Following are some suggestions for optimising the use of resources in the development of education:

¤ Sharing of resources among academic institutions to encourage research.

¤ Create a consortium of all academic institutions and provide electronic access to libraries.

¤ Share the lab infrastructure and resources for joint research.

¤ Share best practices on delivery, governance and administration.

¤ Promote larger classroom and smaller tutorial groups (these can be introduced through internet) helping and addressing large class sizes.

¤ There should be a separate mechanism for monitoring PPP in place, perhaps through an independent cell.

¤ Fundamental changes are needed in the education system across K-12 and university level education.

¤ Define quality of schools to ensure that schools are not rated on results alone. School leadership, teacher empowerment and parent participation should be part of quality assessment.

¤ Need to understand applications along with concept at school education level.

¤ Create awareness for giving importance to vocational training.

¤ Integrate technology and pedagogy to enhance quality and reach of education.

¤ Encourage life-long learners - suggestion to consider on-the-job PhDs based on work credit recognition and entrepreneurship.

¤ Build education cluster which offer research and development, collaboration between industry and educational institutions. Industry should have a wider perspective where it should help in honing the skills of students and not merely look at their own requirement.

¤ Look at global good practice where optimum utilisation of resources is practiced. For example, in Germany, there are seven technical universities each having about 20,000-30,000 students. The number is several times more than Indian universities. We need more students and fewer factulties by using advanced technology.

¤ Contest libraries to accomodate electronic mode of publications. A consortium of universities will be cost effective and increase the resource base.

¤ Evaluate teachers to attract the best talent and their continued professional development. Recognition and remuneration should be done by evaluating the way they teach. At times they become stagnant in their learning. External assessment will raise the bar on quality.

By Shruti Vandana

Thanks to its adaptability, such as language, IT is to be an intrinsic participant in India's growth story. For example, multilingual IT solutions can be devised for the agrarian population in rural India.
The total broadband subscriber base rose to 6.8 million in July 2009, us by 2.7 per cent. On the other hand, the number of fixed line and mobile connections crossed the 550-million mark with mobile subscriber alone 500 million, giving India a teledensity of 45 per cent.
At the same time internet has become the fastest growing medium in the media and entertainment industry, which has seen grown phenomenally in the last decade.
According to Indian Telecom Analysis (2008-12), the telecom sector in India will maintain its growth rate in future despite the global economic downturn. The growth will be driven by the expanding mobile subscriber base which has outperformed all other segments of the industry in terms of growth rate. The mobile subscriber base is projected to reach around 800 million users by 2014 and is forecast to grow at more than 15 per cent during 2009-13, propelled by low call rates, increased level of infrastructure and technological advancements.
As daily life gets more and more dependent on the speed and efficiency of the web - be it in social networking, business, accessing news and information, writing mails and communication, or even in managing one's finances - the need is for multiple-point accessibility that can be shared and recovered 24/7. Therefore, the need for cloud computing is felt all the more.
The speed that world wide web has to be matched with systems that not only match this feature but also allow portability.
It would not make much sense to have a desktop installed in a company, without its management having the ability to access its web-ability on the move. Space is at a premium and the need for its right use has never been felt before as in the post-meltdown times.
Therefore, notebooks, netbooks, nettops and MIDS are the need of the times, with their ability to converge voice and data for full-fledged computing.