OREANDA-NEWS. “The demand for good motivated teachers at the university level has gone up but the supply for it has gone down”, said Mr.A.S.Kolaskar, Consultant and Mentor of the Neotia University, Kolkata. He was speaking at the session on Internet 2025- its impact on Research and Higher Education, being conducted at the National Centre for Nanosciences and Nanotechnology at day three of the 102nd session of the Indian Science Congress, at University of Mumbai’s Kalina Campus here in Mumbai today.  

Kolaskar was speaking about the exponential growth of new knowledge, globalization of commerce and culture, lifelong educational needs of citizens in a knowledge-driven, global economy being challenges of our times in the arena of higher education. He presented Case Studies of Internet Impact on Research and Education, where he underlined that textbook structure hasn’t really changed as such. We need to bring about pedagogical changes where one is thinking about the job of the teacher as not a provider of information but as someone who can tell you how to learn. Assessing children should be driven not by examinations but by competency driven credentialing. Technology should be helped to grow both parts of the brain. Children should be evaluated differently and not examined so that a great future musician does not end up in an engineering college without his wish. He also added that there should be improved collaboration between researchers through next-gen high definition Skype or Telepresence for conferences. Stressing on affordable, inclusive access to higher education by all, he put forth that while combating existing severe faculty shortages, relying on experts globally is essential.

“Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) Multiplexing is a potential technology which requires new fibers and there is room for improvement in the current technology,” said Stephen Wolff, Principal Scientist from Washington, DC 200036, USA. He was speaking on The Internet, Reloaded.

Prof. Bharat Bhaskar from IIM Lucknow very confidently told that it was time to think of newer ways of folding the future in today. He was speaking on the Impact of Digital Technology on Society. Redundant IT plants bring overspending and inefficiency, said he. With digital camera countless sensors and IoT becomes reality. With improvement in technology, the big data and AI based analysis technique would probably be anticipating our every move! With wearable devices and augmented reality, early detection of disease risks would be possible and lifestyle and medication, gaming sectors would be benefited.

At a time when ‘selfies’ are a craze amongst the youngsters, Bijendra Nath Jain, Vice-Chancellor, BITS, Pilani spoke about e-attendance being a reality. By using selfies with smart devices and automated attendance in large classes, face recognition in cloud and analytics on recorded attendance, he transported the audience into a completely digitalized educational institution. With ERP system using PeopleSoft, multi-campus high-definition video conferencing has also been made possible. With changing technology trends in internet, speed, reach and security become prime areas of importance and change. With time, internet would achieve greater reach in developing and developed countries with wireless access beyond 3G, 4G or LTE. He also echoed the audience’s concern about greater access control and robust user authentication. He also spoke about ICTBioMed, a consortium built on foundation of domain knowledge, network and computing resources. The session also shed light on foreign institutes using Indian facilities for research and development, on the request of a member in the audience.