India and Digital Revolution: A Talk by Mr. Shivanand Kanavi, VP, Special projects, TCS

The Institution of Engineers, India ( IEI), Dharwad Local chapter organized a talk on "India and Digital Revolution" by Mr. Shivanand Kanavi, Vice President, Special Projects, TCS. Mumbai, on 21st August, 2009 at Balekundary, Hall. Mr. Kanavi has an illustrious career which took him to different domains such as research at IIT, teaching, Business Journalism at Business India. He joined TCS in 2004.

The topic of Talk " India and Digital Revolution" was a very thoughtful choice and Kanavi did a great justice to it. His talk composed of two parts- first dealing with the technological underpinnings of digital revolution and its impact on India and second part was about Indians who contributed heavily in shaping digital revolution. The impact of digital revolution in India was termed " fall out" by the presenter and he listed the following as the main areas that benefited Indian- people, market, business.

• Indian IT
• Chip Design
• Telecommunication
• Global Platform for R & D
• Centre for Engineering Design
• Media and entertainment
• Governance

The root of all positive impact of digital revolution is due to advancements in telecommunication. The developments made it possible to separate design and fabrication functions and get them done anywhere in the world. The Indian talent took this opportunity very well and now "India strategy" to any major business in the west. The chip technology has become a ubiquitous in its spread and virtually every tool that we use today contains a number of special purpose chips. For instance, a modern day car has a number of chips for steering control, wheel etc. Companies such as Texas Instruments ( TI) are doing a lot of R & D work in aerospace technologies. Historically India had missed earlier revolutions - Industrial ( due to British rule ) and electronic revolution - however, the telecommunication industry made us to catch up and join the revolution in later stage. 80% of the mobile sets used world wide use DSP technology designed by TI. GE has established a R & D centre in Bangalore that contributes upto 40% research work in aircraft engine design. The design and development of Ferrari used in Formula-1 is designed by TCS. Tata's Nano project proved that with just one fourth of research budget allocated in the west, one can design and deliver a car from concept to market.

The contribution of ISRO towards making India a strong player in world is very great. Starting from its SITE program for distance education in 70's, ISRO has technologically supported Indian march including introduction of nation wide color broadcasting during, ASIAN games in 1982.

The devlopments in digital technology have made a great contribution in changing the way government runs it services. The land record computerization has resulted easing of many services. The use of IT in central government departments such as company affairs has enabled them to handle data of more that 6,00,000 companies very efficiently and in atimely manner. The IT use in passport issuance has greatly simplied the very process and it will be possible to get passport within three days of police clearance. Similar changes have been planned for judiciary, medical departments. Digital libray is planned as solution to reach wider learning audience. Implementing DEMAT mode of shares and computerized transcations in stock market is another example of IT in action. The NSE in India is one of the busiest stock exchange in the world and its systems have be built using economic hardware and software components. The Role of IT in banking is still more stupendous- SBI with more than 14,000 branches has been successfully using IT to serve its customers in the every nook and corner of the nation. The Indian railways took the path of computerization without resorting to massive lay off in the '80s and its success has brought a sea change in the public perception of computerization. In summary IT has been playing a pivotal role in Indian current development context.

The second part of the talk was profiles of some perosnalities that contributed in the making of digital revolution. The list included J C Bose, Amar Bose of Bose System fame, Raj Reddy, Praveen Chaudhary, Arun Netravali, F. C Kohli, Abhay Bhushan and many more

Shivanand Kanavi's talk was one of the most informative and inspiring talk that I had heard in the recent past. Thanks Sir

ELITE Course: A Report

IIIT, Bangalore with support from DIT, GOI conducted a four week training program on Effective E-learning and E-Teaching during Jun29 to 24th July. 22 Faculty from across the nation and from different discipline were invited to attend the training. Prof. N J Rao, from IISC, was the coordinator for the ELITE program conducted the course in very effective and planned manner.The purpose of the training was multi-fold. Some of the important aspects covered in depth during the course were

• Course Design
• Assessment
• Instructional Design
• Learning Management systems(LMS) - MOODLE.

Course Design:

With more institutions going autonomous way, now they are responsible for designing their own curriculum. Course design is a process of designing a complete course given the program outcomes and competencies. It was stressed that a methodical course design process is very useful both from teacher and learner perspective. Useful tools such as concept maps were introduced and good examples were provided. Groups were formed among participants and each group was assigned the task of designing a course from scratch. It was a very education experience for each one of us.

Assessment:

Assessment is an important aspect of any course design process. However it is noticed that in a large system such as university, assessments get lower priority and examination methods usually end up asking more of a remembering and recalling types of questions. The training exposed us to a well structured and graded easement method known as Bloom's Taxonomy which consists of stages of learning starting from remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating and creating. Course designed by participants included a deliberate inclusion of Bloom's taxonomy as an integral part.

Instructional design

Lecture is a dominant form of teaching, it is not the only open for teaching. Instructional design is selection and applications of various combination of instructional strategy by the concerned faculty. It includes in addition to lecture, demonstration, Learning objects, practice session to name the few. Sufficient coverage of theoretical foundations of instructional design were taught to us during the training. Each of the group presented the course designed by the them to whole audience and critical feedback was provided by Prof. N J Rao and other participants

Learning Management Systems:

Learning management systems help faculty managing the entire process of teaching including content management- delivery and assessment. We were trained on one open source LMS called MOODEL. Ms Vani conducted a series of practical sessions explaining the features of MOODLE system and each candidate was asked to test those features.

A valedictory function was conducted in the presence of Dr. Sadagopan, Director and visiting UGC team. Participants were given a course completion certificate and a ipod

In all it was great learning occasion for all of us

9th Convocation of IIITB: A Bystander's Report

You rarely get such chance like this one. Attending a convocation of an institution where four of most successful persons of contemporary India -each of them whom have architected most recent achievement in India share the same dais and share their thoughts with upcoming generation.. I am talking about the 9th Convocation of IIIB ( International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore) which held today in instituter's campus just opposite Infosys, in Electronic city, Bangalore. I was nobody in the gathering- I was not a graduating student, nor was I a proud parent nor I was faculty who by default have a privilege to participate. In Drucker's word I was a Bystander. As a trainee for a month long e-learning course , I am staying here. But I was more than rewarded with a series of thought provoking speechs first by Dr. Madhavan Nayar, Chairman of ISRO who along with his team is leading the world in space technology. The next was Mr Asok Soota who built up an eminently successful enterprise Mindtree is less than a decades time. The third one was Mr N R Murthy who embodied entrepreneurial spirit in his creation of world known software service firm Inofsys. The last but not the least was Prof. Sadagopan who as a founding director of IIITB creating a world class institute in India where even foreign students are attending. He needs no better applause than one by Peter Drucker when he said " The graduates from IIITB as good as from any institution in world". We owe a lot to Director.

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