE guidelines. It addressesthe needs of all stakeholders within the education realm


tech focus erp


tech focus erp

eRP on BoardForward looking Higher education institutes have adopted ERP solution as it leads to improvement in performance.It brings efficiency and transparency to the sphere of operations. Higher education leaders in India share their ERP experience

Academia Speak

OurERPsolutionisanin-housede-velopmentof theHindustanGroup,and is tailor-made for our purposes. The complete solution is in various stages of development and imple-mentation and we are reaping the benefits of the system. The biggest challenge is user acceptance and change management.

Dr elizabeth Verghese, Chancellor, Hindustan University

The current ERP system functions undertwobroadsubjects.Themostimportant one is operation of all the institutes along with their progress. The second area is the recruitment system for all the alumni. This re-cruitment system helps us to keep a track of all our students and also the students are updated about the recruiters.

santanu Mishra, Co founder and Executive Trustee of SMILE foundation

The ERP solu-tion at JKLUc o m p r i s e s of various modules that cater to the needs of aca-demic and administra-

tive staff. The ERP is going through the implementation and customisation phase and the results are satisfactory. The biggest challenge was to strike a balance between customisation and adopting standard industry practices. Balance has been struck with mutual agreement and heavy involvement of all stakeholders. Periodic review meet-ings have been a great help in the most trying times.

Dr upinder Dhar, Vice Chancellor of J K Lakshmipat University We have also developed our own ERP package for the university, where every

aspect of the students activities whether it is attendance, his medical sickness, hisperformance&evaluation,hisendtermtestsetc,everythingisputuponthisthing.SoafathersittinginUS,byloginuseridandpasswordcancometoknow about the activities of his son or daughter studying in India.

Brig Grewal, Vice Chancellor, Chitkara University

We had been using an industry strength ERP for our accounting and financial functions. In the forth coming academic year, we are going to start using a student information management ERP product also. This ERP will cover complete information in student lifecycle, from admission and registration process to management of academic records, library, hostel, mess,placementandAlumni.We,atNUhaveveryspecificprocessesforseveralacademic functions and we wanted to get an ERP package that could be fully customized and configured to suite our process requirements. This ERP package is being developed and customized by NIIT LTd.

Akhlesh Agarwal, VP - Learning Technologies, NIIT University

Administration Simplif ied the Electronic Way...

11600+

ERP SOFTWARE FOR INSTITUTIONSS C H O O L U N I V E R S I T Y C O L L E G E

Campus C a r e

E n t a b i n f o t e c hR

India’s Largest Selling Institution ERP

Institutions - PAN INDIA & OVERSEASInstitutions - PAN INDIA & OVERSEAS600+ Years of Excellence11Years of Excellence

el gl eoC

loohcSytis r e vi n U

KEY MODULES

Registration & Admission

Student Administration

Exam & Evaluation Process

Attendance Management

Transcript Preperation

Time Scheduler

Online Exam

ACADEMIC

Fee Collection Management

HR Management

Leave & Attendance Management

Finance & Budgeting

Inventory Management

Purchase Management

Tuckshop & Cafeteria

Library Management Process

Hostel Management

Smart Card

Alumni Management

Smart Payment

SMS Alert

Microsoft Live@edu

R

FINANCE ADMINISTRATION

B-214, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase - I, New Delhi – 110 020, India, Tel/Fax.: + 91 - 11- 43193333 (100 Lines)E-mail : [email protected]

Entab Infotech Pvt. Ltd.

( CampusCare and CampusSoft are the registered trade marks of Entab Infotech Pvt ltd., New Delhi.)R

w w w . e n t a b . i n

R

(An ISO 9001:2008 Certified)

CampusCareCampusCareAn ICT Tool


interviewhigher education

The education Successor

Ashok Mittal, Chairman, Lovely Professional University (LPU) is a visionary who wants to bring back the traditional education values to modren pedagogy. In an interview with Sharmila Das, he talks about role of ICT in filling the gaps in education

What was the inspiration behind the launch of the Lovely Professional University? India had been the epicentre of learning thousands of years ago. Taxila, Nalanda, Vikramshila enjoyed the status of pre-mium seats of knowledge and education and attracted schol-ars from far and wide. Unfortunately, we failed to retain the knowledge as these Universities faded into oblivion. The pivotal inspiration behind the launch of this University is to bring back the glorious past of India in the realm of higher education, and recreate the magic of Taxila University in con-text of present times. We are inspired by the great heights of learning achieved by these Universities in various disciplines like medicine, mathematics, astronomy etc. and want to bring back the status that India enjoyed as the “Knowledge Capital” of the world. On an optimistic note, I declare that we are well on the course to establish ourselves as higher education gi-ants, and will break into the top 50 Universities of the world in next 10 years.

What steps has the institute taken to embrace ICT in its education system? What benefits has the institute experienced? The University has arranged a multi-faceted digital podium that features an IT-based University Management System, Learning Management System, Wi-Fi Campus, Electronic Sur-veillance System and many others. We have an extensive ERP programme put in place which is used as a common platform for almost all of the official communication and interactions – whether administrative or related to teaching (between the

students and the teachers). Every single student and teacher has his/her own intranet account in the University, where all the information of his relevance is dispensed. Right from the morning, the students and the teachers hook on to the ERP pedestal – the daily attendances are registered online, notes are uploaded (by teachers) and downloaded (by students), the students post their queries online to which the teachers re-spond via the same software. Not only this, the performance of all students is assessed online as their scores are displayed on the intranet, all important notices and information is also shared online. Records such as availed/pending leaves, salary, daily assignments, work progress chart, etc. are recorded on-line. This helps the students/employees/management to have crystal clear, transparent and easily decipherable information to plan for their charted work and execute their duties and re-sponsibilities in a more efficient fashion.

