Leveraging Internet Technologies for Teaching

A couple of interesting articles and news reports that I came across recently. The first is one mentioning the New Technology Foundation based in California and the other is about IIT Delhi offering Distance Learning.

Distance Learning offered by IIs is not exactly new. Other IITs have been offering it for some time now. Nevertheless it is a useful move and should benefit both industry and the IIT themselves. It will also serve as a learning opportunity for how to leverage technology in other aspects of teaching offered by IITs across the board.

The other article refers to how online education has matured over the years ad its applicability at the school level (as opposed to college).

The educational bottom line, it seems, is that while computer technology has matured and become more affordable, the most significant development has been a deeper understanding of how to use the technology.

“Unless you change how you teach and how kids work, new technology is not really going to make a difference,” said Bob Pearlman, a former teacher who is the director of strategic planning for the New Technology Foundation, a nonprofit organization.

Deploying and using technology for the sake of using technology is pointless. The challenge is in being able to adapt the teaching styles to incorporate group learning through joint project work, online interaction etc. in addition to traditional teaching methods. While Western countries have been through a learning curve and have started to identify techniques that work, schools and colleges in India can stand to benefit from these lessons learned. With the growing penetration of broadband in India and the availability of open source technologies, there is plenty that can be done to leverage internet-based learning technologies.

Education Focus: A Must for India

Take a look at this video (from April 2007) India vs. China

So in the great race of this century, the race to see which country will lead the world in 2100, I’m still betting on China for now. I’m having my kids learn Chinese, not Hindi (or Indian English, a remarkable language in its own right).

Until India’s economic boom becomes much more broadly based, and until Indian schools manage to teach their students, this country will continue to waste its precious brainpower and won’t achieve a fraction of what it should.

The entire article is here.

India’s Education Challenge

The Wall Street Journal reported that India is struggling with a poor talent pool (India Faces a Homegrown Staffing Issue: Not Enough Talent (subscription required). The article specifically mentions:

In a nation of 1.1 billion, there are plenty of graduates. But the education many receive is dogged by a lack of funding, teacher absenteeism and rote learning.

Approximately 50% of engineering graduates and as many as 85% of other graduates aren’t suitable for employment when they leave college, according to tech-industry trade association Nasscom.

On the one hand its great to see initiatives like Teach India at the grassroots level. On the other hand it is saddening to see that existing schools and colleges are struggling and unable to cope. The reality is that even the top engineering colleges like the IITs and RECs are unable to attract and retain good teaching talent. The pay scales and incentives required to attract good teaching talent are non-existent. Many colleges bring in their fresh graduates to teach with little or no experience whatsoever. These folks are committed to the job only until they can find a “real job”. Thus, these colleges extort huge sums of money and seldom provide education of value. Its a sad state of affairs with serious implications.

The big IT companies (TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Satyam, Cognizant) hire entire classes of graduating students without the slightest hesitation or very often without a interview! Most of these students spend the first several months being trained. They are subsequently posted on relatively uninteresting so called IT maintenance jobs. A few years of this kind of work and the engineer is probably incapable of higher studies or doing quality creative software work. Unfortunately, getting hired by one of the big few IT companies in India is akin to the much sought after “government udhyogam” in the past. The more self-confident students would do well to eschew the conventional big company path and instead seek out smaller more interesting firms to work for.

Strict controls over the quality of education should be introduced. Stringent measures to ensure that quality is maintained over time should also be put in place. Institutions across the country must collaborate and leverage start of the art technology to share teaching talent across campuses. Last but not the least, teaching professionals simply need to be paid better and provided an environment where they are encouraged to thrive and excel. It is understandable that all of these are easier said than done. But the reality is that a concerted effort (possibly a joint effort between the Government-private sector) has to start to address this issue or India’s competitive advantage could soon be lost.

Teach India

The Teach India program launched by Times of India sounds like a commendable move. It is heartening to here that the response to the call by TOI has been very impressive. On the other hand is a little disappointing (and surprising!) to hear that the four metros namely Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata have been chosen to start with for this initiative. Why not start with lesser know cities or at least a mix of cities?

In any case, the organizers deserve kudos for simply taking the initiative. TOI certainly has the muscle to give this program the needed visibility and impetus. Hope to hear more about its success and spread across the country.

US Education in the Middle East

Read this interesting article about US universities expanding beyond its shores, particularly in the Middle East. In principle, the concept of truly global education provided by an international university with a presence in multiple countries makes a lot of sense and is truly fascinating. However, it does raise a number of questions. Here are a few.

• How does the University maintain the quality of its education?
• Is it realistic to scale the number of faculty on a global basis?
• Will the overall learning experience even come close to that offered at the main campus?
• Are universities viewing global opportunities for growth as a money making exercise?

In the context of India, there are no shortage of collaborations between Indian and foreign universities (though very often its hard to identify which of these are real and which of these are purely publicity exercises). A collaboration is very different from a foreign university setting up shop in another country. Collaboration is easier to achieve and quicker to produce results but lacks the brand value and the potential financial upside for the foreign university. Hence the rush to setup shop overseas.

IITs To Go Virtual?

Saw this news report that the India Institutes of Technology (IIT) are in talks with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to help setup a virtual IIT. On the one hand it is a great forward looking move that deserves to be commended. It could certainly help tackle the problem of faculty shortage. On the other hand, one could easily argue that the IITs are further diluting their brand value. Having increased the number of IITs lately, there are bound to be plenty of challenges associated with doing justice to these institutions. Unless care is taken to ensure the continued high quality of IIT graduates, there could be a negative impact to the overall IIT brand. Are the IITs spreading themselves too thin by attempting too many ambitious projects? Hopefully, they can address the challenges of the new IITs, while continuing to explore new ideas like virtual IITs.

Education in India Facing Challenges At All Levels

The challenges faced in providing basic education to India’s poor is not new. The NY Times did a long story based largely on a recent study of education made by Pratham.

Sixty years after independence, with 40 percent of its population under 18, India is now confronting the perils of its failure to educate its citizens, notably the poor. More Indian children are in school than ever before, but the quality of public schools like this one has sunk to spectacularly low levels, as government schools have become reserves of children at the very bottom of India’s social ladder…Click here for complete article in today’s NY Times

Sadly enough the Times of India had a news report today about how the IITs are struggling to pay salaries.

In short, education at the grassroots level as well as at the college level in India has its share of serious challenges. The quality of education at various levels reflects in the output. Unless steps are taken to address these challenges India’s competitive advantage of having a young, educated work force is soon going to be lost.

Construction Company Website Design

We are happy to announce the completion of a website for a leading construction company in Trivandrum.

One of the challenges faced by a number of India based companies who desire to have a website is the lack of content (or the inability to develop it). In this case we were able to develop both the content and the design with the co-operation of the team at Sun Projects India.

Happy New Year!

I’d like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a very happy and prosperous new year!

We are pleased to announce the release of our new and improved website at the start of the New Year.

A “Must See” Talk on Creativity and Education

Check out this talk. Brilliant and humorous. The speaker is Sir Ken Robinson, an expert on innovation and creativity. A must see for anyone interested in education in general.