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People

NIIT’s new math lab initiative

A number of supplementary maths education enterprises are revolutionising maths teaching-learning in schools across the country. Offering innovative, hands-on pedag-ogies, they are making this traditionally dreaded but at the same time exciting subject more acceptable to students.

A new entrant into the maths education segment is NIIT Ltd (estb. 1981), Asia’s premier IT training and talent development corporation which offers diverse learning solutions to 5 million students in 32 countries worldwide. On November 14 (Children’s Day) last year, in collaboration with the US-based Key Curriculum Press Inc (a leading provider of software research and development for mathematics education), NIIT launched its new Math Lab hardware-cum-software unit for schools through its School Learning Solutions (SLS) division. The NIIT Math Lab is designed to enable secondary students of classes VI-X to learn and explore mathematical theory and verify mathematical facts and theorems using the latest technology tools like the geometer sketchpad, besides learning through hands-on activities using a wide variety of mathematical models.

The impetus for the design and development of the NIIT Math Lab came from an announcement made by the Delhi-based National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT), which in its path-breaking National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2005, suggested that maths learning should be a prime focus area of secondary education until 2010 and recommended that maths pedagogies should be made more visually appealing and enjoyable for students. Accepting this recommendation, India’s largest national school examination board — the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) — directed all its 8,979 affiliated schools to install math labs and declared that 20 percent marks in the school-leaving (classes X and XII) exams will be allocated on the basis of lab work assessment.

"The CBSE directive inspired us to link up with Key Curriculum Press to design a model math lab suitable for secondary schools in India. The result is a state-of-the art lab with unique features such as computers and peripherals, teaching and learning aids, over 200 maths activities, videos, manipulative and measuring instruments, tables and charts. To familiarise teachers with the NIIT Math Lab, we employ 35 academic support executives. Priced at an affordable Rs.8 lakh per school, our math labs have already been ordered by eight prestigious schools and enquiries are multiplying daily," says L. Balasubramanian, president of NIIT’s SLS division. An applied sciences graduate of the Guindy College of Engineering, Chennai, Balasubramanian brought over three decades of IT experience including stints with the Indian Space Research Organisation and DCM Data Systems when he signed up with NIIT in 1988, where he has successfully led the company’s forays into education.

For students who despair of maths, NIIT Math Lab is good news. "We have brought excitement into the lives of maths teachers and students. The modular design concept of our math lab will enable us to add innovative features and activities to our next improved version which will be launched soon. Indian students have enjoyed a traditional edge in math subjects. Our labs will further stimulate young minds to improve their learning while enjoying the subject," says Balasubramanian.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

Exemplary educationist

With industry and business experiencing an unpreceden-ted shortage of adequately skilled professionals, technicians and workmen following incremental liberalisation and deregulation of the economy since 1991, there is growing awareness of a nexus between insufficient provision of foundational elementary and secondary education and poor shopfloor and workplace productivity of Indian industry. Consequently some perceptive leaders of industry — even in the SME (small and medium enterprises) sector — are beginning to invest money and time in providing quality education in the hitherto neglected hinterland of India.

A case in point is Adittya Mody (34) director of Eve Fabrics Pvt Ltd (estb. 1936), a low-profile Mumbai-based company engaged in the business of globally sourcing textiles for some of India’s top garment manufacturers including Raymond Ltd, Siyaram, Bombay Dyeing and Pantaloons among others. Even while attending to the business of Eve Fabrics which involves frequent travel in India and abroad, Mody devotes considerable time to three path-breaking primary-cum-secondary schools and two vocational institutes run by the Satyanarayan Sagarmal Mody Education Trust in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, his family hometown.

"The S.S. Mody Education Trust (estb. 2004) is named after my late grandfather Satyanarayan Mody (1925-2000), a successful entrepreneur who made his fortune in textile yarn manufacturing and trading in Mumbai. Yet he never forgot his hometown where he promoted three primary schools which currently have a total enrollment of 3,500 students from underprivileged backgrounds. Following in his footsteps, in 2001 my father Chandrakant promoted the S.S. Mody Vidya Vihar, a KG-class XII English medium CBSE-affiliated school which currently has an enrollment of 680 children. And following their able example, I promoted the S.S. Mody Cambridge International School in 2006 which offers the UK-based Cambridge International Examination board’s IGCSE curriculum," says Mody, a commerce graduate of Bombay University who began street marketing shampoos and popular magazines while still in college.

