The Continuum: A Blog by PHI Learning

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  • COVID-19: How smart classrooms are transforming India’s education system ?

    The global pandemic has taken a massive hit on all the sectors of the economy. While it has been slightly easier for MNCs and professionals to adopt work from home as the new normal and continue business as usual, the times have been challenging for the education system around the world. With disruptions everywhere, several concerned scholars, citizens, politicians, and bureaucrats support the need for re-imagining and reinventing the education system. Hence, comes in the smart classroom systems.
    The adoption of smart classroom systems by schools is transforming the traditional education system. The sudden switch is not only limited to private schools, but even several government schools have started running smart classes. Though the crisis is devastating, it is making our schools and even colleges, technologically advanced. No doubt, students and teachers have had to make more significant adjustments as learning has always been in classrooms. Moreover, many of them are not well equipped with technology tools to avail of remote learning.
    “Use of technology in education is one of those methods that will help improve the quality of education in India. It is also altering the way education is provided in India. With the current pandemic, the opportunities to improve infrastructure across the K12 and higher education sectors have risen. Private schools had already gotten onto the bandwagon of e-learning, smart classrooms and some even making tabs mandatory right from pre-primary education. Now, considering the lockdown situation, one can imagine that many Ed-tech companies will see and perhaps seize the opportunity to fill the gap that may exist in bringing more schools on to the digital platform. As far fetched as it may seem, the next five years in India may make virtual education the new norm,” said Teja Gudluru, the Founder and CEO of UDO-now.com.
    A key aspect of coping with Covid-19 is to ensure that the learning remains a continuous process virtually. Connecting students and teachers through digital platforms and necessary software through the use of laptop or phones is the latest transition in education, trying to eradicate the physical need of teachers or classrooms. This is an ideal time to accept technology and its latest offerings in order to make education delivery to students more efficient and make it more productive through online learning and assessments,” said Kiran Dham, CEO of Globus Infocom Ltd.
    Digital Transformation of Education System
     
    Due to the accelerated adoption of digital technology triggered by the lockdown, educational institutes, business houses, data management methods and online education solutions have been forced to work in tandem. Many educational institutes are considering this as an ideal time to experiment and deploy new technology to make education delivery possible and meaningful. In a move to not let the crisis hamper the curriculum, digital transformation has become a new norm with educational institutes across the country. Many are leveraging it as a chance to be more productive and efficient while developing innovative and improved professional skills through online learning and assessment.
    The adoption of technology in education has led to an unprecedented transformation from teacher-centric education towards student-centric education. Virtual classrooms and various online tools are helping to continue and enhance the engagement between the teacher and students as close to the classroom-type experience. Going forward, smart classrooms are making everything possible from teachers and parent meetings to staff/management meetings, providing the necessary interactivity.
    Dham added, “Technology is turning education from teacher-centric education to both teacher and student-centric education. Virtual classrooms and various online tools today allow us to make the engagement between the teacher and students as close to a real, in-classroom like experience, as possible. Technology-based education makes the education system more transparent and equal. Digital education needs balanced coordination between course content, educationists, technology and course-takers. It can only be successfully implemented with the availability of basic amenities like internet connectivity, availability and affordability of online systems, PCs, laptops, software, etc. Nonetheless, we can’t deny the fact that here in such extreme situations, COVID-19 has only accelerated the adoption of technology to make quality education accessible to everyone.”
    Summing It All Up
     
    The online assessment platforms or ed tech companies are continuously striving to improve their products. Much has been planned and implemented, and more improvement is underway.
    The tremendous use of technology in teaching amidst crisis will lead to a new era in the education sector wherein the best of faculty will be available from across the globe to students. Quality of faculty, quality of IT infrastructure and familiarisation of the faculty with digital teaching technologies are important parameters foreseen in the future. There is no doubt that the crisis has accelerated the adoption of technologies to deliver education and will help strengthen the country’s digital learning infrastructure in the long run.
    The impact of COVID-19 will remain for years, if not longer. The new normal will be that significantly larger numbers of students will attend classes from home. While this trend was already on the uptick, it will receive a massive impetus because of COVID-19. The great thing is that India is well prepared to teach the lakhs of students at home. The country has one of the world’s most extensive 4G networks on the planet. In virtually every part of the country, there is 4G connectivity. Even more impressive is the fact that data is very affordable. Over such robust networks, classes can be streamed with ease. Students who learn in virtual classrooms will find that their learning experience is as good as or maybe even better than that of students who sit in classes. The hugely transformative power of virtual classrooms is their ability to bring an endless number of courses to students’ doorsteps. A student living in the interior of the country can master a course on AI or big data without paying a considerable fee. Indeed, over the next few years, the number of students who get an education online will grow considerably,” said IntelliPaat Founder and CEO Diwakar Chittora.
    Boost Students’ Learning Experience with PHI Digital Books!
     