How ERP is indispensable for the overall functioning of your institute?Given the scale of operations of the University (25000+ stu-dents and nearly 600 faculty members), and a deep penetra-tion of ITC deployment in majority of working domains of the same, ERP becomes more than just being indispensable. ERP is the backbone of lion’s share of execution and monitoring undertaken by various level of management hierarchy and we feel that it is virtually impossible to run not just special proj-ects, but daily affairs of the University in the absence of ERP solutions that we have put in place.

What do you think about STEM Education in India? In India, we are fortunate to have an academic culture in schools that helps in providing a constant supply of good stu-dents with high aptitude in academic disciplines of Science, Technology, engineering and mathematics. But to be fair in all means, we still lack the required level of inputs at the end of education providers or for that matter, say entire education system that can help us to extract the benefits to their poten-tial. STEM Education in India has taken roots, but it has not penetrated that deep.

www.lpu.in

Ellucian: 40 Years of Success in Delivering Exceptional Education Technology Solutions and Services The recent combination of two leaders in education technology, Datatel and SunGard Higher Education, has a new name: Ellucian™.

Ellucian delivers sound, strategic guidance and a broad portfolio of powerful technology solutions to help educational institutions provide exceptional service for their constituents.

Helping institutions thrive. Because educational attainment is a global priority, the work of educational institutions has never been more important. At the same time, the need to re-imagine education has never been greater. Technologies are reshaping how people learn. New platforms for delivering education are evolving rapidly. In this dynamic environment, Ellucian is dedicated to helping educational institutions thrive.

Insights to help education move forward. Ellucian provides expert guidance and innovative, flexible solutions that help institutions fulfill their missions effectively and deftly navigate change.

Helping you deliver exceptional service. Ellucian’s extensive array of products and services help you provide your colleagues and your institution’s students with the tools they need to succeed. We strive to deliver solutions that can help you deliver a level of experiences that can set your institution apart.

Seamless solutions. Ellucian delivers integrated solutions to help you blend information, services, and communities seamlessly—knitting academics and student life into a single network of people and services, improving productivity, and creating interactive, collaborative learning communities.

Serving your students. Ellucian helps you discover innovative ways to deliver the support every student needs to succeed. Our tools and services help you find new students, get them engaged in your institution, and help them stay on track to achieve their academic goals.

Managing for efficiency. From implementation support to cloud-based solutions, from application hosting to technology management, Ellucian provides an array of strategic and technology services that can help you manage operations more effectively, adapt new solutions as needed, and build the foundation you need for a more sustainable institution.

Ellucian: 40 Years of Success Today, education institutions around the world look to Ellucian for ideas that will help individuals discover their future through learning. Ellucian helps institutions by investing in the primary solutions that clients rely on, including Banner and PowerCAMPUS administrative systems. We provide a broad portfolio of solutions that give clients more choices and capabilities to address their evolving needs.

Ellucian’s history of service and solutions in education technology means that we have knowledge and experience you can count on. As you work to manage your responsibilities, we will be there to help you strengthen your institution and the learning experience it delivers.

EXPERIENCE: 40 years delivering

education technology and services

40

CUSTOMERS: 2,300 institutions from 40 countries around the world

2,300

COMMUNITY: 13,500 customers

share best practices at regional user groups

13,500

COLLABORATION: 20,000 customers

participate in a vibrant online community

20,000

ADVISORY BODIES: 1,000 customers

provide direction about products and services

1,000

SOLUTION CENTERS: 9 global solution

centers for addressing localized needs

9

www.ellucian.in


interview HigHer education

Shaping Finest Mindswww.galgotiacollege.edu

What differentiates Galgotias University from other universities?Galgotias University has been founded with a vision to create and per-petuate a thinking ecosystem for the education of outstanding stu-dents so as to enlarge their thinking and imagination, so that they emerge intellectually, socially and spiritually as evolved global lead-ers.

When we started Galgotias Educational Institutions, we had one clear objective: that we would create institutions, and not mere or-ganisations. While both institutions and organisations need great human and physical infrastructure, what distinguishes an insti-tution from an organisation is that an institution is an edifice built on the foundation of a better thought and deeper value system.

The mission of Galgotias University is to enable the finest student and faculty bodies to learn together, through the most evolved education processes in an atmosphere of rigour and discipline. Every effort is made, to evolve a culture of learning excellence, which emerges from and integrates with real life industry, science and commerce processes.

What global advantages is Galgotias University bringing to India?We have put a number of global level academic build-ing blocks into place to ensure that Galgotias Univer-sity serves as a beacon of excellence for all to emulate for generations to come.

First, we firmly believe that only the finest minds can shape the finest minds of the future, for life. That is why Galgotias University’s global-level faculty comprises o f

Suneel Galgotia, Chairman, Galgotias Educational

Institutions, in conversation with Sheena Joseph Cherian,

provides his views on the university’s initiatives in shaping

the nation’s educational landscape

48


www.digitalLEARNING.in


interviewHigHer education

finest academic minds drawn from top international universities, like Purdue University, Georgia Tech, Oakland, Ar-kansas State University & National Uni-versity Singapore.

