Shwetank Dixit

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.

On the weekend, I went to thiruvananthapuram, AKA Trivandram, where Barcamp Kerala 5 took place on sunday. I think the event can be expressed in the testimonial I sent to Anand about the event

I came all the way from Chandigarh to attend Barcamp Kerala. My hope was to meet and exchange ideas with the best technical minds in Kerala. However, BCK5 went well beyond my already high expections. The crowd was not only knowledgable and technically strong, but also were very humble, polite and had excellent communication skills, as evidenced by the presentations conducted. The Technopark campus, with its beautifull campus and excellent infrastructure, proved to be an great venue. I've took part in a lot of Barcamps across India, and I have to say BCK5 was an especially great experience. Kudos to the organizers and sponsors.

And I really meant it. Let me elaborate further...

First, the crowd: In terms of quantity, it wasnt the biggest, just around 120 or so IMO. However, most of them were pretty knowledgeble and had excellent communication skills. Also, most of them spoke in english which made my task of the understanding whats being said, much easier. The presentations were quite good as well, and most of them avoided the cheezy stupidity of clip-art and unnessery text which often plagues presentations in India. Many of them also showed live code examples, and I found quite refreshing.

Secondly, the infrastructure: The Technopark is Trivandrum is certainly one of the most beautifull business parks I've been to, and the conference hall there was quite nice as well. There were mics for everyone in the audience as well, so nobody in the audience had to shout to get their points or questions heard. Usually in other barcamps, people hesistate to ask questions for the same reason, especially females. The hall was air conditioned as well, which was a relief from the hot and humid weather outside, and the sound system was quite good as well, the voice of the speakers being audible throughout the auditorium, even at the back.

Thirdly, the enthusiasm: The geek community in Kerala is certanly alive and thriving. The enthusiasm I felt there was reminiscent to the not-too-recent barcamp in Kolkata which i had attended, which was the first to be held in that city. The guys really seemed excited to meet everyone else, many of whom they only knew through twitter and hadn't seen in real life.

Fourthly, it was all in one hall. We decided against seperate tracks, mainly because they werent as many people there to make one. However, this played out well for people like me, who like to keep track of all the talks, and hate missing out on some talks just because you're attending another. Having just one track gives a more close and intimate atmosphere, otherwise things seems a bit too spread out sometimes in barcamps here. However, the reality is, as an event grows, multiple tracks are a neccessity, but I like the fact that BCK5 didn't have it.

Fiftly, the talks itself: The day started out with a talk on the Keralite youth, and how a new attitude and greater encouragement is needed to spur the youth in Kerala to do something with their lives. The speaker butressed his point with a lot of stats, but did not provide the source of all the figures (I somehow forgot to ask him as well). The talk by Praseed on making a compiler in .Net was also quite awesome, though I reckon it went over the head of most people (at least the ones who were not so technical).

One more notable talk was by Binny VA, titled 'Development: What they don't teach you in college (everything important)'. I agreed with his basic premise that colleges don't teach a student anything really, if it comes to a normal web development job. However, I do disagree on a couple of points. First, like it or not, for many (not all) students in India, the first introduction to computers (even when they choose computer science as their major) is college. And for many, college provides them the first introduction to programming. Colleges also put young students in touch with other bright students, and together many of them help each other learn and implement some nice cool stuff.

Technically speaking, everything taught formally in college is from curriculla available in books, and as long as you read the proper books or sites on the net, you can gain similar knowledge, theoretically speaking. However, in reality, college is a time in which you are developing not just intellectually, but socially as well and IMO, its still a better idea for most people to stick through college than drop out and do a job straight-away. Having said that, Binny VA mentioned a whole lot of stuff that I wish college students knew before they start their first day at office.

I also spoke there. I spoke on HTML5, SVG and standards in general. The talk as well the swag I handed out, seemed to be well recieved I ended up having extended discussions even after my session ended.

There was one more gentleman, who was a farmer. He founded a site, in which through an iFrame, he linked to the publicly available stats of the Kerala governement. The interesting thing is, these stats, which were hidden somewhere where not a lot of poeple would see, shows a bunch of irregularities in the sale of rubber by the governement. The government then contacted him, and asked him to remove the iFrame, stating that their content is all rights reserved, and linking through the iFrame is not allowed. He asked us, whether this is correct. Sadly, I think the gentleman can't do much in this case. The content is all rights reserved by the Government of India. If they want (which they do) they can rightfully order him to remove the iFrame. However, he can take a snippet of the data and if he adds some analysis to it, and makes a review of it, then it maybe permissable under fair use (Just like snippets of paragraphs are sometimes included in book reviews).

BCK5 was a great event, and kudos to the organizers, especially Anand and Kenny.