IT in Education

Emphasis on education has been one of the key driving force in bringing progress and prosperity to our country. Let's see the role IT is playing in taking the education sector a step further

Friday, May 01, 2009

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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.”

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