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.

Winning With Web via kwout

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ELITE 2009: Inagural Function: A Brief Report

ELITE-2009 ( Effective e-learning and e-teaching) a month long training for the faculty of engineering colleges started today at IIIT, Bangalore today. About 22 faculty from nook and corner of the country have been selected for this and they come states as far as Nagaland and Jammu & Kashmir. Prof. Rajagopalan introduced the purpose and intention behind the training quoting a NASSCOM study result that engineering teacher need instruction and training in teaching. With exponential growth in number of engineering colleges and in enrollment there is a immediate need to scale up our teaching efforts to meet the needs of greater number of students. Technology provide a means to overcome this challenge. The focus of the training is two fold (1) designing a couse for delivering face to face and as well as on the web and to (2) use Moodle a open source system for teaching

 

Dr. Sadagopan, Director impressed upon the fact that technology can positively impact teaching process and it time to enjoy the "pains of problem solving" in the context of increasing demand for engineering education

 

Prof. N.J Rao, coordinator of the training program made a very elaborate speech describing the need and goals of blending teaching – another name for e-learning and e-teaching. Historically he said teaching has focused on teachers and now is the time to move on to "student centric learning" paradigm. The main problem with engineering education is engineering graduates and even post graduates do not have adequate teaching trainings. Another point he noted is that designing a course in the past would mean choosing a text and selecting a few chapters from that. The stress in the training is to teach participant on how to design a course with due regards to different roles such as e-learning (student focused), e-teaching (teacher focused). In other word the purpose is to make teaching a more formal than depending on chance to find a good method of teaching or a teacher. "A lot of research carried out in cognitive field can be harnessed for improving teaching process" he stressed.

 

Dr. Ramani referred to the range of productivity tools available on PCs, which have made our lives better organized. He mentioned that a variety of tools are similarly revolutionizing professors' lives. He mentioned Moodle as a great a productivity tool for teaching.  He also mentioned the conference management tool, EDAS, which has made his life as a conference chair very simple. The system has automated a variety of chores associated with conference organizing, for instance, it takes care of reminding authors and reviewers. He urged participants to investigate such tools and to use them.

ELITE 2009: Day 01: Session 3: Webex

Session 3:  2.00 PM Webex by Rohit

 

Mr. Rohit a customer success manager, from made a presentation on WEBEX a collaboration tool designed by webex  and currently owned by CISCO Webex supports a range of interactions such as meeting and conferences via web. Webex application range from group meetings to large conferences. The tool allows a user called host to set up a meeting and invite other for participation. The invitation delivered via email template is secure and provides a link to the invitee to join the meeting. The host controls the pace and proceeding of the meeting. The host can choose the presenter- one among the participant to make presentation. He can grant or withdraw the status of "presenter" to any participant at his will. In addition participants can use other communications means such as chats, video. However to be video enabled- the participant must ensure that her webcam is set up before she join the meeting. It is also possible to take notes during the meeting and can be saved at the end of the meeting. (it was suggested to have an option of sending such saved notes to participants via email). The share option of web provides a means to share a set of items to be made accessible to all or select participants. One can share such as desktops, applications, presentation available one's system selectively with other participants. The whiteboard option allows participants to scribble and add notes to a common place and can be viewed by all. Some time during the course or after participants are expected to conduct a meeting with course coordinator using WEBEX

ELITE 2009: e-learning Session by Prof. N J Rao

 

Prof N .J Rao conducted an extensive session on e-learning. The session covered basic tenets of e-learning.  One of advantage of teaching is that it once learning resources such as class notes are available in digital format it allows faculty to make incremental improvements in his class notes and secondly it can be made available to large number of students. However whenever faculty simply transfer his paper-based class notes and other learning resources into digital format – in toto – he may not be gaining all the advantages potentially possible with new technology.

 

E-learning is a very useful tool for enhancing both effectiveness of teaching and as well as productivity of a teacher. E-learning tools support all kinds of instructional methods- lecture, demo, tutoring, simulations, discussions etc and allow teacher to combine them in customized manner. E-learning tools provide consistent teaching delivery systems that dose not depend on such thing as mood of a teacher and other exogenous factors. In addition instructional methods such as tutoring – can be very time consuming. E-learning tools help teacher to overcome this. By means of automating certain tasks such a conducting assessment tests- e-learning tools relieve teachers from the drudgery of routine tasks.