Despite relatively low tuition fees (Rs.8,000-11,000 per year in Vidya Vihar and Rs.40,000 in the international school), both institutions are well provided in terms of state-of-the-art laboratories manufactured by Godrej Interio and Waldner, Germany; a common well-equipped library boasting 16,000 books and 30 journal subscriptions; and spanking clean separate lavatories for boys and girls. Moreover several classrooms are equipped with electronic smart boards and most students speak fluent English — unexpected in small-town Rajasthan.

Fully persuaded that quality primary and secondary education for all is "an absolute necessity for national development", Mody is all set to promote "a world-class quality" kindergarten school as well as a B.Ed college in Jhunjhunu, which he is determined to transform into an education hub. "Longer term plans include the promotion of an undergraduate college which apart from the traditional arts, science and commerce degree programmes will also offer vocational training and skills enhancement courses for power and telecom technicians and retail personnel. A huge skills shortage is imminent in Indian industry. My mission is to set an example and prove this situation can be remedied," says Mody.

Wind in your sails!

Dilip Thakore (Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan)

Language(s) learning entrepreneur

Until recently learning a foreign language was regarded an accidental consequence of a liberal arts education or an intellectual undertaking to better understand the structure of English grammar and literature. It was generally assumed that anyone studying a foreign language as a major would become a teacher, interpreter, or language translator.

Following liberalisation and globalisation of the Indian economy in 1991, this scenario has changed and a growing number of youth are learning foreign languages to equip themselves for careers in international business and trade. To enable aspiring language learners to learn conveniently from their homes, several distance learning websites have sprouted on the wonder medium that is the internet.

One such website is the US-based Livemocha.com (estb. 2007), which offers free of charge online tuition in French, English, Spanish, Mandarin and Hindi. "I visualised a huge latent need in people all over the world to learn foreign languages to be able to better interact with people abroad during their work and leisure travel," says Shirish Nadkarni, the Seattle-based chief executive and co-founder of Livemocha Inc, who visited Bangalore recently.

Promoted in September last year with venture capital from Maveron — a leading Seattle-based venture fund firm — Livemocha.com has already registered 300,000 learners from over 200 countries around the world. "So far we have not focused on monetising our 300,000 user base but will start doing so in the next few months. We will begin the process with offering online advertising once we have achieved sufficient scale to attract high profile advertisers. On the subscription front we will start charging for more advanced content such as our TOEFL test prep papers. Eventually we will charge a fee to students for online tutoring," says Nadkarni who dropped out of IIT-Bombay in 1981 to study engineering at the University of Michigan and pressed on to acquire an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Livemocha is hardly Nadkarni’s first entrepreneurial venture. In 1999 he promoted TeamOn Systems, a company which developed the wireless e-mail platform used in the BlackBerry internet e-mail service. In 2002 Research in Motion acquired TeamOn with Nadkarni continuing to serve in an executive management capacity. In 2006 he quit to concentrate his energies on launching Livemocha. "Howard Schultz the founder of Maveron and CEO of Starbucks suggested the name Livemocha (‘live coffee’) to give the site a warm coffee shop ambience," says Nadkarni a language afficionado fluent in English, Hindi, Konkani, Bengali, Marathi and Sanskrit and currently learning Spanish.

Given the enthusiastic response Livemocha has elicited from aspiring language learners worldwide within six months of its launch, Nadkarni has ambitious plans to expand the website’s repertoire of languages. "We plan to introduce Portuguese, Japanese, Korean and Russian language learning and to increase instructional time per language from the current 160 to 400 hours. With millions of people wanting to learn new languages for business and pleasure, we expect Livemocha to double its user base by the end of this year," says Nadkarni optimistically.

