EmTech Spl: IT-driven education to build India

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Since 2003 information technology (IT) sector and other hi-tech areas in India have helped the country to lift millions of people out of poverty, and are expected to continue serving India in a similar way in the years to come.

Indian governments’ continuous investments in education have produced world-class talent that fueled the growth of IT in the region.

Today, the world’s largest democracy is also the prime location for IT skills and talent. Tech companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Intel, TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HP, NIIT Technologies and many more have also played an important role in the country’s economic transformation, and have become an important tool in education.

However, the literacy levels in India are still the lowest in the world. Every year 24 million children are born in India, of which 17 million go to school. And unfortunately more than half of them drop out at 9 due to poverty.

In the knowledge nation there are still people below the poverty line who can hardly afford their education. The huge gap, especially the digital divide—the difference between the ones who have become part of the growing India and the others who still live in darkness of the poor India—is yet to be addressed.

How can this gab be bridged? How can more people be brought to the educational mainstream? What are the appropriate technologies and delivery mechanisms required to lift the education levels of millions of people? How can the country best sustain its rapid growth? How can it broaden opportunities for its people? These are the questions focused on during the premier technology conference, EmTech.

“Technology can address a lot of such problems,” Satish Jha, President and CEO, One Laptop per Child said while showing the small laptop meant for millions of poor people. But “just introducing technology cannot solve the problems, we need to me it accessible to all.”

“Today if you look into school structure, teachers, students, parents and administrators, everyone is overburdened,” Tarun Anand, CEO, The Perfect Future. “So if you are teacher, how can you teach in a better way? If you are a student, how can you learn faster. So, for children, we have launched activity-based learning. For teachers and administrators also we developed some programs.”

Role of IT in Improving Education Delivery Mechanism in India

IT helps aid social and economic development in many ways. Wide deployment of computers, software and telecommunications helps boost productivity and reduce transaction costs in many sectors, strengthening economic growth. Computers, mobile devices and software help expand the quality and availability of public services including education.

Today, IT’s major role is to improve the education delivery mechanisms. State governments and tech companies themselves are initiating and investing in several technology training and assistance programs in the country. Of them, some recent ones are:

1. One Laptop Per Child: The project, a part of “Sakshat,” an education program by the Indian government, aimed to empower the impoverished with technology. Thus, bridging the digital gap so that the poor Indian people have easy access to it.

The news of the $10 laptop is buzzing around. However, the concept of a laptop for $10 is also being targeted by contrarians due to hidden costs, language and infrastructure limitations.

“We need to offer tools to create excitement that can connect all of us,” said Satish.

2. Virtual Desktop Technology: It’s fast becoming another mechanism of delivering education. Most recently, NComputing deployed virtual desktops technology in many schools in Andhra Pradesh. This program distributes the power of a PC across a number of users and is aimed to bring computer training and e-learning to 5,000 government schools with 1.8 million students.

“Four months later, the schools have each been equipped with a computer lab with the hardware and software, trained instructors and a reliable power supply. PCs currently in the market are so powerful that the vast majority of students only use a small fraction of the computer's capacity,” according to the company’s recent media statement.

3. e-Learning: e-learning permits the delivery of knowledge and information to learners at an accelerated pace, opening up new vistas of knowledge transfer. Early adopters are companies that have tried to supplement face-to-face meetings, demonstrations, training classes and lectures with this technology.

“The adoption of e-learning in all spheres — corporates, schools, universities, etc — is low at present. The Indian market is not substantial when compared to the international market which is worth about $6 billion to $7 billion,” says Harish Joshy, vice-president of LionBridge Technologies, an e-learning player. E-learning in India has been most successful in the corporate segment where it is seen as a means of achieving business goals and motivating employees.

4. Tele-learning: In India, Internet literacy is 55 per cent whereas cellphone literacy level stands at 82 per cent, according to UNDP, 2005 report. That means mobile can effectively be used to spread education deeper into the country. In fact, it is expected that mobile devices will become the indispensable learning tools in the years to come and tele-education will become a critical way of training, learning and interactive discussions.

“If you are parent, how can you help your child to learn faster. If you are an administrator, how can you do things in a better way. While keeping all these things in mind, we introduced a lot tools and solutions. So we introduced a lot of programs Our motto is to make content and technology accessible for all who don't know English,” said Tarun while talking about The Perfect Future's education programs available on mobile.

Key Initiatives (taken by Govt. or NGOs) to Education Delivery Mechanism:

Headstart—a computer-assisted education program in the state of Madhya Pradesh.

Rural Relations—a non-profit organization is working towards taking second-hand computers to 28,000 village schools in India.

Goa Computers in Schools Project (GCSP)—a community-based project attempting to improve the levels of computer literacy and computer access to students in Goa, while training teachers to use them to teach effectively.

Project Shiksha: Computer Literacy—an initiative aimed to accelerate computer literacy by providing an end to end solution which includes software solutions, comprehensive training for teachers and students, IT curriculum development, and scholarships for teachers and students across India.

Karnataka CLC in Schools Initiative—a joint initiative between the government of Karnataka and the Azim Premji Foundation, focused on demonstrating that technology initiatives have a positive impact on the interest levels of children and increase their learning achievement levels.

Mobile Classrooms—IT Buses in Rural India—a program aimed to provide mobile computing classrooms to spread IT literacy among rural school students.

Indira Soochna Shakti — “Empowering a quarter million schoolgirls through ICT" is a project in Chhattisgarh, India whose goal is the "seamless access to IT education for all girls in high schools.”

Pratishrishti Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) Centres in Western India — a program aimed to encourage children in primary municipal schools to use computers by playing games and learning basic computer functions.

To know more about these programs, visit their websites separately.

For more details on EmTech click here