Secondly, to augment our quest for academic excellence, we have put in place a basket of international pedago-gies right from the beginning. These bring out the best in every student and enable students to maximise their po-tential. One of these is the Fully Flexible Credit System that enables Galgotias University students to pursue liberal arts subjects like music, fine art and theatre along with disciplines such as engineer-ing and management, in line with stu-dents’ talents and interests. This makes sure that students are able to pursue their ambitions as well as their passions in a balanced manner, so as to develop as complete human beings.

What building blocks enable Galgotias to get 100 percent placements?Continuing with the academic building blocks, Galgotias industry-led syllabus enables comprehensive student train-ing, industry-relevant project support, industry visits and internships, hands-on technical and soft skills training. Ex-tensive interaction with domain experts ensures the absolute job-readiness of each student. The power and relevance of industry-led syllabi drive academic excellence among the Galgotias faculty and students thereby enabling industry leaders to recruit at Galgotias year after year. Industry and media surveys reveal placements of 100 percent every year. Key recruiters like Infosys are recruit-ing in ever-greater numbers every year because of their huge growth in the quality of Galgotias students.

How important is research and development at Galgotias University?We have empowered our students with the power of thinking quotient, the art of experiential learning and skills to learn continuously for life. This is supported with Galgotias University’s research-driven education, huge labo-ratory infrastructure and dedicated

research-oriented faculty with a proven track record of instilling a research culture in the students body right from year one. Stress is laid upon produc-ing cutting-edge innovation and ap-plying learning practically, to serve industry and society. NASA has rec-ognised Galgotias’ talent by selecting the Moon-Buggy designed by Galgotias student for permanent exhibit at the NASA Marshall Space Centre, Hunts-ville, Alabama, USA. What is even more credit worthy that NASA has selected Galgotias among five Universities from across the globe and Galgotias is the only private university to be selected from India.

How do you ensure quality in terms of student enrolment as well as quality faculty?Galgotias University has emerged as the institution of choice for high calibre

students pursuing higher studies. We are working today, so that through each student, the thought seed of our tomor-row is nurtured well to ensure that to-morrow’s India realises its potential, to become a great nation state. To ensure this we take students of good merit only, like in the case of engineering, students with less than 85 percent in PCM do not qualify for admission at Galgotias Uni-versity.

High quality intake applies to the fac-ulty too. The basic qualification for teach-ing here is a PhD, so that even first year students are taught by PhD level faculty who have studied and taught in institu-tions of excellence across the world. All faculty have to be the best in their respec-tive fields and from the finest academic institutions of the world, so as to embody world-best educational practises and a never-before learning experience for the students.

We have put a number of global level academic building blocks into place to ensure that Galgotias University serves as a beacon of excellence for all to emulate for generations to come

Suneel GalgotiaChairman, Galgotias

Educational Institutions





“Our Classrooms are Designed Keeping iCt in Mind”

Asia-Pacific Institute of Management is ranked amongst the top Business Schools in the country. What are the most significant achievements of the institute?The AIM is ranked amongst the top Busi-ness schools in the country. There have been many significant achievements in the past few years at AIM. The institute has been graced with visits by distin-guished leaders like Dr Pranab Mukherjee, Dr Kiran Bedi, U K Sinha, Lord Meghnand Desai, Ela Gandhi to name a few. Our cor-porate network has been strong enough to facilitate 100 percent placement of our students. The alumni are well-placed at

top-notch companies with excellent pay-packages. AIM has been successful in driv-ing its 3Is (Institute, Industry, Interface) initiative. The CCR team has been a hub of corporate activities, it maintains a close relationship with corporates through Guest-lectures, business-meets, conclaves etc. The faculty of AIM is called “Think Tanks and Assets”, who hold diverse and rich experience both in industry and aca-demia. The students have been actively participating at various fronts, both na-tional and international. Our recent ad-dition: Takshila-the MDP Centre of Excel-lence, has been a significant move in the direction of trainings and development for the corporate sectors.

The Centre for Corporate Relations (CCR) is the hub of activities, which drive the 3-I (Institute-Industry-Interface) initiative. Can you elaborate on the companies that the college has been associated with?The Institute has maintained its linkages with many corporate giants like NTPC, Powergrid, IFFCO, Indian Oil, IRCTC, IDBI, ICICI Bank, NHPC, NMDC, BHEL, SAIL, Muthoot, Federal Bank, CITI, VIP Industries, Hero Moto Corp, etc. Many corporates from diverse industries have employed our students, including IDBI, ICICI Bank, American Express, Federal Bank, CITI Bank, Reliance Securities, Safte Express, Daink Jagran, DCM Tex-tiles, VIP Industries, ExtraMarks, Edu-

comp, Indag Rubbers Ltd, IndiaBulls, Magma Fin Corp., Kotak Mahindra Bank, Contract Logistics Pvt Ltd, Hero Moto Corp, Balaji Telefilms, Neurometrix India, Practo technologies, Oxfam, etc.

In terms of student training and placements, what are the companies that the college has been associated with?AIM has signed agreements in recent past with IDRAC’s International School of Management, France, which broadly covers: Student Exchange Programme and faculty Exchange Programme. AIM has also recently made a major impact for globalising the education by sign-ing MOU wide Grant MacEwan Univer-sity, Canada. The students from IDRAC France visit AIM every year to spend an academic term in the programme. PGDM-International Business and our students have also been visiting IDRAC, France, every year.

