Archive for the ‘education delivery’ Category

India Develops a Computer to be priced $35 Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

A  low cost access-cum-computing device was unveiled by India’s Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal on July 22. The device is expected to cost Indian Rupee 1500 (around US $35) when it becomes available in 2011, and is meant primarily for students and teachers.

The device has a touch-screen and video-conferencing facility, and uses a memory card instead of hard disk to store data. Reports also mention that it will come with an unzip tool, multimedia content and a searchable PDF reader. Development work is now in progress to make the device work on solar power.

The computer has been developed using mostly parts available off-the-shelf though some new technology involved is being considered for patenting. The ultimate aim is to reduce the price to $10 and research will be continued at Indian Institutes of Technology and other technical institutions to achieve the price, and also quality, goals according to the minister.

The issues of distribution and connectivity are being worked out to reach 200 million children across the country. Nearly 8,500 colleges already connected under the National Mission on Education through Information and Technology (NMEICT) program. High quality e-content is being developed at these colleges and this content will become available to children through the low cost computing device.

For fuller details, read the news at The Hindu.

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The Digital Divide can lead to no Good Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

Digital divide is a term used to signify the difference between different sections of people, or countries, in their ability to use modern digital technologies such as the computer, mobile phone and the Internet. Poor countries are more concerned with basics such as food and healthcare and they are not able to attend to “luxuries” like IT literacy. Even in developed countries, certain sections of the population are digitally illiterate and this leads to a digital divide between different sections.

What are the problems of digital divide? The major problem is that the digitally illiterate people are denied access to knowledge and information that are available to the digitally proficient. Lack of access to knowledge and information leads to missed opportunities for education and earning. The result will be an aggravation of existing wealth disparities.

The world’s, and individual countries’, economic development depends in a major way on the distribution of wealth. If people don’t have purchasing power, there will be no buyers for most of the goods and services produced; production of goods and services will not expand and the economy will stagnate. Purchasing power is created by distributing the wealth of the country as widely as possible.

There is also the issue that high inequality of wealth can lead to civil unrest and wastage of human resources. The world cannot hope to achieve stability so long as large sections of it are underdeveloped.

The issue is complicated by the fact that earth’s existing resources cannot support a living standard that is similar to the living standards in developed nations for all the world’s people.

Digital divide thus have implications beyond just an inability to use computers and the mobile phone. Projects such as Evoke are seeking to spread digital literacy in African countries that are seriously affected by the divide.

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Information Technology for African Agricultural Productivity Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

AfricaFertilizer.org website seeks to facilitate exchange of information about Soil Fertility, Fertilizers and good agricultural practices in Africa. Its goal is to become the standard reference site on matters of African agriculture for evey player in the field.

Food insecurity is a major problem in Africa owing to many reasons, including decline in soil fertility and rapid increase in population. To cope with the problem, Africa needs a Green Revolution that will push up agricultural productivity. The Abuja declaration of June 2006 advocated increased use of both organic and inorganic fertilizers to initiate the revolution.

African farmers, who are mostly poor, do not have adequate access to fertilizers. The Abuja declaration went on to advocate improving African farmers’ access to fertilizers. Farmers also need to be educated on proper fertilizer use and better agricultural practices.

AfricaFertilizer.org is a forum to disseminate and exchange information on different aspects of fertilizer, soil fertility and other agricultural issues in Africa.

Read more about AfricaFertilizer.org and African agriculture.

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The Kindle Reader instead of a bulky Schoolbag Sunday, March 21st, 2010

The Kindle e-Reader is an electronic device that can store 3500 books, articles and documents downloaded from Amazon website. Tim Wilson, director of Student Activities at College of Education, Seattle University is planning to store study materials in e-book format into Kindle Readers for students of his class.

Upto five graduate student volunteers from Wilson’s class will test the device during the entire quarter. The university, faculty and students hope to learn from the trial and determine whether future courses can be offered with electronic readers.

The Kindle readers, available from Amazon, cost $489 each and are not exactly cheap. However, if enough text books are available in e-book format, students can save money in the long term as e-books cost significantly less than paper text books. Then, of course, there is the prospect of replacing the heavy school bag with a compact device.

On the other hand, students will have to learn new skills for using the device. Taking notes, for example, is more complicated than adding them to the margin of a book using a pen.

Seattle U has been trying out modern technology in teaching. Classes are offered both on-line over the Web and in classrooms. Wilson corrects his students’ papers electronically via e-mail and uses podcasts in a project.

Read the story at su-spectator.

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One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) for all of World’s Children Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

The One Laptop per Child Foundation (OLPC)is reportedly a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help provide every child in the world access to a modern education. A recent report mentions of their activity in Kandahar, in war-torn Afghanistan.

OLPC delivered 774 XO laptops to students and teachers at the Zarghona Ana middle school in Kandahar. The report adds that this brings the total of XO’s distributed by OLPC to 3,700 in Afghanistan, and 1.4 million worldwide.

The Kandahar project involves in addition OLPC, USAID/Afghanistan Small and Medium Enterprise Development (ASMED); the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology; Roshan, Afghanistan’s leading telecommunications provider; and PAIWASTOON, a local private IT company. The project is led by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Education.

The XO laptops will have thousands of pages of digital content in the local languages of Dari and Pashto. Also included are acess to 150 educational mini games and interactive versions of curriculum content. Children can take the laptops home, and this means girl students can learn at home without inviting reprisals for going to school.

Read the news at: OLPC.

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The Missouri University Computer Science Department Meets “Customer” Needs Sunday, March 14th, 2010

Successful businesses are distinguished by their customer orientation. They deliver products with just the right features, features demanded by users. The smartphone application development by the computer science department of Missouri University is a great illustration of how this can be done.

The customers in this case are members of Missouri Students Association. The association places a request for a smartphone application suite with certain specific functionalities, including communications services, dining services, a campus map and campus tour applications. Though a sports application was also requested, the university is not developing it as the sports department prefers to use its outlets to deliver news.

Groups of students at the computer science department are developing the different applications, which will then be consolidated. Again, customer orientation is evident as students are being provided development experience in a real-life environment.

The applications will include specific features that provide real value to students, such as menus, nutrition information and food ingredients at different dining halls in the dining services application. Though starting with iPhone, the applications will be developed to work across as many devices as possible, such as Blackberry, Windows smart phone and the iPad.

Data for the applications is being assembled from concerned sources, such as Dining Services and MU News Bureau.

Altogether, a great example of how to go about product development. See more details at the maneater

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Posted in business, education delivery, information technology, smartphone applications, technology commercialization, training | No Comments »

Penn State University to Anchor a 1,700-mile Broadband Network Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Under The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, funding was awarded to Keystone Initiative for Network-Based Education and Research. The $99 million federal stimulus grant is intended to create a 39-county broadhband network.

The funding will enable building a high-speed, fiber optic, 1,700 mile-long cable network, covering areas that have poor broadband access now.

Spokesman for Penn State, one of the anchor insitutions in the Keystone Inititative, said that the completed network will allow all their campuses to be connected at very high speeds. The network will support research and distance education at the universities, and enable connections with remote clinics for health care institutions.

The spokesman added that by working together with other institutions, it was possible to come up with a much stronger proposal for funding.

The network has been compared to a broadband highway with “exit ramps” where electronics systems will be based to serve as access points to the network. The proposal is to provide 13 core nodes and 45 to 50 local ones. It could reach more than 2 million households and 200,000 businesses.

Read the story about Funding for New Broadband Network.

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