Shwetank Dixit

So with everytime I go to mumbai, I forget, or almost forget, at least one thing to take with me. This time it was my DVi connector (thing thingy required to connect my Macbook Pro to various projectors). Once I was packed at home, I realized this, and had to drive all the way to office once again to pick it up.

Plus, just a day earlier, Kingfisher told me that my flight to Mumbai is cancelled So I had to hustle for Air India to get another Flight to Mumbai. However, everything worked out fine, and now I was on my flight to Mumbai with my trusty DVi connector.

Interop Mumbai

The first event I was there at, was Interop Mumbai. I was speaking there was part of the 'Mobile and Wireless' Track. I spoke on how people all around the world are using the mobile web, and how even though there are differences in the handsets people use around the world (especially between developed countries and developing ones), the kind of sites we visit are very much the same (social networking, search, leisure, etc). Some other presentations I found interesting were from Krishnakumar Avanoor from Shoppers Stop. He presented on what challenges Shoppers Stop encountered with shipping of goods from warehouses to the actual Shoppers Stop showrooms, and how they implemented their in-house IT solution to tackle this problem. One more presentation was more wireless security, where it was explained that WEP wireless networks can be compromised in about 5 minutes. In fact there were two separate presentations by different security companies who did a 'war drive in mumbai, finding out info about wireless networks in the city, and both independently of each other came up with similar figures. Around 15-20% of the networks were completely open, without a password. Around another 20-25% or so were WEP protected, which means that it had really very little security and could be cracked by knowledgeable person within minutes.

There was also a talk by Microsoft. They used a different software for presentations called ‘Pixx’ (if I recall correctly) which had more eye candy, but was for internal use only, so far. First they showed a five minute video montage of what they think technology could help us in the year 2019. It was almost like a happy friendly version of minority report. The video is they showed was basically the ones shown in this video...



They explained how each scene in the montage actually was actually based on some real work research going on right now and that its not that far away in the future that we could have this kind of future with us. The event also had a trade show, and a number of companies had their stalls set up. I went around and found a few good people to talk to. I did have one strange experience there, though. I went to a stall of one of the companies there, because I wanted to talk to the guys there.

I went there, and suddenly a hot booth girl pops up with a mic, asking me some weird question about their company.

Hot Girl: Do you know what <their company's new software> is?
Me: Uhh, I just want to talk to some guys from your company here...
Hot girl: But you have to answer it. You can win some prizes!
Me: Okay, uhh, I have no idea to that answer.
Hot Girl: Okay, I’ll ask another question. Do you know how much <their company's other software> costs?
Me: Uhh....zero?
Hot Girl: Yes, you’re right! You win a USB Drive!

Then she gives me a box. I later open it and it turns out to be a pen, not a USB drive.

But still, I was happy with the pen.

I found that Interop Mumbai was a pretty well organized conference. It was the first time Interop was organized in India, after happening in Las Vegas, New York and Tokyo. It was a great place to meet a fine bunch of very talented people in the IT industry.

Startup Saturday

I was in town and I had some time to spare before another meeting, so I thought hey, why not attend Startup Saturday Mumbai. It was pretty good to hear from entrepreneurs telling their stories. One of them was Dheeraj Gupta Founder of Jumbo King Food, which is on the way to being an indian version of McDonalds selling completely Indian (fast) food. Jumbo King is poised to have 500 outlets across India by 2010. I found him to be an extremely studious and dedicated guy. He loves to read biographies of famous industrialists in the fast food business. He conducted user studies of people using his product, and made tough decisions about how to proceed after it. Basically, in the user surveys he found that the demographic of people in their late twenties, thirtys and fortys etc had a different idea of what a 'vada pao' was, which dated back to their experience in college back in the day. Jumbo King's vada pao, in a clean setting and a wrapper and all, didnt gel well with their expectation of what a vada pao eating experience should be. So he decided to go specifically after the younger demographic, hoping that when those young peopel grow older, they'll still stick with Jumbo King as their Vada Pao experience has been now shaped by Jumbo King. Once again, as with almost all entruperenuers in India, he complained about the VC community here in India, and how its a major pain to convince them to give them money. Sometimes startups feel frustrated that even after months of chasing around VCs, they get no result.

Barcamp Mumbai

Finally went to Barcamp Mumbai. This barcamp is also one of my favorites, as the people I meet there are some of the coolest around. I also did my talk, about standards and all (web forms2, canvas, svg, <video>, html5 and css3 in general, etc). I also asked questions in between and gave away t-shirts to the audience to the ones who answered correctly. The session was fun for me to present, and I hope the audience also had fun. I distributed the leftover t-shirts after my talk.

Other talks included a talk by a bright 13 year old kid on blogging, and the CTO of skenzo (a Directi company) on scaling, which was pretty interesting. One more talk, which I missed, but got good reviews, was a talk on high performance computing.

Then came the feedback session. I guess we all had a few differing views on how to make the event even better the next time. Some people called on more students to join. As much a I like students, I don't think bringing in more students will help that much, as usually students do not present. My idea was to promote the idea of barcamps in more organizations so that more people should come. We need more first timers! Especially ones who would present on various topics.

I went to EduTech 2009 in Pragati Maidan in New Delhi a few days ago to speak on the topic 'What is wrong with today’s web related curriculum and how to fix it?' I'll write more about what I presented later on in another post...

If I have to summarize the central points being touched by just about everyone in the conference, they were

• There is a wide disconnect between industry and academia.
  
• Technology has an increasingly major role to play in how to disseminate knowledge to our students.
  