What have been the measures taken to ensure that the course material being imparted at the Institute is updated with the latest requirements?AIM is one of the very few institutes, which revise their course-curriculum, every year. The expert-review meeting for every year is held, where the panel of experts from Industry and Academia and the faculty members, brainstorm, in order to review the course-curriculum,

Asia-Pacific Institute of Management (AIM) intends to provide cutting edge knowledge to

students. A K Shrivastava, Chairman, AIM, in conversation with Sheena Joseph Cherian,

provides his views on various methodologies that the institute is adopting to stay ahead in a

highly competitive education domain

Our new addition, Takshila-the MDP Centre of Excellence, has been a significant move in the direction of trainings and development for the corporate sectors

higher eDuCatiOn interview


www.asiapacific.edu



for each year. The revised curriculum is then presented before the BOG, who finally approves it. Each course outlines are designed and developed keeping in mind the diverse industry requirements and updating.

How has ICTs been incorporated into the educational system at your college? What are your views on the importance of ICTs in education?During past few years, the use of ICT has fundamentally changed the work-ing of education system. The ultra-modern classrooms at AIM have been designed, keeping the significance of ICT in mind. The faculty members use one or the other associated tools for im-parting education. The use of LCD pro-jectors, video-conferencing, Simulation techniques etc. is very common. The use of Management games etc. is also a common practice at AIM. The IT-Lab of AIM is the largest in Delhi/NCR. All the students are linked with each other and every faculty members using WiFi facil-ity at campus.

The ICTs play very vital role in edu-cation sector these days. Education as a qualitative development is not confined with the classroom structure. The mod-ern tools of ICT, such e-learning, online practices of learning, etc. are in huge demand, keeping in mind the versatile requirement of the corporate world.

A K ShrivastavaChairman

Asia-Pacific Institute of Management


higher eDuCatiOninterview


feature

By Sharmila Das, Elets News Network (ENN)

An innovative mind is every country’s asset and to build this asset STEM helps in a big way

From SteM to

Innovationsomeone what they have just discovered.

As a nation we should capitalise on the “aha” moments and work hard to help students not only understand sci-ence, but also foster a lifelong learning in science. Why is this so important?

Science is the one subject that en-compasses everything in life and helps students be curious, ask questions, and make connections as to why the world exists as it does. It is the backdrop for understanding our world, and helps us to explain and appreciate it in new ways.

A successful STEM education pro-vides students with science, math, and engineering/technology in sequences that build upon each other and can be used with real-world applications.

STEM or Science, Technology, Engi-neering and Mathematics educa-tion provides that environment to

think beyond ordinary. To use scientific investigation, knowledge and practices in understanding the whole world.

The progressive educationists of the world have come to the conclusion that STEM education should be encouraged in the early education of a child. Only through STEM we can have the where-withal to develop an innovative mind.

This approach to education is de-signed to revolutionise the teaching of subject areas such as mathematics and science by incorporating technology and engineering into regular curriculum by creating a meta-discipline. STEM Educa-

tion attempts to transform the typical teacher-centred classroom by encour-aging a curriculum that is driven by problem-solving, discovery, exploratory learning, and requires students to active-ly engage in a particular type of a situa-tion in order to reach a logical solution.

Does it fill the bill?Letting students explore ideas in sci-ence and watching them learn is truly a passion that most teachers share. It is inspiring to watch a student work through a science investigation and get to the “aha” moment of understand-ing, seeing their eyes light up, the smile broaden across their face, and the explo-sion of energy as they rush to explain to

feature


feature

Jaganathan. CDirector, Education Technology of Texas Instruments, India

texas Instrument (tI) is working with the government and private education entities to inculcate one-to-one learning practices using tI Nspired Learning solutions for classroom teaching and learning

STEM education creates critical think-ers, increases science literacy, and en-ables the next generation of innovators. Innovation leads to new products and processes that sustain our economy. This innovation and science literacy depends on a solid knowledge base in the STEM areas. It is imperative that as a nation, we make STEM education a top priority.

RoadblocksAs with any educational initiative, there will be noted barriers to the successful implementation of STEM education into education systems. Developing a curricu-lum to include STEM as fully integrated requires funding that may presently be unavailable. In order to provide all stu-dents with STEM education, funding would be needed not only to develop the curriculum to support STEM, but also to expose students to STEM careers, provide on-going and sustainable STEM profes-sional development, provide STEM pre-service teacher training, provide math- and science-related competitions, include mentoring and internship programs, provide hands-on science activities, and recruit and retain STEM teachers.

Another area noted as a barrier to the successful implementation of STEM into a school’s curriculum is the lack of necessary leadership to infuse STEM approaches into a current educational

system. Studies of various school curric-ulums suggest that while curriculum ap-pears to include science and math, all too often, engineering is missing from the curriculum. There may also be school policies around credits and curriculum that may hinder successful implementa-tion of STEM. School systems may feel that the school’s curriculum is already too crowded with classes/studies.

Another factor that hinders the high-quality STEM education in K-12 is the lack of qualified teachers. The most successful implementation of STEM education would require professionals to instruct classes in science, technol-ogy, engineering, and mathematics or at least provide good role models for stu-dents to inspire them to pursue careers in STEM.

Beyond educational obstacles, there may be barriers that include cultural perceptions on the part of parents and students that may hinder students from becoming involved in science and math-ematics. According to Mary Ann Wolf, Executive Director, SETDA, societal atti-tudes and perceptions do need to change regarding careers in engineering, sci-ence, and mathematics. She emphasises the need to change the mind-set of peo-ple and the stigma attached (often called “geek”) to those excelling in the areas of science, mathematics, and engineering. Research suggests that a strong empha-sis must be placed on STEM education to inspire our students to seek careers in STEM so that we may continue to com-pete globally for jobs and prepare our stu-dents for the 21st Century.

