The rise of the cloud is more than just another platform shift that gets geeks excited. It will, undoubtedly, transform the information technology industry, but it will also profoundly change the way people work and companies operate.” —The Economist
The education sector is the second largest sector globally and Indian school system is the world’s largest school system with over 1.12 million schools. The development of the sector is key for economic growth and improvement in the standard of living.
According to the 2011 census, India’s literacy rate has reached 74 per cent, increasing by 9 per cent since 2001. But, what is important is the quality of this literacy. In 2009, 96 per cent of children in rural India, who were six years to 14 years old, were enrolled in schools — of these, 73 per cent were enrolled in government schools and 53 per cent could read class two texts. The government has allocated Rs 52,057 crore for the education sector in the Union budget for financial year 2011-2012, up by 24 per cent compared with the past financial year. Is this enough?
While such statistics paint an extremely positive picture of the Indian educational sector, the overall quality of education still remains an issue. There is a need for more effort on multiple fronts to enhance the quality of educational discourse, improve standardisation and increase the reach of vocational and other alternate education channels to all sections of society.
The challenges posed by the growing appetite for education requirements are immense. India will have about 45 million people in the age group of 18 years to 20 years by 2020. To train them, we need more than 20 million teachers. As per present trends, we will create only 20,000 teachers by 2020.
Traditional forms of technology in education pose a number of other key challen
ges. Cost of technology, both hardware and software, which are unaffordable for the masses; cost of maintenance of IT (information technology) setups; power shortage, particularly in the rural areas; and a lack of trained teachers — especially in IT awareness and knowledge are only some of the issues.
Cloud computing and related business models provide answers to many of the challenges faced by the Indian educational sector. IT in general has proven to be a catalyst in making the experience of learning more enjoyable and effective and cloud computing could provide answers to many of the challenges faced by the education sector in India. The cloud refers to wide-area networks, generally the internet, from which remote computing resources are shared. Google and others, already offer various productivity applications, and Microsoft has announced that it will offer Microsoft Office 2010 online next year. The cloud reduces costs and complexity and provides scalability.
The biggest advantage that the cloud brings is to reduce costs and improve efficiency. An institution can rely on the the ‘pay-as-you-go’ characteristic of the three pillars of cloud: IaaS, PaaS and Saas.
Ease of maintenance increases efficiency as the pain of maintaining the software is now shifted to the cloud services provider. Technical issues related to online portals for distance education programmes and online examinations are the responsibility of the cloud service provider.
One of the primary reasons for the high dropout rate in Indian schools is the insipid form of learning propagated by rote learning. Interactive applications delivered through the cloud can not only standardise teaching methods and content across schools, but also add richness and variety to the learning experience.
Teacher-training program
mes at remote locations or rural areas are often caught in a web of ignorance themselves. Cloud computing solutions can be used for teacher-training courses and rapidly train a larger number of teachers.
Many adults, deprived of minimum education at an early stage of life, are later reluctant to go to schools or do not have the time to do so. Cloud can help bring mass awareness among the rural population through interactive applications delivered using newer means of delivering education through mobile phones and televisions.
SciCloud is a project that is studying the scope of establishing private clouds at universities. With such networks, researchers can efficiently use the already existing resources in solving computationally-intensive scientific, mathematical, and academic problems. The project established a Eucalyptus-based private cloud and developed several customised images that can be used in solving problems from mobile web services, distributed computing to bio-informatics domains.
Online tutoring has become a source of employment in India. In the rural areas, where career choices are limited, cloud online tutoring can play a major role in helping a person earn his bread and butter. At peak times, online tutoring vendors like Tutor Vista’s teachers coach 2,500 American students in one to-one sessions
Opportunity is knocking and while there is no doubt that the private sector will seize it, the government has to form partnerships to enable India to utilise the full potential of cloud computing.
The education sector is the second largest sector globally and Indian school system is the world’s largest school system with over 1.12 million schools. The development of the sector is key for economic growth and improvement in the standard of living.
According to the 2011 census, India’s literacy rate has reached 74 per cent, increasing by 9 per cent since 2001. But, what is important is the quality of this literacy. In 2009, 96 per cent of children in rural India, who were six years to 14 years old, were enrolled in schools — of these, 73 per cent were enrolled in government schools and 53 per cent could read class two texts. The government has allocated Rs 52,057 crore for the education sector in the Union budget for financial year 2011-2012, up by 24 per cent compared with the past financial year. Is this enough?
While such statistics paint an extremely positive picture of the Indian educational sector, the overall quality of education still remains an issue. There is a need for more effort on multiple fronts to enhance the quality of educational discourse, improve standardisation and increase the reach of vocational and other alternate education channels to all sections of society.
The challenges posed by the growing appetite for education requirements are immense. India will have about 45 million people in the age group of 18 years to 20 years by 2020. To train them, we need more than 20 million teachers. As per present trends, we will create only 20,000 teachers by 2020.
Traditional forms of technology in education pose a number of other key challen
ges. Cost of technology, both hardware and software, which are unaffordable for the masses; cost of maintenance of IT (information technology) setups; power shortage, particularly in the rural areas; and a lack of trained teachers — especially in IT awareness and knowledge are only some of the issues.
Cloud computing and related business models provide answers to many of the challenges faced by the Indian educational sector. IT in general has proven to be a catalyst in making the experience of learning more enjoyable and effective and cloud computing could provide answers to many of the challenges faced by the education sector in India. The cloud refers to wide-area networks, generally the internet, from which remote computing resources are shared. Google and others, already offer various productivity applications, and Microsoft has announced that it will offer Microsoft Office 2010 online next year. The cloud reduces costs and complexity and provides scalability.
The biggest advantage that the cloud brings is to reduce costs and improve efficiency. An institution can rely on the the ‘pay-as-you-go’ characteristic of the three pillars of cloud: IaaS, PaaS and Saas.
Ease of maintenance increases efficiency as the pain of maintaining the software is now shifted to the cloud services provider. Technical issues related to online portals for distance education programmes and online examinations are the responsibility of the cloud service provider.
One of the primary reasons for the high dropout rate in Indian schools is the insipid form of learning propagated by rote learning. Interactive applications delivered through the cloud can not only standardise teaching methods and content across schools, but also add richness and variety to the learning experience.
Teacher-training program
mes at remote locations or rural areas are often caught in a web of ignorance themselves. Cloud computing solutions can be used for teacher-training courses and rapidly train a larger number of teachers.
Many adults, deprived of minimum education at an early stage of life, are later reluctant to go to schools or do not have the time to do so. Cloud can help bring mass awareness among the rural population through interactive applications delivered using newer means of delivering education through mobile phones and televisions.
SciCloud is a project that is studying the scope of establishing private clouds at universities. With such networks, researchers can efficiently use the already existing resources in solving computationally-intensive scientific, mathematical, and academic problems. The project established a Eucalyptus-based private cloud and developed several customised images that can be used in solving problems from mobile web services, distributed computing to bio-informatics domains.
Online tutoring has become a source of employment in India. In the rural areas, where career choices are limited, cloud online tutoring can play a major role in helping a person earn his bread and butter. At peak times, online tutoring vendors like Tutor Vista’s teachers coach 2,500 American students in one to-one sessions
Opportunity is knocking and while there is no doubt that the private sector will seize it, the government has to form partnerships to enable India to utilise the full potential of cloud computing.
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