• Lack of good teachers
• Very high teacher-student ratio
• Too much focus on just chalk-talk-and-exams
• One-way dissemination of data/knowledge rather than interactive problem solving

Following is a vision & plan to improve school education in TN but might be applicable with changes in other places as well.

There are  large changes happening in the Education scene (like other areas of life) in India – some key changes in 2010 here. One major change in TN in 2011 has of course been the new AIADMK State Government headed by Jayalalitha. The new government has proposed some major initiatives as part of their election manifesto and is seeking Central funds to implement the ideas. From an education standpoint, there are a few promised initiatives that the TN Govt seems keen on moving forward with:

• Free laptops for Senior School Students and Engineering Students
• Free Cable connections for the public
• Revamping “Samacheer Kalvi” with better books (post election promise)

But they don’t directly solve the problems stated in the beginning.

Meanwhile, the Internet, Smartphones & Tablets have been driving rapid innovation in education frameworks throughout the world, like:

• Next Generation Learning Project by Gates & HP Foundations has funded many interesting educational projects based on sound education research done by many organizations.
• The Khan Academy has shown how a single person can inspire new ways to learn online and now has a large library of free education videos.
• India’s National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) initiated by IIT & IISc has put together a large collection of college level educational videos.

But there are still many challenges in immediately making these online & computer-based initiatives available usable for school education in Tamil Nadu:

• Broadband Internet penetration is still less than 1% of population in TN, India
• Computer penetration is less than 5% of population

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/05/curated-computing-whats-next-for-devices-in-a-post-ipad-world.ars

“One month prior to the iPad’s launch, a Forrester survey of more than 4,500 US online consumers revealed the top features consumers said they wanted in their next PC purchase. Two-thirds of US online consumers want a DVD drive, but this feature, along with other most-wanted features like CD burners and webcams, are absent from the iPad. The iPad’s features, such as the touchscreen, are lower on consumers’ wish list, with only 22 percent desiring a touchscreen for their next PC.”

• iPad is cumbersome. Holding it in one hand & reading is guaranteed to cause pain. Typing on the iPad for any length of time is sure to aggravate your carpal-tunnel syndrome
• Viewing movies on iPad is far from satisfying.
• But it is good enough for consuming small amounts of data regularly. And the iPad is a very capable computing device powerful enough to do most common personal computing tasks – browsing, emails, videos, docs.

But we still dont understand how the human brain works.

Lately we have started understanding the fundamental biology, chemistry & function of the neuron (fundamental unit of the brain) much better than ever before.
         – We are able to map the complete neuron structures of small insects
         – We are able to tap into the ends of neurons, sense their signals (audio) and make them control machines (bionic hands)
         – For many decades now, we have used the “postulated” principles of the brain in Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms. We have even attempted to replicate the human brain as a software model for Machine Vision applications.

Now that we begin to understand the “real” function of the neurons and their connections, the question is:
       – Could we build a true software model of the human brain, provide it some “sensory input” and let it freely “think”
       – Not to solve a specific application. Not to control any robots. Not
       – But just to understand how our own brains “think”

Why would we want to do this? We’ll “know better” once we actually build it.

Recently there have been 3 big education policy changes that could have far-reaching (+ve or -ve) impact going forward:
       1) Right to Education (RTE)
                  – I was initially sceptical that this is one more “right” that might not get fulfilled. But on closer look some of the provisions might have a huge impact – like 25% reservation of seats in ALL private schools, definition of standards for 1:30 teacher:student ratios and the massive sums allocated for states to implement RTE.
       2) Foreign Universities Bill
                  – This is another controversial bill that allows universities from around the world to setup campuses in India. Ex: Virginia tech setting up campus in Chennai.
       3) Common Syllabus (New in Tamil Nadu)
                  – While this is only in TN, there are rumblings about a common syllabus throughout India. This kind of change can make it easy for the country to develop a common infrastructure to train teachers, to provide online educational resources for children, etc.

While we cannot immediately tell whether these large changes will be positive or negative, one thing is clear. The education scene in India will be quite different in the coming decades.