To create such ambiance the role of private players offering STEM solution is crucial. To understand their role, we got in touch with Jaganathan. C, Director, Education Technology of Texas Instru-ments, India. He says, “Texas Instru-ment (TI) is working with the govern-

ment and private education entities to inculcate one-to-one learning practices using TI Nspired Learning solutions for classroom teaching and learning, real time experience of concepts in the lab and beyond, and classroom assess-ment. Our solutions are implemented in the market for CBSE schools through partners like CORE Education and Tech-nologies who specialise in education services. We have run pilot programs in 2010-11 on TI Nspired Learning in nine schools in Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai including two Kendriya Vidyalaya Sang-hatan schools and our solution is being considered by schools”.

STEM in early educationState Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) 2008 says states and school districts should begin the de-velopment of a plan in kindergarten to implement STEM education and develop specific targets to achieve these goals. Based on past indicators, little emphasis is placed on science as a major subject

ashish KesharwaniChief Learning Officer, UEI-Global believes

future holds great hope and scope for Maths, Science & engineering background students. thus the need to create interest amongst the student fraternity to take up this stream is required


feature

area, often being taught once or twice a week at the elementary level.

Experts SpeakAshish Kesharwani, Chief Learning Officer, UEI-Global believes, “Future holds great hope and scope for Maths, Science and Engineering background students. Thus the need to create interest amongst the student fraternity to take up this stream is required. It is evident right from school education that these are dreaded subjects and teachers use traditional/conventional methods to teach them. Being innovative and practical orienta-tion / application will help generate in-terest in this field. This will increase the creativity and analytical ability, thereby enabling students to use their knowl-edge in real world environment. There is dearth of technical graduates. Also the graduates that pass-out lack application skills since the current education system lacks practical learning. Thus the IT and Engineering companies need to spend more time and money on training fresh graduates. At the moment it does not cost much since the wages are low and man-power is available in abundance, this will not be the case in future thus, not only from education but from industry and economy point of view STEM education will help in creating interest and upgrad-ing skills”.

Kartikay Saini, Chairman, The Scottish High International School says,

“There are definitely few aspects of STEM which are currently been followed by the Indian education sector in different forms. With the ever changing innova-tion in education, the Indian education sector may be interested to research and implement the same in the near future”.

Prof Shanath Kumar, Head, E-Learning, SMU-DE of Sikkim Manipal University says, “STEM Education is the foundation for development and prog-ress for any country, more so for a devel-oping country such as India. Proof has come in the form of thousands of Indian youth migrating and serving abroad in information technology and several other engineering and science fields. The country has also grown rich in terms of high quality educational institutions of STEM imparting professional education to millions of students every year.

Technology offers an excellent oppor-tunity to scale up this education system

and to carry the efforts into the remotest corners of the country. This will provide the much needed Human Development effort for India. India has also produced hundreds of entrepreneurs from the STEM education. Increased thrust on entrepreneurship will provide the impe-tus for innovation and thus propel the country towards high growth rates and into the league of developed countries of the world. The sign of this happening is already visible.

However, excellent technology infra-structure, consistent faculty develop-ment efforts and adequate number of faculty, newer pedagogical methods to enhance employability and increasing industry connect will be the challenges which we should overcome and change into opportunities”.

Jaganathan C of Texas Instruments says, “In India, we have been witness-ing a significant improvement in the in-frastructure in primary, upper primary and secondary schools in the last 10 years and more so with respect to public schools. Though there are some impor-tant issues that call for attention both in the infrastructure and professional teaching areas, enrolments in school are on a gradual rise”.

Vandana Lulla, Principal of Podar International School (IB and CIE) says, “Stem education will empower students and teachers enabling them to address some of the bigger social challenges around the world and in their com-munities. It will help institutions and students to think out-of-the-box for so-lutions and ideas that are both collab-orative and creative”.

Amit Rana, Pro-Vice Chairman of DPS-Panipat comments, “The STEM sys-tem is a good start. Proper training and continued usage will lead to competence and then to innovative techniques using STEM technology in education. Our edu-cation system needs a thorough revamp-ing and technology cannot be ignored”.

End NoteLast but not the least, inclination towards a more scientific approach of education is required from the education eco-system and it is not restricted to schools and high-er education institutes alone.

Vandana LullaPrincipal of Podar International School

Stem education will empower students and teachers enabling them to address some of the bigger social challenges around the world and in their communities

amit ranaPro-Vice Chairman of DPS-Panipat

the SteM system is a good start. Proper training and continued usage will lead to competence and then to innovative techniques using SteM technology in education


k-12

A problem identified is often a problem solved. However is CCE the right tool for enabling educationists to identify myriad issues in education?

CCE: The Poserof Student Evaluation

Marks and GradesIt also has its own demerits. A child with 92 marks will get the same grade, as the child with 100 marks and their talents cannot be recognised by anyone else oth-er than their close ones. Also, with this system, students find it difficult to study many chapters, because of its so called semester system, which lead to the stu-dents being engaged mostly in projects rather than in actual studying. Although this system might have some drawbacks, it instils this value that students need to compete with themselves to get a better grade and not with others.

