A CLOUDBURST IN THE CLASSROOM:  Omnipresence of telecom

Cloud computing apart from being proving to be cost-effective & essential to store & recover big data in today’s large scale data environment has the potential of completely changing the education system of India.

The average pupil-teacher ratio according to All India Student Education Survey is healthy 31.But this figure can easily go up to one teacher per 120 and in worst cases 600 pupils considering the fact that many of them teaches multiple subjects. Even then many of the teachers add to the no’s but don’t add value to the education system. Looking at another surprising fact that more than 3, 50,000 engineering teachers are needed to cater some 4 million students in the field. That is where cloud technology can be used to augment the system.

The bright side

Cloud not only lowers costs, but provides a degree of scalability and keeps complexity in central location. Based on this technology Cisco has developed an integrated hardware. Software loud solution for education labeled Dwara which costs only 1$ per month over 3 yrs. It lets teachers in a central location interact and share content with students in multiple locations in real time .It has everything a classroom needs – router, computer, projector, cameras speakers, microphones, and even power management. By using it teachers can interact with their teachers all over the world and most importantly to those places where facilities of high quality education are not available , hence students from remotest of places can avail education facilities without having to move from their houses and going anywhere all they need is a single internet connection. The real benefit of cloud classroom is that it enables students to go back to the content whenever they want .The problem with live classrooms is that you cannot pause,rewind and forward so students might miss some important parts if connectivity is not there or if they are not to concentrate throughout the duration of class, but all these things can be done in cloud classroom.

The dark side

 But it is not totally a rosy picture, as the technology’s implementation has been hampered by cost of implementation which is on the higher side and also by poor last mile connectivity. With India’s internet penetration still as low as 8% which is mostly limited to India’s urban area, there is a big question mark that this technology will be able to reach those areas where it is required most i.e. rural and remote areas. Hence its adoption is expected to pick up once last mile connectivity is improved. But still there is a silver lining considering that karnataka goverment. has already implemented it in a handful of rural schools and to train teachers in some districts. GateForum also use cloud to help final year engineering students in small cities like Agra to prepare for annual graduate aptitude test in engineering. But the largest on ground implementation is NIIT’s cloud campus which now has availed this technology in its 150 centers worldwide

Aditya Yerunkar

Class of 2015