 

However e-learning paradigm has its own requirements. A choice of e-learning method must be justified thoroughly and must respect "human learning process". Secondly e-learning approaches being student-centric make " student responsible for deciding the pace " of learning. Simulation tools such as mathlab are part of e-learning repository. E-learning tools when combined with the finding from cognitive field can overcome many of challenges faced by teaching community today 
 

Indian Culture & English: A Talk by Prof. G S Amur

Center for Developmental studies, Dharwad organized a talk on Indian Culture & English: by Dr. G S Amur an eminent literary critic and a retired English Professor. The purpose of the talk was to find the impact of English on Indian culture. Dr. Amur began his talk with a direct reference to Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilization that claims that following the collapse of communist Russia, world has deprived of any ideological clash and clash of civilization has taken its place. West versus Islam is one such example.

• Before entering the central theme of the talk he clarified his choice of " Indian culture" and not " Hindu Culture" saying that the term "Hindu" is not evolved within and was given to us by western outsiders.
  
• He also defined culture as " way of life" by quoting a supreme court ruling.
• Another clarification he made was that by "English" he does not mean mere English Language by entire "baggage" that comes with it - English institutions etc.

By using a tree and roots metaphor, Dr. Amur, "One must study any culture" he asserted by first looking at its roots and then its current form or status ie. tree. The Indian culture can be broadly classified into Vedic non-vedic components and later includes religions such as Buddhism that evolved within Hindu culture and also those that came to us from outside such as Christianity and Islam. A closer looks at the roots of Indian culture reveals that we have four broad theme or guiding principles. and non-

• Bahuthwa ( Pluralism)
  
• Purusharthas ( Prime Pursuits of life)
  
• Varnashrama
• Jnana & Rajakiya

While our guiding principles are are strong and enduring our commitment to practice them is lacking he noted. We are either hypocritical or incompetent to follow those ideals. The Varnashrama principal is good in spirit but it was unfortunate this was degenerated into caste system. Some historical developments such as census taken up by British Government cemented this caste system much deeper into Indian psyche. One more point the talk noticed that today politics in India has become very powerful and "intelligentsia" has not been in position to have any say in directing nation further.

Other points made by the presenter.

• No culture grows by "isolating itself " from other cultures in fact isolation only kills it. However in accepting anything from other culture, care must be exercised. While western culture is borrowing "good" and "enduring" themes from other cluture, we are not that selective in our choices

Web for Librarian: Presentation Made at Information Literacy through Networking of Libraries

The department of Library , SDM College of Engineering & Technology, conducted a two day event, Information Literacy through Networking of Libraries during 23-24th March, 2009. I made a presentation Web for Librarian. The presentation noticed the concern of librarian that the number of people visiting library is decreasing in recent days and how to deal with it. I told that almost all traditional places of action are failing to attract people in numbers - the number of people watching movie is decreasing, the number of people watching cricket in stadium is less, and finally even the number of people attending class is also decreasing. The underlying reason is simple: people now have other channels to get the same, many a time better services. For instance, a CD now allows a person to watch movie at his own convenient time, guides help students prepare better for exams and so on. Library is no exception. Relevant and useful information available outside makes library a less preferred place to come.

In the second part, I listed various tools available on the web and connected them to work of librarians. At conceptual level , a librarian's work consist of - collection, catalog, new arrivals. I showed them how using tools one can index web content, and using alert one can keep himself updated about happening in the outside world. My whole presentation is accessible here. Web and librarian

Final Day : IPR Workshop : Funding Mechanism

Today marked the culmination of our 15 days 3-part IPR workshop. The first session was conducted by Mr. Madhusudan, Assistant Controller, Patent Office Chennai. He spoke about how patent office and officers view the entire process of patent application and provided their perspective.. In the presentation he described the privileges and perils of being a patent officer and provided insights through anecdotes. He later took us through the process of Opposition.

Dr Saha from DST spoke about IP issues as related to Traditional Knowledge and challenges faced in defining and defending them. He also provided information on certain DST schemes intended to help institutions planning to set up IP cells.

The day ended with a simple valedictory function.

Day 14: IPR Workshop: IP Strategy

Today the focal point of discussion moved from generic IP issues to another important aspect. How to develop right perspectives and attitudes towards this nascent i.e IPR within the mindsets of organizations: Development of IP strategy. While patents represents intellectual property and have wealth and revenue generating potential ( eg. Google's Search Algorithm) , it must be stressed that not all patents fall to this category. The prime job of IP strategy is to estimate the hidden potential of any patent process either obtaining and maintaining at an institutional level. It includes even the job of weeding out those patents that do not any "perceived" value proposition either now or in the near future.

