IT in Education

In a span of 60 plus years since independence, India has managed to make its
presence felt in the global arena, and for all the right reasons. People say
it's the IT boom or the outsourcing industry which has catapulted our nation's
economy. True to some extent, the statement however ignores the real or the
underlying reasons for success. Advancements in Education is the real reason why
we have so many engineers, doctors and millions of other professionals, who are
together taking our country forward. A lot of people would want to complain, but
at the end, like it or not our education system has played an important role in
bringing progress and prosperity to our country. For quite some time now, IT has
been a critical component of the educational experience, creating opportunities
for students. Many software companies are developing educational software to
facilitate teaching. On the other hand, there are companies working towards
innovative hardware solutions while keeping in mind, the costs and the target
audience. All said and done, the country has realized the importance of IT in
the education sector, which is a multi-billion dollar industry and remains
recession proof. Let's take a look at what role IT can play in this domain.

Where do we stand?

No matter what the need, teaching techniques or the administration of
educational institutes, people have realized a lot of benefits from IT
implementations. How institutes function, has changed over the years and new
technologies continue to penetrate deeper. Evidence for the same can be found
right from the start of the admission process, to daily classes, admin chores,
to conducting exams and declaring results. Making admission processes easier and
more efficient, most of the private players already have a website in place.
Also some institutes now have wireless connectivity throughout their campuses
while many are considering ERP solutions and smart classrooms. But still,
majority of institutes remain far from being high tech and are in need of
innovative solutions that can meet their needs and resources.

Prof Bharat Bhasker, Professor of Information Technology and Systems, IIM Lucknow The automation of student registration processes, admissions, placement, accounting systems has been in place at IIM Lucknow for more than a decade. It is due to the high degree of reliance on IT infrastructure that we have been able to scale, upto three times, the increase in PGP intake, and obtain a multi-fold increase in training and launch of several programs with marginal change in support staff strength.

Roadblocks

Blackboards, desks, chalks and dusters, slates and registers remain modus
operandi for imparting education in most institutes. It is clear that the
potential for investments in this sector is immense as most of the schools and
colleges still use primitive means for teaching and running back-end processes.
The main reasons stopping them from going high tech tools remain to be monetary.
Though the importance of IT is well understood, the need for low cost easy to
maintain and easy to use solutions needs to be met. Unlike big organizations,
where IT hardware might be changed every second year, most educational
institutes don't intend to splurge that often.

Another roadblock remains the scarcity of employee training. Many schools and
colleges would first require the faculty and other staff to learn how these
technologies work. Therefore new solutions should be easy to grasp and should
require minimal training. Also, what remains absent in many institutes, is lack
of a dedicated IT team or a knowledgeable IT head.

Another major roadblock remains infrastructure. Apart from bandwidths,
something as basic as electricity is hard to get as you move further from the
urban areas. Institutes in such areas need solutions which together with the
above reasons should consume as low a power as possible in order to be run by
tiny generators when required.

IT at its Best: Turning one PC into many

The importance of computers in the education sector is well known. Everyone
understands the need of computer labs in schools and colleges. However, even
though the need is real, for a large part of this sector, initial investments
and catching up with technology might not sound feasible. Desktop
virtualization, which has become a hot topic in the past few years can if not
completely, solve this issue to a certain extent. Ncomputing, an organization
that provides such solutions uses virtualization in order to utilize the
horsepower of a single PC. The concept works on the the fact that when we talk
of everyday computing needs, users are not even close to utilizing all the
processing power that computers offer. A typical solution, can use one CPU in
order to provide 5-10 PCs depending upon the nature of computing needs. Now for
instance, when setting up a new computer lab or upgrading an older one, you
might not need ten different computers. Using one CPU, typically a Core 2 Duo,
with 3GB RAM and an HDD that suits your storage requirements, you can have ten
different PCs. Only a monitor, keyboard and mouse along with a tiny access
device is needed for each user instead of ten complete PCs having ten separate
CPUs. Savings is the word to describe the advantages in such a scenario. First,
on the hardware costs, secondly on power consumption and finally on other
equipment like the UPS.

Jayant Bhadauria, Head Education Solutions, Adobe India e-Learning “You need more of synchronous as well as asynchronous mode when it comes to elearning. The instructor has to be present even if he is only present online to make the learning more engaging. When talking of elearning what we lack is standardization and quality content. Tools like Captivate and Presenter can be used by any instructor to generate quality content.”

Shailesh Mehta CEO GurukulOnline on advantages of elearning “Generation, transmission and distribution of every megawatt of power generated requires around seven people. There is a huge shortage of trained professionals in many such sectors. By leveraging the power of Internet along with technologies like simulations and video conferencing, it is possible to deliver a wide variety of courses and train people for specific functions.”

Manish Sharma Vice President — APAC, NComputing Inc “The core applications being used have not changed much in the past ten or so years. Everyday computing involves web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets apps, etc. But what has dramatically changed is hardware capabilities. A daily user usually don't use more than 5 or 10 percent of his desktop's processing power. This is where our solutions step in. They take the surplus power from any computer and create multiple, independent computers out of it. This way, the cost per desktop user comes down significantly. Using our desktop virtualization software called Vspace and other access devices, one can have ten independent desktop users using one CPU.”

