Manthan Awards recognise technology for the greater good
In its annual event Digital Empowerment Foundation facilitated innovation in the field of ICT. The Manthan Awards 2008, celebrated recently in the Indian capital, recognised contributions of 33 initiatives across diverse categories.
This was the first year that the Manthan awards, now in their fifth year, were extended to seven South Asian countries. The awards were supported by Mint and the government of India’s Centre for e-Governance.
Math becomes fun via satellite
Category: e-Content for Learning & Education
Winner: Centre for Child Development & Disabilities, Bangalore
Every morning, Sumana Sumuk walks into a room in Bangalore to teach mathematics to 420 children, none of whom are actually in the room. They’re in 14 schools across rural Karnataka, beamed into Sumuk’s classroom daily via satellite for 60 minutes, so that she can show them that math doesn’t have to be difficult, and that it’s no reason to leave school.
- The Manthan Awardees/ Photo credit: www.manthanawards.com
Two years ago, when Nandini Mundkur participated in a survey of Karnataka schools, she discovered that the dropout rate in rural areas was abnormally high: between 40% and 50%.
“The reason, we discovered, was that the students were just not able to deal with the maths lessons,” says Mundkur, the director of the Centre for Child Development and Disabilities.
When she mentioned her concerns at a dinner, she was taken aback when someone offered the satellite time. It was to be the start of a programme titled: Learning is Fun. Mundkur emphasizes that Sumuk’s lessons complement the school curriculum. “We want to make the learning process enjoyable, so that the kids aren’t daunted by the subject,” she says.
Sumuk recently conducted a World Cup of Book Cricket for her wards.Sumuk’s classroom consists of a video camera and a large screen with a view of one of her 14 classrooms. There is a “hand-raise” facility, so she can switch to that particular classroom.
“Just to start my day looking at these kids, all eager to learn something, is completely worth it,” says Sumuk.
Medical training from a box
Category: e-Content for Learning & Education
Winner: MEdRC EduTech, Hyderabad
On a television screen at the MEdRC stall at the Manthan conclave, a man is intently studying a bone, a femur, judging by its appearance. He rotates it meditatively this way and that, and then he turns to a detailed, three-dimensional schematic of the bone on his computer.
That schematic is one minuscule element of MEdRC’s hugely ambitious project—to digitise and virtually deliver the theory component of the entire Indian undergraduate medical curriculum.
“We found that medical lecturers spend 70% of their time just delivering the same didactic facts over and over,” says Neeraj Raj.
“By digitising these lectures, we can reverse the figures; students can now use that same 70% of their time to practise their skills.”
The digitised curriculum consists of detailed lectures by nationally known teachers, captured in video and accompanied by bright graphic models to illustrate the theory. “The advantage is that students can rewind these lectures, or return to them at any time to revise their studies,” says Dr Raj, the director of MEdRC. A pilot programme, at the NTR University of Health Sciences in Andhra Pradesh, is already under way.
The next step, however, is dauntingly large. By tying up with partners such as Cisco, Microsoft, Intel and BSNL, MEdRC wants to build Rs3 crore worth of infrastructure in every Indian medical college, a precursor to a broader delivery of its digital content.
“Per student, the cost of this will work out to Rs2 lakh, which is not significantly more than the total cost of a medical education,” says Dr Raj. “We want to deliver this content end-to-end: from our servers, on the BSNL backbone, to laptops provided by us to every student.”
