|India Education Digital Library|
The digital library’s first component is a web site hosted by National Informatics Center, Karnataka. It has searchable catalog of all the content in the digital library including links to download them. The search facility is given in three languages–English, Kannada or Hindi by keyword, subject, title, language, audience, and type of media. Those who find difficulty in downloading the content can get the content by writing an email to Education Development Centre (EDC).
The second component is a scaled-down CD version of the digital library. Its purpose is to display all the content titles so that the user can select the required one and order it by sending an email to EDC. It will be distributed to district and block level education offices and to primary schools and public libraries that have computers (but no Internet connection). To examine the use and feasibility of the digital library, pilot testing was carried out in six sites in Bangalore’s rural and urban districts. The feedback from the pilot reveals that the teacher as well as students feel that digital library supplements their knowledge, enhances subject enrichment and improves clarity of concepts.
The library has played a significant role in the evolution of human society. It has ignited thoughts and germinated ideas transforming the disadvantaged into leaders and thereby changing the course of human destiny. Library’s only constraint was that it cannot be transported from one location to another easily. As a result, its access was limited to a community residing in a geographical area. The second problem was the preservation of the information available in it, as the ravages of time wiped out many of the gems in libraries.
ICT has the power to address both the concerns without occupying much space and huge investments. Use of ICT makes it accessible to a wide audience distributed across geographical and political boundaries ensuring free flow of information and knowledge and thereby empowering people along the way.
Nadya Karim Shaw
Shalini R Urs
Education Development Center
080 – 22449244
Multi-lingual (currently in three languages- Hindi, English, Kannada)
SolidGyan aims to bring knowledge and expertise to MBA aspirants of 20-26 years of age living in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, who are ambitious but don’t have much training avenues to enter B-schools. The courseware it has developed is broad enough to fulfill aspirations of the working professionals as well as those who have little time to enroll in classroom training or not the desire to go through on their own with available correspondence courses.
SolidGyan’s initial offering SmartCAT – an e-learning offering focusing on CAT and other Indian MBA entrances is built around the observation that the traditional delivery model of classroom coaching and correspondence even though have lot of positives lack wide reach and personalization. However, it has incorporated the best of them in its learning modules.
The online offering has been live for the last 14 months. It has so far 7,500+ registered users from India, US, UK, Belgium, Middle East, South Africa.
Teaching has always been dependent on the teacher. However, the trouble is that a good teacher can impart lessons to a limited number of students confined to a geographical area. The privileged, as a result, crowd around institutions that are known for good teachers. Correspondence course took the next leap to reach a wider student community delivering course material with consistency in quality, but it lacks the resources for interactive session and is deficient in fulfilling individual needs instantly.
ICT has the potential to play the role of delivery infrastructure imparting quality training material for entrance examinations over a much larger geographical area as well as cater to each individual’s needs instantly. The students in such a mode can learn at their pace.
Online SolidGyan Pvt. Ltd.
022 – 28778656
Think.com is a web-based learning community for primary and secondary schools, sponsored by the Oracle Education Foundation. It provides free websites, email, and collaborative tools for everyone associated with school. The members have individual websites allowing them to create and share their work within the password-protected community.
The journey began in 1998 as an integrated email and web service for schools in the UK and USA, sponsored by Oracle Corporation. Since then it has grown into a comprehensive online learning community with extensive features and membership that spans the globe.
In October 2005, sponsorship of Think.com was transferred to the Oracle Education Foundation, which also sponsors ThinkQuest. How can Think.com be used in the classroom? There are many ways that educators can use Think.com as a learning tool. A school can integrate lessons from any curricular area into Think.com, including writing assignments, projects, peer review, student collaboration, WebQuests, homework assistance, after-school programmes, and much more. Think.com can enhance any lesson by integrating text, video, images, and sound. The tutorials and sample classroom units offer more ideas. Teachers can also use Think.com to communicate with parents by posting homework and classroom news to their parents’ page.
Knowledge is power and ideas rule the world. Uniting primary and secondary school children and their teachers on a single platform forms a global community, who share knowledge, brainstorm ideas and perhaps also think of solutions that are plaguing us. As Internet is accessed primarily by the privileged class, the majority of the students subscribing to this e-learning site belong to the upper socio-economic strata. But as Internet becomes ubiquitous, the disadvantaged class could reap the benefits from initiatives such as these to move up the ladder. Think.com would not only bridge the digital divide, but offer equal learning opportunities to the disadvantaged. The seeds of democratization of learning opportunities have germinated.
Oracle Education Foundation
0124 – 4328000
The products are information based, which are published for the villagers of Andhra Pradesh in Telugu, the local language, on subjects relating to their livelihood, their health, for their own self learning and benefit. The aim is to help them earn better, have good health and in turn have a better quality life. These are supplied on demand in electronic medium – in PDF or PPT form by email – or in CDs by post, to even the interior parts of Andhra Pradesh. The approach saves paper, which in turn save trees and environment.
The subjects covered are agriculture, horticulture and animal husbandry related livelihoods, girl child development, prevention of malnutrition in children below two years, prevention of micronutrient deficiencies like anaemia in women, and other relevant topics like thrift and credit cooperatives, preparedness for disasters such as cyclones, floods etc. The content is developed based on the village needs of the people. These information products are given to all village information centres, which hastens the process for the rural poor to acquire knowledge and learn computers.
Knowledge for knowledge sake makes little sense to the disadvantaged groups. They need opportunities to improve their standard of living. The initiative has identified the need gaps of information of the target community and developed products accordingly so that reading them make a difference in the lives of the target community and thereby inculcate in them how acquiring information perpetually could help them to move further up in life. Booksline has also involved the community and thereby set in motion peer to peer learning through forming book clubs where book reading sessions are held.
Booksline, A unit of SRAS Foundation
040 – 23376210