G.P. Gupta NIFM The application of IT in day to day service domains like payroll, time table management, accounts management, result declaration etc. is yielding its fruits in the form of effective delivery and high beneficiary satisfaction. The State of Art Lecture Halls with Interactive Boards and LCD projectors provide a conducive environment for learning. Besides, we have fully automated library for the convenience of both the trainee officers and the faculty.”

ERP for educational institutes

We all are aware of advantages that ERP solutions bring to enterprises. With
different modules, a typical ERP solution in an institute can ease the pain of
manual data entry and the conventional register maintaining practices. From
maintaining the enrollment process to everyday attendance tracking, ERP
solutions for schools and colleges can even take care of library and laboratory
management. When online, you can take the parent teacher student interaction to
a new degree. Online forums and discussions become possible and so does regular
updates for parents like results, attendance and other information. Features
like time table and curriculum management come as standard in such ERP
solutions. The main advantage of deploying an ERP solution also remains that you
can have one customized according to your needs depending on the number of
classrooms, students and other key things. Advanced features can be RFID tags
and Biometric identification for students and staff access control and
attendance tracking depending upon budgets as these tend to cost more.

Sushil Sharma Director, Dream Team ERP solutions that we offer are open source solutions. Based on Linux, apache, MySQL and php, these solutions have an option of online, off line or a combination of both. Unlike previous applications which were used to automate the admin side, solutions available these days have modules for knowledge management. Users of such solutions include students, teachers, parents, management, other staff, alumni and guests. Features like online examinations for students, online discussions and forums for parents have also been made possible. “

The e-Degree

Everyone knows what stamp papers are. Remember documents on which property
transactions used to be done with different currency notes printed on it. There
have been a number of scams related to such documents as forging them is not as
difficult as forging a currency note. Crimson Logic is the company that
introduced the concept of e-Stamping in our country. It came up with a portal,
which replaces the use of stamp papers. Typically, a user comes to this portal
choses the kind of transaction, enters the details of the transaction like names
of the parties, amount etc. Based on these details, the portal will
automatically calculate the stamp duty to be paid. Once you are done paying for
the stamp duty, a stamp certificate would get printed using a normal laser
printer and normal sheet of paper and is still impossible to forge. Optical
document security is the technology which makes this possible. It uses various
features like optical watermark, microprint etc. The beauty in this technology
being there is no need for a special paper, ink or printer. The same concept is
in the pipeline in the education sector. If implemented, it would make it very
difficult for people who try to forge important documents like marksheets and
degrees.

Simple implementations, Great Benefits GPS enabled transportation

The biggest asset of any institute is its students. Therefore, their safety
is mission critical specially when traveling in school/college buses. Using GPS
based navigation devices, routes can be stored for each bus and the traveling
speeds can be kept under check. In fact, the entire transportation system can be
automated, right from storing info on students, drivers, bus details, etc to
even tracking their movement using GPS navigation devices. The authorities can
keep a tab on the speed at which a driver is moving and also locate a bus
whenever required. Regular instructions can be handed over to the driver and his
route diverted in case there's some blockade or disruption in traffic on the
way. Most of the radio cabs have such solutions implemented.

Netbooks

With a little less horsepower than the conventional laptops, these computing
devices can be of great advantage to both, students and the faculty. Key
features of these devices include a small form factor, very less weight and
20-25k price tags. The Intel Atom processor running these computers is a perfect
match for basic productivity apps and Internet browsing and multimedia playback.
If not for everyone institutes can consider such options for its teachers. Also
available are desktop PCs priced around 15k being run by the same engine.

Interactive whiteboards and projectors

Not typically for institutes with tight IT budgets, Interactive whiteboards
and projectors are meant for those with basic IT infrastructure in place. An
interactive white board is typically a two way interaction solution. In simple
words, whatever you write on the board will be seen on the computer screen as
well. Combined with a projector, the solution can make the classroom the most
fun place to be in, as the interaction level goes high. The teacher can share
presentations, audio and video clips and a whole lot of other things with
students.

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NEC WT610

When talking of projectors in classrooms, the presenter should be able to
stand in front of the screen without blocking the light from projector in order
to avoid shadows on screen. Short throw projectors, which use aspheric mirrors
might be a good option. The WT 610 from NEC is one such projector. It can
project a 60 degree image from less than 11” throw distance and also comes with
an optional LAN card.

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Netop School

With features like sharing your computer screen with the class, supervising
student computer work, lend a hand when needed, control application and Internet
use, distribute and collect documents, create tests and evaluate student
progress, Netop school6 is a powerful teaching and management software for the
new age networked classroom. New dynamic teaching methods like demonstrating on
student computer screens, broadcasting multimedia along with policy control like
limiting Internet activity and application usage can also be performed using
this solution. For grabbing attention and improving productivity one can also
block keyboards and mice on the fly. The solution also helps in improving
collaborative learning and evaluation of student progress.

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Varun Jaitly with inputs from Mastufa Ahmed and Archana Singh