India: ‘Dhandho’ To ‘Venture’

‘Entrepreneur’ is a person who makes money by starting or running businesses, especially when this involves taking financial risks. And when it comes to taking risk in terms of our daily routine life then the mindset of majority of the Indian communities makes you little cautious apart from few Indian communities who have been doing business for multiple generations as its “dhandha” or “dhandho” the way we call it in Konkani which is not worth taking the risk compared to “Service” and this has been for generations. So you could figure out from the names like Tata’s, Birla’s or some of the surnames in Goa like Salgaokers, Dempo that they are or were in business.

 

Why do you think business families or some of the business communities were/are able to hold onto their business for 3rd or 4th generation? The sole reason is the sustainable ecosystem that they made which met the requirements of traditional business. The people from the non-business communities lacked this along with the mindset which caused a huge gap in terms of innovation as the majority of our population were dependent on few Business houses who in turn ran the country.

However with the introduction of Professional technical courses in India, it shadowed the usual mindset and got some tech savvy people in the business fold. In all it was Information Technology which led the upcoming surge by parting with old ways of heavy manufacturing to online based rapid changing technology. One such company which is worth multiple billion dollars now is “Infosys” founded by Narayan Murthy in 1981 who was described as “Father of IT Sector” by TIME.

Professional education flourishing and the demand for technology driven services from the western world brought many laurels to India. As the Indian mindset towards the business slowly started being positive the ecosystem started becoming the bottleneck which was addressed in due course with E-cells in colleges and now the Incubation Centres which are supported and backed even by Government and philanthropists.

There are many support schemes which the Government of India has come up with, like “Startup India”, “Standup India”, innovation centres, roadshows, conferences, incubators for the support of innovation in young buds. Showcase your Ideas with Proof of Concept or small viable product which exposes Angel funding, Venture capitals which you can lay your back on with respect to financials (same was not the case with Narayan Murthy back then who started with Rs.10000). The Government of Goa is also sponsoring Rs.10 Lakhs for the startups in Goa. Strong foundation of  ecosystem with government driven initiatives for the ideas of Innovation, Its the time for the younger generation to drive the next phase of entrepreneurship leading India competing with the world as even the Indians are referring to business with a new modern name  “Venture” rather than “dhandho” or “dhandha”.

 

 

Compiled By:

 Mr. Shreeyank Jambhale

Asst. Prof. ETC Dept

Mind the Gap

There are many gaps in our individual and social life, such as the generation gap, the credibility gap between leaders and followers in all walks of life, the micro gap between our inhalation and exhalation, regarding which there are principles and books like “Mind the Gap”.

The gap that is actually of more concern is the gap between the formal education imparted in the institution from KG to PG and the actual world of work! A graduate in any faculty literally knows nothing about the atmosphere, human relations, work culture, job expectations, etc. as a result of which he gets badly exposed not only at the interview, but also when he starts his job.

It has been the experience of battalions of novices and apprentices in technical education that they get completely lost in labyrinth of problems, just as Abhimanyu of Mahabharata was caught in Chakravyuha. They have studied the structures and functions of machines in textbooks or college labs or workshops. But the industrial atmosphere of work involving so many machines, softwares, different mechanisms, several instructions and above all the uniformed workers literally stun the new entrants . These proud products of educational institutions are completely at a loss to know what is happening around them. At the same time a minimum of training required for the industry is given in a month or so and the employee is adequately fit for smooth functioning of the firm.

What are the means of improving this sorry situation? How to mind the gap?

  • First and foremost is bridging this gap between formal education and day to day tasks in industries. In simple words, the eligible candidates (with fairly impressive CV) should be   made employable. For this, internship period during academics should be made longer.
  •  To make studies worthwhile from industrial point of view, subject specialization could start from the start of the semester itself.
  • A novel idea of sandwich courses could be effective in this case. Many new industries or startups are coming up. When added to already existing industries they offer
    abundant scope for starting such courses under the joint auspices of colleges and universities wherein students can be given education in college followed by  actual field work and    work experience.

In short, this technical educational institutes should approach industries of all types and in return industries should come down to colleges for fulfilling their requirements by training young candidates for their general and specific requirements.
As it is said, the walls between town and gown should crumble down; similarly we can say the gap between the ivory tower (universities) and industrial gear should be mixed at the earliest. This is not a pipe dream but a practical and practicable vision!

-Miss. Shreyas Gawde (Asst. Prof, ETC department , SRIEIT Shiroda)

Moodle for Educators and Learners

Moodle stands for “Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment.” It provides custom learning environments for educators and students. Moodle is also known as a  Learning Management System (LMS) or Content Management System (CMS) or sometimes Course Management System (CMS). These are all just fancy names but what is really important is the Moodle can help you to improve online instructional practices or online classes.

Moodle was originally developed by Martin Dougiamas. The goal was to help individuals and organizations to share resources for a group of intends with full management power on the resources shared. Today, the Moodle Project is led and coordinated by Moodle HQ. Moodle HQ is an Australian company with total of 50 developers and they are financially supported by a network of 84 Moodle Partner companies worldwide. Open-source programmers also assist moodle development.

The objective of the draft is to understand very basics of Moodle. We will understand what a Moodle is, exploring the features and visualize Moodle’s place in the universe for educators and learners.

 

Deployment of Moodle:

Moodle is available free at cost. You need to download it and install on a web server, such as Apache HTTP Server. It also requires a database management system such as PostgreSQL.

There are many Certified Moodle Partners who provides various moodle services, such as hosting, training, customization and content development. Moodle can smoothly run on any Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, Unix, NetWare and any other systems that supports database and PHP.