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    Source: financialexpress.com

  • World Book Day and Copyright Day

    An annual event to promote Reading, Publishing and Copyright
    Copyright is not an obstacle. It’s something you need to understand how to navigate, and we want to make that as easy and as transparent as possible.
    Tracey Armstrong
    CEO, Copyright Clearance Centre
     
    World Book and Copyright Day is a day entirely dedicated to celebrating the contribution of authors and their books towards the global culture and the association between books and copyright. Since 1995, the 23rd of April has been a day to celebrate content creators and the laws that protect their works. Each year on April 23, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and the rest of the world celebrate World Book and Copyright Day to address the problems of plagiarism and copyrights in a serious manner. It is a significant day for international book publishing because it is a worldwide celebration to promote the reading and enjoyment of books. About 100 countries and more than a million people join in the celebration.
    Besides the name ‘World Book and Copyright Day’, this day is also familiarized by the names viz. ‘World Book Day’ and ‘International Day of the Book’. This day creates an occasion to honour the books and authors worldwide and inspire people at large to develop their interest and discover the inclination towards reading.
    During the celebration of World Book and Copyright Day, representatives of the International Publisher’s Association (IPA) and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), together with UNESCO, choose a city to be the World Book Capital. Cities designated as UNESCO World Book Capital undertake to promote books and reading and to organize activities over the year. Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) was named World Book Capital for the year 2020 by the Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, on the recommendation of the World Book Capital Advisory Committee. The city was selected because of the intense focus on inclusive education, the development of a knowledge-based society and accessible reading for all parts of the city’s population.
    With the slogan KL Baca – caring through reading, the program focuses on four themes:
    1. Reading in all its forms
    2. Development of the book industry infrastructure
    3. Inclusiveness and digital accessibility
    4. Empowerment of children through reading
    Among other events and activities there will be the construction of a book city (the Kota Buku Complex), a reading campaign for train commuters, enhancing of digital services and accessibility by the National Library of Malaysia for the disabled, and new digital services for libraries in 12 libraries in poor housing areas of Kuala Lumpur.  
    The city’s objective is to foster a culture of reading and inclusiveness – “A city that reads is a city that cares” – emphasizing ubiquitous access to books throughout the city. The city’s ambitious programme for World Book Capital is linked to the Vision 2020 for Kuala Lumpur, and the eco-city project called the River of Life with open-air bookshops and libraries populating the newly-restored waterways of the city.


    SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DATE

    The inspiration for the celebration came from the tradition in Catalonia, Spain. Catalonia’s patron saint is St. George. According to local legend, St. George slew the dragon on April 23 and saved a princess from being sacrificed. A rosebush grew on the spot where the dragon’s blood dripped. St. George (St. Jordi) picked the rose and gave it to the princess.
    From then on, the tradition of a man giving a rose to the person he loves on St. George’s Day started.
    In the 1920s, a bookseller from Catalonia realized that April 23 was the death anniversary of revered authors Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare (who died on April 23, 1616). A few authors were born on April 23, such as Manuel Mejía Vallejo, Halldór Kiljan Laxness and Maurice Druon. He promoted the date as a good time to present someone with a book instead of a rose. Many followed the idea, which led to the birth of “The Day of the Book” or El Dia de Libre in Catalan.
    The tradition is deeply established in Barcelona, which is the publishing hub for books in Spanish and Catalan languages. In the region, a book is exchanged for a rose, and the gift-giving tradition on April 23 does not distinguish between genders. Most of the annual book purchases in Catalonia happen during the region’s Book and Rose Fair. Booksellers present a rose to anyone who buys a book. Various other activities are planned during the event, and many authors and publishers launch their books during the fair.
    This date was a natural choice for UNESCO’s General Conference, held in Paris in 1995, to pay a worldwide tribute to books and authors on this date, encouraging everyone to access books. It is also the day to honour books, authors and the copyright laws that protect the intellectual properties of the authors. Various other factors make the World Book and Copyright Right Day very significant. It declares the intent of UNESCO to support equal access to knowledge, diversity and creativity. Various organizations work together to promote mobile learning, literacy, open access to educational resources and scientific knowledge.
     