Experts SpeakThe assessment has been made easy by splitting up the whole year into two se-mesters. After completing a semester, a test called ‘Summative Assessment’ is held by CBSE directly (90 marks for class IX and 90 marks for class X).

Continous and Comprensive Eval-uation (CCE) helps in improving student’s performance by iden-

tifying his/her learning difficulties at regular time intervals. It also employs suitable remedial measures for enhanc-ing their learning performance. The CCE system was formulated by Kapil Sibal, Minister of Human Resource Develop-ment Government of India.

CCE is introduced to decrease the accumulated stress of board exams on

the students and to introduce a more uniform and comprehensive pattern in education. The scheme of CCE has in-built flexibility for schools to plan their own academic schedules as per specified guidelines on CCE.

In CCE system the student’s marks is replaced by grades, which get evalu-ated through a series of curricular and extra-curricular systems. The aim is to reduce the workload on students and to improve the overall skill and ability of the students by means of evaluation of other activities. Grades are awarded to students based on work experience skills, dexterity, innovation, steadiness, teamwork, public speaking, behaviour, etc. to evaluate and present an overall measure of the student’s ability.

This helps the students, who are not good in academics to show their talent in other fields such as arts, humanities, sports, music, athletics, etc. This is a new term to assess all round develop-ment of a child, irrespective of individ-ual differences.

Vineet JoshiChairperson, CBSE Board

The CBSE has introduced a number of reforms in the school education sector. Our focus for the coming decade is on effective implementation of Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation

By Sharmila Das, Elets News Network (ENN)

The grading system is-9.0-10.0 A18.0-9.0 A27.0-8.0 B16.0-7.0 B25.0-6.0 C14.0-5.0 C23.0-4.0 D2.0-3.0 E10.0-2.0 E2


k-12

According to the notified scheme, ev-ery aspect of extra-curricular activities like sports, club activities, are given prior importance.

Kartikay Saini, Chairperson, The Scottish High International School, says, “According to me it is a fine and effec-tive assessment system which helps the mentors/ instructors to track the per-formance through regular evaluations. It enables educationists to take immedi-ate corrective measures for the students. We follow continuous assessment such as formative, summative, parent assess-ment, peer assessment, self assessment at regular intervals to study the perfor-mance of the students, to help them self evaluate their performance and work an action plans for the same. So according to me every evaluation method helps in knowing the areas of improvement lead-ing to effective results”.

Vandana Lulla, Principal, Podar In-ternational School (IB and CIE), says, “Change is inevitable. As a school, we need to constantly upgrade and update ourselves. If improving the continuous and comprehensive evaluation systems in school benefits students, so be it”.

Mamta Gupta, Principal of Shiksha Bharti School, says, “I welcome CCE and through CCE, I came to know that every child is special. Through CCE I realised that if any student is not good in studies it does not mean that he/she is good for nothing”.

Rajat Gupta, Director, Ramit Tech-nologies Pvt Ltd, (CCE software solution Provider Company), says, “Till now, our education system was academics oriented, but with the introduction of CCE, students are now evaluated both on scholastic (intellect and brain) and co-scholastic (heart and hand) attri-butes. Such kind of system leads to the change in the attitude, life skills (emo-tional and social) and confidence level of our children and helps in their overall personality development. This is very important for them to survive in today’s competitive world. Some critics say, it is not apt for the country like India, but if implemented properly, its advantages completely outweigh its disadvantages”.

Norina Fernandes, Principal of Smt. Lilavatibai Podar High School, says, “In-troduction of CCE has bought about a

sea-change in the classroom. The main aspect of this change is the fact that as-sessment has become an integral part of the teaching-learning process.”

CBSE Chairman Speaks on CCE SystemVineet Joshi, Chairperson, CBSE, says, “The CBSE has introduced a number of reforms in the school education sector. Our focus for the coming decade is on ef-fective implementation of CCE for which the board aims to provide continuous training and engage in discussion with our teachers to build effective monitor-ing processes within the system.”

On the FlipsideTeachers are going to play a very impor-tant role in the implementation of CCE, which is why a comprehensive plan to upgrade teachers teaching skill through different training is required. Secondly, the introduction of CCE does not advo-cate less emphasis on academic achieve-ments. Students will still be required to do well in studies. CCE in no way dilutes the emphasis on academics. In fact, while the assignments and projects assigned by teachers have to be interesting, they also have to be challenging for students.

Fernandes says, “The one off area of challenge in this system is dealing with student absenteeism, especially with long sick leaves where the student has missed out on a whole concept”.

Investment requiredRajat Gupta of Ramit Technolgies Pvt Ltd says, “To achieve fair assessment, proper student to teacher ratio is re-quired, Proper training to teachers is a pre-requisite to achieve proper results. In rural areas, CCE can be a burden where even the desired primary objec-tive of basic academic teaching is not properly achieved.”

Rajat Gupta goes on to say that the in-vestment required to have the CCE assistive software in education infrastructure can vary from ` 15, 000 to ` 50, 000.

To sum up we all know that every new policy is bound to have its own pros and cons - the CCE is too seems to be plagued with as many cons, as it is blessed with pros. In the final reckoning, it is up to the education masters to bring out the best of it and use it wisely!

Suggestions to Improve CCE System in Schools from Rajat Gupta of Ramit Technolgies Pvt Ltd1) Adequate training to teachers on different parameters like CCE evaluation,

its benefits etc.2) Workshops for parents should be conducted to explain the benefits3) School management should focus on improving the student-teacher ratio.