It was told that recency of IP domain makes it difficult for IP professionals to convince institutions and its governors about its growing importance and making it an integral part of institutional life. The immediacy of IP calls for urgent measures towards this. Later deliberations centered around framing a syllabus for IP course either as an independent course or as a part of an existing management course

Day 13: IPR Workshop: Plant Variety, IC Layout

Day 13 of our IPR work shop began with a presentation by Ms. Rajani Jaiswal, Laksmikumran & Srinivas, a leading agency specializing in plant variety related IP Issues. Revising the basic definitions of IR, the presentation took us through the meaning and scope of plant related IP issues and current status of the field in India.

Ms Rachna Singh Puri, first presented a session on Semiconductor IC design and connected IP related aspects and then she presented a session on IP in IT that covered issues such as software and hardware related topics.

Later in the afternoon, both Ms Rachna Singh and Ms Aravind Vishwanath presented interesting case studies each. One was about CT and other was from the field of chemistry
The day ended with a presentation on the topic of IP in BT by Mr Aravind

Day 12: IRP workshop: Copy Right & Trade Marks

Second day of IPR was very interesting both in topics and resource persons. The pre-lunch session was about Copy Rights and it was conducted by Ms. Shiny for Mohan Associates, a firm that specialises in copyright issues and is Chennai. A Post graduate from Dr. Ambedkar Law university, Ms. Shniy covered legal and practical aspects of copy right and illustrated with a number of case studies.

The after session on trade marks was conducted by another professional Mr. Vikrant Rana of S S Rana , a Delhi Based firm specialised in Trade mark issues. Starting presentations from very basic terms, Mr. Vikrant took us through the entire process of trade mark with very relevant and illustrative examples

Day 11: IRP workshop III Phase commenced today

The third part of 3-part series IPR workshop started today at SJCE, Mysore today. The principal Dr. Sangamesh inaugurated the 5-day workshop. First day sessions were dedicated for the discussions of Patent Analyses. The resource person Aravind Vishwanath conducted a very detailed presentation covering various aspects of patent analyses process including claim mapping.

IPR Workshop : Day 9 ( SDMCET, Dharwad), 09.01.2008

IPR workshop turned out to be very practical today. Mr. Yashwant, TIFAC conducted a session describing the entire process of patent searching. He explained :How different is patent search from general search? and why Keyword search is not good enough and said that free search tools for patents are not up to standard. In the following session, he took us through in a step by step manner on how to start and go on narrowing patent search process. He covered Indian, US and EP patent databases.

IPR Workshop : Day 8 ( SDMCET, Dharwad), 08.01.2008

Today IPR workshop continued by taking another important phase in patent process:Patent Prosecution- defending your patent application. The session introduced terms such as Office action, Office Action Response, prosecution history, Estoppel. Once a clear understanding was established we were taken through a number of case studies- explaining each one of them in details. Some sample exercises involving claims- how to understand them, interpret them and how to handle objections raised by patent office were discussed.

IPR Workshop : Day 7 ( SDMCET, Dharwad), 07.01.2008

Today we continued with the job of drafting a patent application and claims. We refined the draft done yesterday. We are told about different kinds of claim approaches among others such as:· Jepson Claim- Wherein improvement comprises and Markush Claim - Selected from a group consisting of A, B, and C. Claim coverage and dependent claims was also discussed. In the post-lunch session a case of a granted patent was selected and throughly discussed.

IPR Workshop : Day 6 ( SDMCET, Dharwad)

Today IPR workshop's second part of 3-part series commenced at SDM College of Engineering & Technology, Dharwad. In the inaugural function Prof. M.N.S Rao, Principal/Director made a presidential remark. Ms. Rachna Singh Puri and Mr. Vishwanathan from Xllentip are the resource persons. The session was moderated by Prof. Chelli

In the first session, Mr. Vishwanath ran a review of topics covered in the previous workshop at MSRIT, Bangalore during December 1-5, 2008. Followed by this, Ms Rachana Singh Puri and Vishwanath conducted Mock Inventor Interview. In this, a hypothetical case study of inventing wheel was discussed and inventors were subject to a series of questions. The session is expected serve as model for would be inventors on how such an interview is conducted and what transpires there. Later Ms. Rachana Singh presented a session on " Presenting the Invention" which covered the points to be included in a document describing an invention and presenting the same to others including patent attorney and patent application office. In the post-lunch session we covered the topic "Drafting the claim". Using the same case of " Invention of wheel" discussed in the morning, the class covered on how to formulate claims: main and dependent claims. A very detailed analysis of adding/removing a word/phrase into the claim and its overall implication was carried out.