Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Tuesday, Nov 25, 2003
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Tuesday, Nov 25, 2003 |
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Industry & Economy
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Education Centre of Excellence to network education Our Bureau
Thiruvananthapuram , Nov. 24 WITH the Kerala Education Grid spearheaded by the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management-Kerala (IIITM-K) becoming operational in the near future, Kerala will have one of the finest educational services-cum-network `test bed' for several educational applications and services. According to a spokesman of IIITM-K, it will be the first time in the country that such cooperative e-learning network will be in place across a large number of institutions and colleges in any State. The opening of the Sun Centre of Excellence at IIITM-K here on Wednesday is expected to strengthen R&D and services development in the areas of e-learning, knowledge management and effective applications of convergence over this network IIITM-K will be Sun's first Centre of Excellence in South Asia. Both parties had earlier entered into a memorandum of understanding for the installation of Sun server systems and software for the Kerala Education Grid Project. These systems are now under installation and would be soon commissioned at the IIITM-K, the College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram, the Cochin University of Science and Technology and the National Institute of Technology, Kozhikode. ERNET will help lay the Education Grid backbone network linking all the four institutions. The same network would be extended to the Kerala Agriculture University (KAU) to support the Virtual University for Agrarian Prosperity and the Telehealth Referral Centre at the Medical College Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram. In the next 18 months, the Kerala Education Grid plans to connect about 100 colleges over to the backbone network. To accommodate the traffic, the backbone network bandwidth would be made scalable from 2 Mbps initially and move up to 50 Mbps in stages as the traffic expands and the number of colleges connected increases. Sun Microsystems supports academic and not-for-profit institutions for the development of Sun Centres of Excellence (CoEs). This programme provides a formalised framework for partnership between Sun's Global Education and Research Group, the client institution, and additional partners. It is intended to drive the widespread use of Sun technologies by students, researchers and faculty to enhance business and technology relationships between the engaged partners and external partners and facilitate the adoption of Sun technologies in both academia and industry. Sun has stringent selection process in deciding the institutions where its CoEs will be set up. There are about 32 Sun CoEs in different leading institutions and universities worldwide. One major requirement is that the programmes at the CoE should be closely aligned with the vision and objectives of Sun's own. Sun Micro was attracted to IIITM-K because of its leadership role in conceptualising and launching specific community networking projects, its technology and business incubation model that promotes new companies. The institute has also conceptualised a unique police-community interaction portal for Thiruvananthapuram city and has pioneered enterprise applications integration and knowledge management for several leading institutions and organisations. The services of the Sun CoE will be available to any scholar or academician who is keen to learn and contribute to grid based applications and services. IIITM-K's own contributions are also made internationally visible through the Sun CoE programmes and support and collaborations with other Sun CoEs world over. "We expect to take the Education Grid one bit higher through the Sun CoE and move towards creating the Kerala Virtual Campus, under which any qualified resident may take courses of his/her choice from any of the institutions in online mode supplemented by on-campus practice and interaction sessions. This is a step towards building the knowledge society in the State", IITM-K the spokesman said.
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