    CELEBRATE WORLD BOOK AND COPYRIGHT DAY BY READING PHI EBOOKS
    It cannot be denied that books still have the power to connect cultures and generations.
    The celebration of this day plays a significant role to inculcate reading habits in the students and develop their interest in them to know about several authors and other relevant things.
    Perhaps the most straightforward way to celebrate World Book and Copyright Day is to read a book. Check out a new book from your local library, purchase a book from a local bookseller, or reread a favourite book you have at home. If you have a particularly busy day on April 23, reading a portion of a book with your family can be a great way to end the day and to celebrate the holiday.

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    AVAILABLE PHI EBOOK FORMATS

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    FROM WHERE TO ORDER?
    Order e-book online from:

    • www.phindia.com   
    • Amazon Kindle Store  
    • Google Play Books  
    • Barnes & Noble Nook Books Store   
    ONLINE BOOK PREVIEW
     
    Read a free sample on the webpage of the book of your choice at www.phindia.com with the help of Google Preview.
     
    When you read a book, you become a part of the ongoing transfer of information and culture that is so important to human history. You’re also supporting the work of writers who are devoted to the process of information and cultural exchange.
     
    Happy World Book and Copyright Day!
     
    Explore more about Copyright Law and Intellectual Property Rights with PHI e-books 







  • V. RAJARAMAN – A Pioneer in the Field of Computer Science Education in India

    V. RAJARAMAN – A Pioneer in the Field of Computer Science Education in India
    Born: 8 September 1933, Madras Presidency, British India 
    Occupation: Computer engineer & Academic Author 
    Known for: Computer science academics and literature 
     
    Awards
    1. Padma Bhushan 
    2. Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize 
    3. Om Prakash Bhasin Award 
    4. Homi Bhabha Prize 
    5. IISc Rustom Choksi Award 
    6. INAE Lifetime Contribution Award 
    7. IISc Distinguished Alumnus Award 
    8. CSI Lifetime Achievement Award
    Vaidyeswaran Rajaraman is an Indian engineer, academic and writer, known for his pioneering efforts in the field of Computer Science education in India. He is credited with the establishment of the first academic program in computer science in India, which he helped initiate at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1965. An elected fellow of all the Indian science academies, he is a recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, the highest Indian award in the Science and Technology category for young scientists and several other honors including Om Prakash Bhasin Award and Homi Bhabha Prize. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan, in 1998, for his contributions to science.
     
    He passed the Higher secondary examination as a student of the first batch of the Madras Education Association (now known as DTEA) Higher Secondary School, New Delhi, in 1949. V.Rajaraman was awarded a scholarship by the Delhi University after passing the All India Entrance Scholarship Examination and graduated with honors in Physics from St. Stephen’s College of the University of Delhi in 1952 and continued his higher studies at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc) to obtain a Diploma in Electrical Communication Engineering in 1955. He stayed on at IISc and designed and constructed non-linear units for an analog computer and applied it for solving a number of engineering problems for which he was awarded an associateship by IISc in 1957. He was awarded an overseas scholarship by the Government of India and joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge from where he obtained his master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1959. Thereafter, he enrolled himself at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for his doctoral studies and did research on adaptive control systems and obtained a Ph.D. in 1961. He started his career as an assistant professor of statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1962, he returned to India to work as an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK). He went as a visiting assistant professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley during the period 1965–66. It was during this time, he shifted his focus to the then-nascent discipline of computer science.
     