CBSE can also issue mandatory guidelines w.r.t the minimum student-teacher ratio.

4) It is better to be without CCE than having the CCE without the basic infra-structure. This is more applicable in rural areas.

5) CBSE has to understand the reality & revisit implementation of CCE so as to strike a judicious balance between scholastic and co-scholastic outcomes.

Rajat GuptaDirector, Ramit Technologies Pvt. Ltd

CBSE has to under-stand the reality & revisit implementation of CCE so as to strike a judicious balance between scholastic and co-scholastic outcomes

TM

CT 178

CT 168

Delhi: Customer care - 01123288150 Chandigarh: Mr. Kapoor - 09878166633 Lucknow: Mr. Praveen - 09415781268 Ahmadabad: Mr. Girish - 09825146561 Rajasthan: Mr. Choudhary - 09414049527 Pune: Mr. Rajesh - 09822033280 Mumbai: Mr. Maqsood - 09820157501 Indore: Mr. Naresh - 09424010533 Kolkata: Mr. Avinash - 09830024785 Hyderabad: Mr. Sanjay - 09949106651 Coimbatore: Mr. Bharath - 09842244957 Bangalore Mr. Ravi Shankar & Satish - 09342166111 & 09844188925

Available on all leading stationery stores or at :

195 x 272 mm, 5 mm four side bleed

A3

Please fill this form in CaPital letters

First Name .................................................................................... Last Name .....................................................................................................

Designation/Profession ................................................................. Organisation .................................................................................................

Mailing address ...................................................................................................................................................................................................

City .............................................................................................. Postal code ...................................................................................................

State ............................................................................................ Country ........................................................................................................

Telephone ..................................................................................... Fax ...............................................................................................................

Email ........................................................................................... Website ........................................................................................................

I/We would like to subscribe for 1 2 3 Years

I am enclosing a cheque/DD No. ................................................ Drawn on ..................................................................................... (Specify Bank)

Dated ............................................................................................................... in favour of Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd., payable at New Delhi.

For `/US $ ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... only

http://www.eletsonline.com/subscriptions/

ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON e-GOVERNANCE

ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON ICT IN EduCATION

ASIA’S FIRST MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON THE ENTERpRISE OF HEALTHCARE

SubScribe now

Subscription Terms & Conditions: Payments for mailed subscriptions are only accepted via cheque or demand draft • Cash payments may be made in person

• Please add `50 for outstation cheque • Allow four weeks for processing of your subscription • International subscription is inclusive of postal charges.

I would like to subscribe: egov digitalLEARNING eHEALTH

you CAN SubSCRIbE oNLINE

3Packed magazineS

Power

SubScription order card Duration Issues Subscription Newsstand Subscription Savings (year) uSD Price INR Price INR

1 12 100 900 900 --

2 24 150 1800 1500 `300

3 36 250 2700 2000 `700

*Please make cheque/dd in favour of Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd., payable at New Delhi


Product Launch

texas Instruments Launches new range of Scientific calculators

Texas Instruments (TI) has an-nounced the launch of its new range of scientific calculators in

India – TI 36 XPro, TI-36X II, TI-30XS MultiView and TI 30XII S. Participating in the programme, “Promoting Math-ematics using Technology,” organised by TI, Dr D Purandeswari, Minister of State for Human Resource Development (Higher Education), Government of In-dia, formally released four models of TI’s advanced line of scientific calculators in India. Dr Peter Balyta, General Manager, Sales & Marketing, Education Technol-ogy, Texas Instruments Asia, was also present at the occasion.

TI announced that Statworks India Pvt Ltd will be the distributor for scientific calculators in India. An agreement to

this effect was signed by Dr Peter Balyta, General Manager, Sales and Marketing, Education Technology, TI Asia and Ma-heskantha Balasubramaniam, Manag-ing Director, Statworks India. The TI sci-entific calculators feature a high quality

MultiView display, MathPrint capability and enhanced analytical functions, all of which are best suited for the needs of engineering, science and commerce students. From basic calculations to so-phisticated 2-variable statistics, conver-sions, regression analysis and scientific data plotting, TI’s scientific calculators provide a range of functionalities for sub-jects like engineering, general mathemat-ics, algebra, trigonometry and statistics. With these calculators, students will have more tools for learning and exploring mathematics and science concepts. They will also enable students to determine the numeric derivative and integral for real functions. Users can also perform one- and two-variable analysis, and display six different regression models.

Click, Learn, Advance CourseLine® is an online learning platform that offers Hospitality Management Education courses from the American Hotel & Lodging Educational Institute (EI) in a digital format. These higher education courses are used in hospitality programs worldwide. Course material is organized into core competencies for each topic area developed by subject matter experts. A combination of key terms, web links, case studies, exhibits, interactive activities, and quizzes help reinforce the material covered in each competency. Review quizzes and final exams are taken online with immediate feedback.

CyberCinema® is an online platform that provides access to EI’s various hospitality training videos; many of which come with quizzes to gauge viewer comprehension.

Flexible pricing for academic institutions makes it easy, convenient and affordable to offer from one to 30 courses online.

