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Is Microsoft bribing its way into the Indian Education System???

Hi!!!

This article was not written out of hatred for Microsoft but purely is analyzing the current state of IT education system that is carried out in India, and in Gujarat, a very wealthy state lying on the Western part of India.

I am linked to a company that works on Open Source technologies such as Drupal, RoR, PHP, Linux etc. We have been breathing opensource like anything... even all our computers run on Linux (Ubuntu) OS.



Recently, we started organizing some seminars in Colleges in order to make students aware of the latest in technology (Drupal, in this case, which won the 2008 Webware Awards). We found that students were very much interested in learning .Net, ASP.Net, C# etc. but not technologies such as PHP, Linux (I heard some people didnt even knew how to use Linux and others were asking what the abbreviation PHP was for).


Investigating the subject, I found that .Net/Microsoft technologies have been integrated in their curriculum and was a part of their courses. I also found that the Microsoft is seeped into the education system right from the point when "Computer course" is made a subject say Std. V.

I was puzzled as so whether Is this not a clear case of brain-wash where the students are only taught what others want them too. A student studying in Std. X doesnt even know that there is an alternative available (no matter the alternative is better or inferior) for Microsoft Office. Also we all try to log into Internet Explorer because we are taught about it and have molded ourselves with it, opening up multiple windows at a time, not knowning that a simple Ctrl+T (Tabbed browsing) can easily solve this simple problem.



So why is Microsoft so much imbibed into the whole IT education system in India. Is is really tough to learn parallel products as to what Microsoft is offering. Or for that matter is Microsoft really offering good products?

Let's look at a very simple example of Microsoft Word. A simple word file of 1 page could be of roughly 32 kb while the same file can easily be less then 9kb if made in a openoffice Word. Also it is much easier to carry on multiple tasks in a LINUX based or Ubuntu based PC's rather than Windows PC. (Aren't we so used to using Ctrl+Alt+Del while using Windows OS as if its part of the routine). I almost forgot that when I was using Ubuntu PC's.

When talking to some students who have studied both Open source and Proprietary (Basically Microsoft) technologies, they said how Open source technologies were not even considered in their curriculum. Students who wanted to learn this and were refrained from alleged that the reason for Microsoft being so much used into the curriculum is for a simple reason that Microsoft bribes key officials of the Education Department of Gujarat, and hence it is so much utilized into the current education system.

There is a team of renowned academicians who presides over a strong committee are asked to propose changes in the curricula which should be in line with the changing trends of the industry. Although many professors have always pushed open source because of its flexibility, due to certain "unknown reasons" it does not appear into the curriculum of the students.

When we talk of democracy/equal exposure to all, while is there a stepmotherly treatment to open source technology. Kids/students have been so much "Forced" to adopt/use Windows as if that is the only technology which is available. Windows has become synonymous to computer in India and i am sure it has been in most of the countries.

It's time we give out an even pitch to both open source and proprietary software to prove their worth. Democracy gives a right for every voter to know what a candidate of a party can do for him. Now its for the voter to decide which side should he go with.

Cheers!!!

~Rajat~

For a Good Cause...!

Hello Friends!!!

We all have our own aspirations, our apprehensions, thoughts, some of us believe that whatever we think we can definitely achieve it... and some of us... (like me...) wud let that thought go by thinking that "its just one of those days".

BTW how many of us actually have the guts to stand up for what we believe in... we fear... we would be ridiculed, laughed at, by society, by our family... but what if that thought is more powerful than all this... i would like to share some one incident with you all...

The other day i was going to some restaurant and a kid caught my eye... the kid was actually very simple... nothing new in it... only that she was lying on her mother's lap with his eyes stuck to the sky... her mother desperately trying to sell some balloons so that she can feed her baby... the kid unnerved from all this was keeping his eyes fixed....

A thought struck my mind... wht can that kid think of... we as kid wud think of going to school the other day... maybe getting holiday so we wud play all day with our kins... but wat abt tht kid...???

Can we change all this.. can we... with our limited knowledge and potential... can we give that kid a good education... knowledge doesnt have a patent and it doesnt even require any resource... only a tutor and a student.... can we do this...

Well most of us can... only thing is that we need to have the "DESIRE"... a desire to look beyond our own life... and think how many life can we affect by our actions... only for the good...

Hence a group of us have decided to bring this cause to task and create an NGO that can help destitute kids and children with limited means get education... this wud first b started off with a "community website" on the lines of "orkut" and then take the shape of a full blown organization in the days to come... our partners would be governmental agencies... our dream is to make these kids become the future...

Even a single kid getting full education and taking up a professional career through us would make our efforts a success!!!

I am not calling for any money or donation... there is plenty that we can contribute apart from money... and one of that thing is "Our Support to the Cause"

I sincerely hope that i have definitely struck a chord with all you people as far as this goes...

