Tux Math… with Aren (5) and Riza (9)

Out there, a set of committed software coders are creating games and tools for young minds. So are our kids taking to them? You bet… hear the story from two kids in whose home FN lives at Goa, India.

Classmate PC…

Intel’s lower-cost computer for kids.

Taking FLOSS to the classroom, industry-style

Confederation of Indian Industry initiative Shiksha India helps promote use of technology for making teaching-learning more effective. Focus areas are content and coaching. Gurgaon-based project manager Narinder Bhatia narinder.bhatia at ciionline.org explains what the emphasis is on.

EDC, the Education Development Centre

Victor Paul, PhD, the country director of the Educational Development Centre at Bangalore-India http://www.edc.org explains what is the agenda of this organisation promoting, among other things, educational software in schools.

Quest Alliance: promising quality education, skills training

The Quality Education and Skills Training Alliance (QUEST) is a partnership of public, private and NGO. Aakash Sethi who leads this Bangalore-based organisation explains what its priorities are. Quest partners include a number of big names include Microsoft Corporation, Azim Premji Foundation, Byrraju Foundation, Education Development Center, G E Foundation, One World South Asia, Pratham, USAID, WIPRO Technologies, etc.

Video + school = videoshala

When video starts being educational in parts of Gujarat (western India), it gets called videoshala. Shala is the world for school. Deepika explains the concept behind VideoShala.

Thanks you, Mr Premji

Indian software czar Azim Premji has diverted some of his (and his team’s) energies into creating “not for sale” educational resources for children. As one goes about telling others about the potential of the software from azimpremjifoundation.org, five-year-old Aren is a willing accomplice in making the point. It’s fun to use (and, at zero-price, easy to access). Wish more could use it! But it really needs to reach schools catering to the under-priviledged, so that the social role of such software could be met.

FLOSS … and computer usage in education

“Open Source and education has a lot of mindshare match,”: says Dr. M Sasikumar, Principal Research Scientist and Incharge of the R&D Unit at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) in Navi Mumbai. An interview with a passionate supporter of FLOSS in education.

Thanks you, Mr Premji

Indian software czar Azim Premji has diverted some of his (and his team’s) energies into creating “not for sale” educational resources for children. As one goes about telling others about the potential of the software from azimpremjifoundation.org, five-year-old Aren is a willing accomplice in making the point. It’s fun to use (and, at zero-price, easy to access). Wish more could use it! But it really needs to reach schools catering to the under-priviledged, so that the social role of such software could be met.

Images from a symposium

Some images from the ET Symposium, a meet on educational technologies, held in Bangalore in end-August 2008. Doesn’t claim to be a complete report by any stretch of imagination. See http://www.questalliance.net

IITians attempt to teach (tiny kids, in FLOSS)

An interesting experiment to teach schoolkids about the power of Free/Libre and Open Source Software. An interview with Dr Farida Umrani. Umrani is Research Associate
at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay Powai, Mumbai – 400076 Maharashtra
Cell no. 9323267196 She has been working with Prof. Sridhar Iyer at Dept of Computer Science, IIT Bombay on content development for school computer science based on Edubuntu.

Learning, teaching, learning… Free Software

At the August 2008 GNU/LUG (GNU/Linux Users’ Group) meet in Miramar, Goa, participants share knowledge and ideas about Stellarium, the astronomical free software product. An example of how teaching and learning, and the sharing of useful knowledge, happens at a Free/Libre and Open Source Software network. Check it out.