Mekhala Roy (Bangalore)

Model care giver

Her mission is to infuse the lives of special (i.e challenged, handicapped) people with hope and laughter. Mamta Gupta, superintendent of the Cheshire Home for the Mentally and Physically Challenged, Dehradun, has been unwaveringly pursuing this mission for the past 15 years! The home has a staff of 28 including four vocational teachers who teach the 46 inmates skills such as embroidery, knitting, making candles, artificial flowers and folders. The home runs under the auspices of the London-based Cheshire Home Trust (estd. 1956) which has established 300 such homes for special people worldwide.

"I realised how difficult it is for challenged children to receive education in mainstream schools following the birth of my visually challenged son in 1988. I had to struggle to get him admitted in a regular school and college. Even though three out of ten children in India are disabled, they are totally marginalised by mainstream education and society. Therefore when I saw an ad in our local newspaper soliciting teachers for Cheshire Home, I took it as a signal opportunity to help the differently abled realise their true potential. I was initially hired as a teacher but within a month I was promoted to the post of superintendent," says Gupta, a home science graduate of Mahadevi Kanya Pathshala with a Master’s in drawing and painting from Dayanand Anglo Vedic College, Dehradun, who signed up with Cheshire Home in 1993.

Since taking charge, Gupta has initiated several innovative measures for the welfare of her wards. Among them: a special cell to help severely disabled students learn vocational trades and promotion of an Early Intervention Centre to train parents to conduct simple physiotherapy exercises to help their children cope with everyday tasks. "Cheshire Home provides for all the board and lodging needs of its 46 inmates. Moreover about 20 disabled children who live in nearby slums attend half-day school with us. Recently we have introduced a programme under which our therapists visit severely physically challenged children who are unable to come to school," says Gupta who never misses an opportunity to urge philanthropists and local businessmen to come forward and help.

Following her natural instinct of care and commitment, Gupta plans to start a not-for-profit dairy farm to provide employment to the disabled and open a respite care home to take care of disabled children in the absence of their parents.

A model of what one person can do to brighten and make a difference in the lives of others.

Natasha Pathak (Dehradun)

Enterprising professor

Assessing and selecting excellent published works and making them available to the public (for a modest fee) at the click of a mouse, is the extra-curricular activity of Dr. Ramakrishna Ramaswamy, professor of physical sciences at Delhi’s showpiece Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), since 2005. Quite impressively, the venture notched up a revenue of Rs.10 lakh last year. An alumnus of the blue chip Princeton University and IIT-Kanpur, and teaching at JNU since 1990, Ramaswamy had the foresight to visualise an Indian version of the American Amazon.com. Thus was born www.schorlarswithoutborders.in.

"Initially publishers/distributors were wary of funding this project. So with the help of students, I set up an internet site and began listing academic books, journals, documentaries and downloadable digital material. Starting with offering what I considered a popular medium i.e the internet, I focused on text books for college and university students. We soon had orders flowing in from customers in India and abroad," recalls Ramaswamy, who by virtue of an army background is familiar with the hardships of students from small town, remote areas.

The myopic trader mindset of bookshop owners puts off publishers, thus depriving readers. According to Ramaswamy this problem is acute in the distant north-east, Jammu and Kashmir and other smaller states. "On the other hand, there are small and medium publishers around the country who publish good books but cannot distribute them. So we provided a platform and gave them exposure to eager students. This business will grow further as we’re getting excellent response from all over the country," he says.

Defending his decision to commercialise the enterprise, Ramaswamy says: "People must be made aware that writing and publishing comes at a price which they must be ready to pay. This is the culture we need to create for encouraging good authors and publishers." Impressed, the Ford Foundation has begun extending its support to enable wider access to scholarswithoutborders.com.

Meanwhile even as students in India have begun benefiting from this initiative, scholars and academics abroad are also regular visitors to the site. "There’s a lot of good work being done in India in the fields of gender, Dalit and Gandhian studies, which is of interest to researchers and students abroad," says Ramaswamy who plans to include inventories of documentary films, which have been denied to the masses of India, in his pioneering website.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)