    Supercomputer Education and Research Centre, IISc Bangalore 
     
    In early 1965, with the encouragement by Prof. H. K. Kesavan, the Head of Electrical Engineering Department at IITK, Rajaraman along with his colleagues, initiated a new MTech program with Computer Science as an option; the first time the subject was being offered as an academic discipline in India. Later, he helped introduce a doctoral program, too, and the group led by him pioneered the use of decision tables in the development, debugging, and optimization of complex computer programs. He initiated the first B.Tech. program at IITK in 1978 with an initial batch of 20 students. He became a senior professor at IITK in 1974 and stayed there till 1982. He moved to the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and developed low-cost parallel computers and a supercomputing facility of which he served as the Chairman from 1982 to 1994. During his tenure at IITK and IISc, he guided 30 students in their doctoral studies. He published over 70 scientific papers in national and international peer-reviewed journals and several textbooks, including the first on computer programming published in India by PHI Learning Private Limited titled Principles of Computer Programming, Computer Programming in FORTRAN 90 and 95, Computer Oriented Numerical Methods (Third Edition), Analog Computation and Simulation, Analysis and Design of Information Systems (Third Edition), Computer Basics and C Programming, Computer Programming in C, Computer Programming in FORTRAN 77 (With an Introduction to FORTRAN 90), 4th ed., Essentials of E-Commerce Technology, Introduction to Information Technology (Third Edition), Fundamentals of Computers (Sixth Edition), Parallel Computers—Architecture and Programming (Second Edition), Computer Organization and Architecture, Digital Logic and Computer Organization, An Introduction to Digital Computer Design (Fifth Edition) among others. His Ph.D. thesis was on the Theory of parameter-perturbation adaptive and optimizing control systems and S.M. thesis was on Effects of Parameter Variations in Linear Amplifiers. He wrote a monograph, History of Computing in India: 1955-2010, on the invitation of the IEEE Computer Society in 2014. It details the history of Information Technology in India. Rajaraman, besides developing parallel computers, contributed in the development of real-time control system for Bhilai Steel Plant, designed the training modules for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and designed computer science curriculum for All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the national council for technical education in India. He was a member of the Electronics Commission during 1979–82. During his tenure in the Electronics Commission, he chaired a committee that recommended the introduction of a new academic program called Master of Computer Applications (MCA) for BSc and BCom students foreseeing the impending human resource shortage for the IT industry. This was a unique program in India. He was a council member of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) from 1986 to 1988. He served as a consultant to Bharat Electronics (BEL), TCS, Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) and Kerala Venture Capital. He chaired a committee set up by the Science Advisory Council to the Prime Minister in 1987 that recommended establishing Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) to design and develop supercomputers in India using parallel computing technology. He was a member of CDAC’s governing council in its formative years. He was a Tata Chem professor at IISc from 1991 to 1994 and the IBM Professor of Information Technology at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCAR) from 1994 to 2001. He was a member of the board of directors of CMC Ltd., Canbank Computer Services Ltd., Encore Software Ltd., and IIIT, Kerala. He was a member of the Technical Advisory Panel of the Government of Karnataka from 1985 to 2014. During his tenure, he advised the government on computerization of land registration (Bhoomi Project), Kaveri project of the stamps and registration department for computerising registration of urban properties, computerizing the court systems and many important e-governance projects. His hobbies include listening to classical Karnatik and Western music and reading fiction and non-fiction books.
     
    Awards and Honors 
     
    Rajaraman received Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, the highest Indian science and technology award for young scientists, in 1976, for his contributions in optimizing the use of decision tables and his pioneering work in computer science. This was followed by the Homi Bhabha Prize in 1984 and the Indian Society of Technical Education Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1988. He was awarded the Om Prakash Bhasin Award of the Shri Om Prakash Bhasin Foundation and Rustom Choksi Award of the Indian Institute of Science in 1993. The Government of India included him in the Republic Day Honours list in 1998 for the civilian award of the Padma Bhushan. The Indian National Academy of Engineering honored him with the Lifetime Contribution Award in Engineering in 2005 and he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Science in 2014. He has also delivered several award orations including the S.H. Zaheer Medal (1998) of the Indian National Science Academy and is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Computer Society of India, Dataquest, and Systems Society of India. The Indian Academy of Sciences elected Rajaraman as its fellow in 1974 and the Indian National Science Academy and the National Academy of Sciences, India followed suit in 1982 and 1990 respectively. He is also an elected fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering and has held the fellowships of the Computer Society of India (1974) and the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers. The Bengal Engineering and Science University and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur have conferred the degree of Doctor of Science (honoris causa) on Rajaraman.
     
    An interview with Dr. Rajaraman is available at http://voxiitk.com/interview-with-dr-rajaraman/ 
     
    The Series of Books by Rajaraman, published by PHI Learning, is available for purchase from www.phindia.com.
     
    The books are available in print book format as well as e-book format.