 

How Moodle helps Educators and Learners         

Trusted worldwide

Moodle is trusted by wide number of institutions and organizations, such as London School of Economics, State University of New York, Microsoft and the Open University. It is the world’s most widely used learning platform. About 90 million users are using moodle world wide, which gives a huge trust support to Educators.

Designed to support both teaching and learning

The moodle has introduced fully managed online classrooms. Online Classroom is a place on internet where you can do most of the activities may occur in classroom otherwise. Moodle provides a protected place where students can access resources safely and efficiently. It’s appears to be an interactive duration with students and teachers. Educational resources can be uploaded using a simple interface that allows drag-and-drop features. To help this it has published a  well-documented resources along with ongoing usability improvements which makes Moodle easy to learn and use.

Moodle in your language

Moodle community has successfully translated moodle in more than 120 languages. Plenty of resources are made available to easily localize the moodle site in various languages. A high end community discussion is available for different language.

All-in-one learning platform

Moodle provides flexible tool set for learning and online courses. It easily integrate everything needed for a course using its complete range of built-in features, including external collaborative tools such as forumswikischats and blogs.

Customosable

Moodle can be tailored based on individual needs. It support plugins according to the functionality need of moodle for a particular online task.

Scalablility

Moodle features can be utilized for fe students as well as millions of students across the globe. Because of this feature it is been adopted in  education, business, non-profit, government, and community contexts. It is the globally learning platform.

Isolation and Privacy

The moodle community constantly work to provide updated security to the data and user privacy.

The security module is constanly developed in the software development phases keeping the software intact with security techniques and implementation of it. That is how moodle can be completely implemented on private secure cloud.

Mobile access, anywere, any time

Since moodle is web-based, any device with cross platform compatibility with correct user credentials can access the resources from anywhere.  It will work seamlessly on any compatible web browser irrespective of location.

Abundant resources available

A lot many plugins are shared all over the globe. These plugins are freely used by any one having moodle installed. Based on the individual functionality requirement they can directly use these plugins, write their own plugins and contribute as a moodle community uploading new plugins.

Strong  community support

Moddle project is supported by a team of dedicated developers, international community a network of a certified moodle partners

Come moodle with us in the community forums!

Hence, Moodle is provided freely for both commercial and non-commercial projects without any licensing fees and benefit from the cost-efficiencies, flexibility and other advantages of using Moodle. Moodle is a fantastic solution when applied to the correct requirement.

Moodle is a fully managed system for learners right from creation of lessons, management of courses to the evaluation and storing records of course proceedings. It provides virtual interactive session between teachers and students. A wide variety of features are supported for students where they can review the class calendar, submit assignments, take quizzes, and interact with their classmates.

And to keep the services up to date, Moodle is continually being reviewed and improved on to suit the current and evolving needs of its users.

Compiled By:

Ms. Deepmala Kale

5G

After 1G, 2G3G and 4G LTE now comes 5G. 5G is the 5th generation mobile network. It will take a much larger role than previous generations. 5G will be based upon the combination of the existing wireless technologies like GSM, Wi-Fi, LTE etc and the new radio access technologies.5G will elevate the mobile network to not only interconnect people, but also interconnect and control machines, objects, and devices. It will deliver new levels of performance and efficiency that will empower new user experiences and connect new industries.

5G is a new kind of network: a platform for innovations that will not only enhances today’s mobile broadband services, but will also expand mobile networks to support a vast diversity of devices and services and connect new industries with improved performance, efficiency, and cost. 5G will redefine a broad range of industries with connected services from retail to education, transportation to entertainment, and everything in between. 5G will be seen as a technology transformative as the automobile and electricity.

5G is the next-generation mobile technology defined by 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) – the standard body that also overlooked the development of 3G UMTS (including HSPA) and 4G LTE standards. Wi-Fi is defined/standardized by IEEE and promoted/certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance, not 3GPP. A 5G user will be able to seamlessly use 5G, 4G, and Wi-Fi since 5G will interwork both with 4G and Wi-Fi, allowing a user to simultaneously be connected to 5G New Radio (NR), LTE or Wi-Fi. Similar to Wi-Fi, 5G NR will also be designed for unlicensed spectrum without requiring access to licensed spectrum, which allows more entities to deploy 5G and enjoy the benefits of 5G technology

 

5G doesn’t have a price tag yet. A key 5G objective is to lower the cost-per-bit (data cost) compared to 4G LTE, by leveraging new and wider spectrum in higher bands including the mmWave range. This could potentially allow mobile operators to continue offer unlimited data plans even with increasing data consumption. This can also enable new use cases and make more applications economically viable for broader adoption in a 5G network. For example, 5G can help to proliferate immersive augmented and virtual reality, which is possible today with 4G LTE but may be limited by network capacity and data costs.

5G will be significantly faster than 4G, delivering up to 20 Gigabits-per-second peak data rates and 100+ Megabits-per-second average data rates. 5G will support a 100x increase in traffic capacity and network efficiency. 5G technology will come up with advanced functionalities as compared to 4G. As we know the data bandwidth in 4G is 2Mbps to 1Gbps, 5G network will allow greater bandwidth i.e higher than 1Gbps. The frequency band will also be very high as compared to 4G.

As 4G uses technologies like seamless integration of broadband LANWANMAN  , unified IP etc 5G network will use these technologies with advanced ones based on OFDM modulation. It will follow CDMA and BDMA standards. It will allow dynamic information access, HD streaming and will work on-demand.

There will be many more changes which will evolve when 5G Technology will come into existence.

….Written by  Mrs. Nilam Shetye