The software features will include:
      – Touchscreen capable OS like Android, iPhone, Symbian or Windows Mobile 7
      – Key features: Phone, Internet (HTML5 with Flash), Email, Media player, Camera
      – Support for 3rd party apps via app stores

Chips and development platforms with these features have already been available to OEMs from TI (Blaze MDP), ST-Ericsson (U8500) and others as of late 2009. Early products with these features will likely hit the market for 2010 Christmas sale or many products will be readily available in 2011.

Given these features, can these devices not serve as your Netbook or eBook reader if you had an external display & keyboard like this accessory?
When placed in a dock with a HDMI cable (and perhaps a USB HDD), can these devices not serve as your AppleTV, Roku Netflix streaming player or Boxee Box?

Wouldn’t this “smartphone” become your real “Personal Computer”? Why do you still need a Netbook or basic digital camera or digital media receiver?

Of course, you might still need a Mac and iTunes player to “sync” these devices to your PC.

We are now in March 2010 in the post-”Avatar” world. Above timeline is my prediction of a hype cycle for Digital 3D.

We are in the early part of the cycle:
- Avatar released in Dec 2009 has triggered a huge hype and interest in Digital 3D technology, though 3D itself has a long history.
- At this year’s January, 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), lots of companies (technology, entertainment) interested in establishing a new market have announced new products – though there is no accepted standard.
- New standards like HDMI 1.4a announced in March 2010 are critical foundations for real 3D products.
- Early applications like entertainment (movies – Avatar, Alice in Wonderland, ESPN sports) show a lot of promise.
- Early products are too expensive like this $21,000 3D camera.

In the next stage of this hype cycle, real products need to be available. They need to become affordable. Then they will be really adopted by larger number of people.

I for one, hope to see applications like 3D Tourism become popular. I would really like to see Live or Realtime 3D Two-way communication – almost like Teleportation.

Think about the Stock Market and see if the following Wikipedia description is a good match:

“Schizophrenia from the Greek roots skhizein (σχίζειν, “to split”) and phrēn, phren- (φρήν, φρεν-; “mind”) is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a neuropsychiatric and mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality. It most commonly manifests as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking with significant social or occupational dysfunction.”

Here is one good example of a “split mind”:
        – Wall Street loves layoffs done by most well-run companies. Ex: “Microsoft layoffs would be good for stock“
        – But, Wall Street wants to see unemployment rate decrease. Ex: “Job creation is fundamentally important“

How do you (“Wall Street”) expect the economy to improve and stocks to go up, if you want companies to layoff employees to increase profits?

As soon as the current recession started, lots of companies immediately started huge layoffs to make the stock market happy. And now the stock market wants Jobs to be created magically so that stocks will increase !

On a related note, I was impressed when the Indian Govt (then-FM Chidambaram and PM Manmohan Singh) requested the large companies to “keep your market share, keep your loyal workers with you and take a price cut” and to a large extent major Indian companies did their best. I was surprised Obama never made such an appeal to the US companies to avoid layoffs and is only fighting in the Congress/Senate on a Jobs bill.

But in a corporate environment (or personal use for techies), iPad could turn out to be a flexible Thin Client PC if there are good apps for the use case. There are already many VNC clients for iPhone which would probably get updated to iPad promptly. But an app that targets the corporate user with a virtualized desktop & storage on the server – intranet or public cloud – would make the iPad a really useful tool. It already has email, calendar, word, excel, powerpoint and can even support connection to projectors (with the awkward VGA connector). A well-integrated VNC or Citrix GoToMyPC app for the few custom corporate applications could nicely serve the corporate user. Webex already works for the iPhone and if the full features are supported for the iPad it could take care of meetings.

Now if only Apple could give me a nice iChat on iPad with front-camera – Jan 2011??

Update Feb 3, 2010:  Citrix and others are coming out with announcements related to this usemodel for iPhone and potentially for iPad. See this LinuxDevices.com article.

The number of people whose lives will be impacted – for better or for worse – is truly immense.

This got me thinking a lot about my own work and contribution towards the current Deciding Decade (2010 to 2020) for India as well as the broad developing world.

I plan on spending some of my time & energy on two key areas relating to this in the coming decade:
          – Improving School, University and Vocational education using technology
          – Encouraging educated youth involvement in Public service

More on specific ideas later…