For further details, contact:[email protected] # +91-22-26820878

12-04249

Dr. Purandeswari, Dr. Peter Balyta, General Manager, Sales and Marketing, Education Technology, TI Asia and Mr. Maheskantha Balasubramaniam, Managing Director, Statworks India


special feature

Experiencing New innovations in EducationThe Pearson chain of schools was established in 2008, with the aim of delivering world-class education at an affordable

price. Pearson Schools manage, operate and build high quality schools that focus on quality control and standardisa-tion. Started off with an ambitious target of having 100 schools within 5 years, today Pearson Schools is the fast-

est growing chain of schools in India, with over 27 schools in India and Nepal. Pearson School offer complete solutions to schools. Different schools in India using Pearson solutions share their experience with new innovative tools in education.

Saroja Rathnam , Principal, Amanora School, on use of modern teaching toolsWe at Amanora School believe that learning hap-pens most naturally through developing, listening and visualising skills. Solutions from ICT are of great help in developing the cognitive aspects of the learner and hence learning happens most effectively with higher retention.

Ahanjith Chandra Routh, Prin-cipal, Pailan World School, on CCE modelA learner with CCE model of assess-ment stands to benefit, as assessment is in fragments. CCE brings lot of transparency to the system of evalu-ating various students, and hence it is of great benefit.

Rekha Shiralkar, Principal, Jnanasarovara Inter-national Residential School, Mysore, on training of teachersWorking in a school managed by Pearson is a reward for us, as the teachers are given maximum support and encouragement. We are provided with excellent infra-structure, ICT resources, timely training and teacher development programmes and have ample opportuni-ties to achieve the target of excellence in education.

Judith Singh, Principal, Cambridge Public School, on digital teaching tools We are planning to add ICT boards, introduce tablets, implement Power School solution with the view of at-taining the following objectives:• Guide my students to success, designing maximum

activities for them to work on the topics as ‘class projects’ with ICT integration.

• Equip MATH lab with e-activities for enrichment.• Encourage and exchange ideas with colleagues / teachers about ICT inte-

gration and quality of education.• Students get connected to teachers via Skype / video talk or are able to

discuss with experts wherever and whenever needed.We use Edurite DigiClass, which is an interactive, ICT based classroom solution.

Prabha Balasubramaniam, Principal, Amara Jyothi Public School, Bangalore, on CCE system and assistive softwareWe face challenges like lack of instructional tips, lack of support material, and creative aids.

Solutions from ICT provide teachers with excellent resources for creating their own lessons (state-CBSE-ICSE syllabus). These personal lessons can include mind mapping of concepts, introduction, previous knowledge links and animations from digital sources, drawings, pictures drawn on e-white board, interesting related facts, lesson notes with highlights, summary of the lesson, evaluation pages.


special feature

Pearson Education Services aspires to seamlessly combine its international standards in education with India’s traditional methodologies, and bring to us teaching techniques that can propel education into a higher plane. Uma Shankar Vishvanath, President, Pearson Education Services Pvt Ltd, speaks to Pragya Gupta about the ways by which Pearson schools are re-inventing pedagogy

“the future Belongs to personalised education”

sidered a noble profession anymore. There is a need for making teaching an attractive profession. There are many regulations and restrictions, therefore many schools are not in position to pay high salaries to the teachers. As a school manager I have to ensure that good quality of learning is happening in my classroom. Today it is a trend that number of higher education institutes are not grow-ing at a pace that is in tandem with the way the demand for these are growing and the world is becoming very competitive. As new courses arrive in the education sphere, parents have to condition their child to be better prepared on these upcoming topics and at the same time I have to reduce my dependency on good quality teachers that I am unable to avail toady. So, that is where technol-ogy and ICT play a key role.With use of technology, good content, animation, graphics, I am able to supply much better quality of education to the child. ICT and technology play a very key role. As the cost of educational technology acceptance keeps coming down, the popularity of such solutions goes up.

Tell us about your tie-ups and partnership plans for Pearson Schools?We are currently working with our own companies, including Edurite. All our classrooms are enabled using Digiclass solutions. We also have Edxcel working with us, so our teacher training pro-gramme is currently certified by Edexcel. We also have a compe-tency test on the use of IT that is accepted worldwide.

Is technology playing a role in re-inventing pedagogy?Children today are getting more accustomed to the visual media. There was a time when regular TV was not considered educa-tional, however, with wide variety of educational content becom-ing available today on the TV and Internet, students are getting hooked to the screen. The methodology of teaching has to take into consideration the fact that content is now not limited to the confines of a teacher’s mind, ICT is leading to universalisation of content. A blended approach is best way forward, moderation and best-suited combination should be used. It depends on the teacher and how she uses it. The government itself is promoting tablets and promoting personalised learning. This will pave the way for teacher-independent learning and dependence on good teachers will come down.

What initiatives have been taken by your company to make optimal usage of technology? Please share the idea behind launching Pearson Schools in India?Pearson schools have been launched in India with the aim of enabling majority of students to access quality education at an affordable price. One of the major concerns we found was when we enter into Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities there is a dearth of branded schools offering quality education. There are many missionary institutions traditionally which have been there in lots of these

towns, but there is no single large player in these markets. So we felt that we

wanted to provide branded edu-cation at affordable price by le-veraging the vast resources of Pearson. Looking at technol-ogy, as the price of technology

keeps coming down, the usage will increase in education. We are focussed on ensuring that

classroom learning will be-come better by use of

technology.

What are the solutions offered at these schools? We have consid-ered a 360 degree d e v e l o p m e n t programme in these schools. The common challenges that any school faces today is that of good quality teaching staff. Perhaps teach-ing is not con-


digitallearning july 2012

Documents

education news

ministry of education

founder ceo

ministry of higher education

tech focus education

chief executive officer

chief of strategy

executive director