• The role of teachers is moving towards being facilitators rather than 'dictators' of knowledge.
  

The disconnect between industry and academia
This was actually the central point of my presentation as well, and was repeatedly highlighted in many others people's talks. The web industry wants skilled front end engineers, but we cant find enough of them as the college's don't teach the proper techniques for it. During the panel discussion later in the day, this was again highlighted by the Director of HR from L&T who said he was finding it difficult to find good engineers in structural engineering.

Another thing which was highlighted was the fact that Indian students were relatively good when it came to written communication skills, but were found rather lacking when it came to spoken communication skills, especially in English. This was especially a problem in science and engineering graduates, and no steps are taken in the majority of colleges and universities to address this issue. Some may argue that extra-curricular activities somewhat help in this regard, but the fact is that this is totally optional and the students who really need to improve their communication skills never participate in these activities in the first place.

Some universities, for e.g, JIITU in Noida, do have a separate course in improving communication and personality skills, which is quite good. However, most colleges still are not there in providing decent help at the curriculum level in improving communication skills.

One more point I would like to add, is that in my experience with communicating with a lot of Indian students, especially in connection with the Opera Campus Crew and University seminars, I have found that the level of written communication has also gone down. Students are starting to write in 'SMS lingo' and sometimes it is downright impossible to figure out what they have written. I definitely feel there is a great need to improve communication skills amongst college students, especially in English, which has been India's main advantage in getting client projects in the IT industry.

The role of technology in education
Technology has been playing a major role throughout the history of education. The rudimentary blackboard was at one point of time a sophisticated piece of technology. The calculator was once regarded in the same way. So were projectors, and now so are computers.

The change now, is not in the devices as such (though there are many devices which are making an impact, the Amazon Kindle being one of them) but in the software being written which is enabling greater sharing of knowledge.

We had various people telling us about how Open Source software was helping their institutions in spreading knowledge. This was especially the case with Dr. Savitri Singh who presented on how Wikis were helping in the dissemination of information in her university. The same point was emphasized by Varad Gupta as well. However, later on during talks, some questions were raised about the accuracy of the information on the wikis, and other problems regarding Open Source Software deployment in educational institutions which Mr. Nitin Mukadam from NMIMS highlighted.

Claire Masson from Pearson talked about next generation online homework. Pearson has made a tool, which makes it possible to provide better guidance to students when it comes to homework. Basically the idea is that students will be logging in online to complete their homework, which will be a bunch of questions. If the students struggle with the questions, additional hints or questions will be provided to make the student think on the right track, just like a teacher would if he were to be asked the answer to a question in person. Also, the benefit with that is that teachers are free from grading all the sheets, as all of it is done online, plus the teachers get additional information on which questions were answered easily by students, and on which questions they struggled. Overall, I was quite impressed with the tool by Pearson, and I think it was only a matter of time before someone came up with this kind of software.

One of the most impressive talks, IMO, was given by Mrs. Ruby Kumar of Gems Education. She provided a range of tools being used right now in various schools, but more prominently, her own schools, which used technology in innovative ways to teach students better.

One of things mentioned was interactive whiteboards (Also sometimes referred to as Promithean or SMART boards depending on the company).

Here is a little video of how it is used...



Another thing mentioned as e-Twinning. The basic concept behind it being that students from one school will collaborate with another school (many times in another country) on working on specific problems. Communication happens through ICT and apart from increasing communication and problem solving skills, it also helps in cross cultural exchange.

Other things mentioned were webquests, concept mapping and QUIA books.

Other points discussed
As mentioned previously, it was mentioned by quite a lot of people that teachers nowadays are just there to help, rather than to push information down students throats. With the advent of SMS, Mobile Web, wikis, TV and social networking etc, information about any topic can be consumed within seconds.

IMO, we no longer face major technical challenges in education. It is increasingly becoming apparent that more and more technology is being invented to help students learn. Rather the challenges are (and have always been so since the dawn of time) human in nature. How do we address deficiencies in the human aspect? This is one thing which was not touched upon in the conference. Stuff like addressing bias in treatment of certain students, disciplining the class, motivating students to perform better, etc...these are all real world challenges.

The problem with all this technology is the assumption that the student wants to learn. If the student wants to learn, then these technologies are absolutely great. However, if the motivation is not there itself, if the student is not willing to learn in the first place, then all this technology will not be able to do much. As such, the human aspect (rather than the technology aspect) should have been a point of greater discussion as well, but sadly, it was not.

One more very important point regarding the human aspects of teaching was the emphasis on ethics. I raised this issue in the panel discussion, and the fact that even many reputed engineering colleges in India do not have a course on engineering ethics yet. Ethics in this day and age, is especially important, with kids being away from their parents and the corporate world having scandals after scandals. Some people said that ethics have to be taught at the school level. I guess that should be fine, however, I would think that its only in college that a student's mind is mature enough to realize the importance of it and the way he should apply ethics in his own future profession.

Nitin Mukadam said that a thing like ethics cannot really be taught. It has to come from within. I kindly but strongly disagree with him there. Ethics courses deal with what situations you'll have to deal with when you enter the industry. Stuff that, as a student, you probably do not even realize would be an ethical decision. Such case studies and other valuable information is dicsussed in most ethics courses, and it certainly makes students aware of the importance of ethics in the industry. I know from personal experience that the ethics course that I took made a huge impact on me and changed the way I thought about the industry and the way I should look at things.

Overall EduTech 2009 was a great place to hear of new ideas in the education sphere, and to see the future of education practices being discussed. I hope next year its an even bigger event.