I dont know where this would take me or us... whether we would actually be able to make it on our own... or it would just die... as all our aspirations have... i believe that it does not take one person or a group to make it a success... but what i can do is stand for that thought....

Best,

Rajat

When is the Web 2.0 bubble going to burst???

People, mostly teens are now a days seen hanging out on one social networking site or the others, most of them are just plain crap but quite a few of them are still making the users spend most of their time playing around with their buddies or scrappin' them such as Facebook, Myspace and Orkut.

What we are witnessing here is a phenonmenon unknown for by us a few years back. Earlier websites were used as brochures providing a kind of communication that still was one way, from the company to the users. Then came websites giving email services where we can have interaction but limited to a larger extent.

What followed was websites using comments posting, blogging, feed aggregation etc. Thus came the buzzword, "Web 2.0" The word was born during a brainstorming session between Tim O'Reilly and Dale Doherty while assessing the dot com crash in 2001 found that it gave rise to a whole new generation of websites and thus Web 2.0 conference was born. (See http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html for reference)

Web 2.0 websites are basically dynamic websites as against static websites which merely serve as brochures for their companies. These new age websites will encourage more participation from user.



Now what could be the effects of these Web 2.0 enabled websites. As i already mentioned, one thing that these websites can do is bring in more users who can participate in a website. User participation would lead to knowledge sharing.

We already know that people have an innate desire to share knowledge. Every person has some capability or the other to comment, voice opinion or give suggestion over one topic or other. The point here is that these websites will force people to post their comments, voice their concerns on the general web space. We also know that whenever we are up for something be it a movie, clothing, accessories, mobile, doctor ... i mean anything ... we always ask for opinions... though we might not follow them.

This leads us to the topic of the next post i.e. "User Generated Content: Hits and Misses". Watch out for this space to know more about UGC and its applications.

So opinions is what people like to give and also take from others. There is a definite market for it and many people have built strong businesses over the internet just by sharing comments and postings of different users.

Web 2.0 with all its features of blogging, sharing content over the internet, syndication and aggregation has been just 4 years old. But how much long will it last. People say that it is here to stay while some consider it as a bubble waiting to be burst.

Although sites such as Myspace and Facebook, Delicious and Digg, are adding more and more users day by day, their irrelevance will only grow by time when people realize it.

Also there are companies which are trying to implement web 2.0 technologies into their website unknown of its effects. Web 2.0 features though encourage the free spirit also attract unwanted elements. If not properly edited people might find unwanted content lingering on their website only to be edited and thrown out. Any unwanted content for a short period of time on a website can do enormous damage.

Finally webspace is an ever-evolving entity where the obvious cycle is moving from web 2.0 to web 3.0, which will most probably cover the video content. It is still to be seen whether how many users hold on to the web 2.0 websites.

Why Sarrthi???

Obvious question is why at all "Sarrthi"... well to be true to myself... was fed up with all the names that i tried... anything that was close to what i thought was right was taken by somebody else...

After trying my luck for the nth time.. i finally gave up and asked Krsna to help me out... and bingo... got the word... Sarrthi... Well... Sarrthi.. comes from the epic... Mahabharata... in which the Lord Himself became a... Sarrthi.. or Charioteer for Arjuna... a great hero of that time... Lord Krsna, himself being a God and also the king of many states... became a simple charioteer just to show that God knows no boundaries to people whom he cares for...

This event also is significant from the fact that... Lord Krsna knew that Arjuna would be bewildered at the start of the War and would give up arms and come to Krsna for help... And Krsna truely delivers Arjuna and makes him realize the real goal of life... For if we whole heartedly surrender to Lord Krsna than Lord will himself deliver you from all the obstacles in life... And as they say... he will lead you from darkness to Light!!! ... just as a charioteer steers the chariot from difficult roads to the right path...

Well believe it or not, the "NAME" does have its relevance...

Rajat

My First Blog @ Blogger

Well technically speaking, this is actually my first blog at blogger, i did some blogging while at yahoo 360 but due to its awkward display and un-user friendly i became quite averse to blogging. I guess only blogger.com provides you that kind of clean and user-friendly experience that others havent.

So now, its 7.00 am precisely... I have been working from 5.00 am in the morning just to meed the deadline set by my boss... i am quite not an early riser and definitely not a hard worker... but sometimes situations demand so much that we need to make compromises... (compromising on sleeping is the toughest... i can bet you on that ;) ....

So what my blog would be about... well i sincerely dont know... havent figured out yet.. maybe I wanted to share information... anything from the latest technology to the current trends, from sports to internet... from web 2.0 to business plans... from education consultancy to IT...

Being a management graduate i have loads of information to share and more than that to gain... so if you guys did like this one... plz post me any damn question under the sun... and i would sincerely try to figure out the answer to it...

Rajat