Baramati: An oasis for networking

Introduction
Baramati Conference 2005 is the fifth annual conference on ‘ICT and Development’, organised as part of an unique ICT programme called ‘Baramati Initiative’, conceived by Vidya Prathisthan’s Institute for Information and Technology (VIIT) and implemented in rural region of Baramati – roughly 100 Kms from Pune (an industrial and educational hub) and approximately 200 Kms from Mumbai, the capital city of the state of Maharashtra, India. The initiative began with its opening conference in 2001 and over five years it has established itself as a networking platform for people, institutions and organisations across the world to showcase and share knowledge in the field of ICT for development. This time the conference was co-organised by VIIT (www.viitindia.org) and Grameen Foundation, USA (www.gfusa.org).

Conference theme
This year Baramati conference chose to focus on ‘e-Education’. The conference tagged itself with the statement – ‘Delivering Opportunity: Education, technology, and development’. All over the globe and particularly among developing nations, education has been identified as the single largest impacting factor for catalysing development of underprivileged communities. Undoubtedly, recent progress in information and communication technologies is increasingly providing easy and economical means for reaching out to those who were alienated from ICT advantage. Thus, the conference theme aptly fits into the need-of-the-day, providing an ideal setting for people working in this field to maximise each other’s potential for achieving the common goal of leveraging universal education through ICT application.

Delegation
The conference witnessed cross-sectoral representation of delegates spanning government, corporates, research institutes and civil society organisations, both from within and outside India. Leaders of corporate IT giants, policy makers from the government and representatives of various national and international non-governmental organisations equally shared the platform to discuss their views on innovative ICT application in formal and informal education, as well as, brainstorm issues which are emerging as challenge to the current developmental process.

Day 1 - Welcome address
The conference began on the evening of 3rd March, in the main auditorium of the sprawling VIIT campus. Welcome address by Alex Counts - CEO and President of Grameen Foundation, USA (co-organiser of the event) touched upon the need to proliferate ICT usage for leveraging the socio-economic conditions of poor and underprivileged societies. Highlighted the efforts of his organisation in delivering high quality education through various ICT platforms. He urged the gathering to take up initiative that can effectively bring out potentials of modern ICT in bringing social and economic equity through education. This was followed by a speech by Sharad Kulkarni – Chairman, Governing Council, VIIT, who gave a brief preview of the association of his institute with Grameen Foundation, USA, in organising the Baramati conference and conducting a number of rural ICT projects in and around the region with assistance from national and international funders. The last speech of the welcome ceremony delivered by Paul Maritz - former Group VP, Microsoft, emphasised on the potential of e-Education in bridging the digital divide and stressed the need of leaders in helping underserved communities to gain access to technology aided education. The session concluded over a sumptuous dinner at lawns adjacent to the conference venue, providing quality-networking time for the participants.

Day II - Opening remarks
The second day began with an opening remark by Guest of Hounor, Dayanidhi Maran – Union Minister of Telecom & IT, Government of India. Deliberations of Maran categorically highlighted government initiatives in propagating education through modern ICTs. “ICT as a catalyst for development is a focus


bringing education to all”…explained Maran. He specifically talked about the huge potential that ICTs offer, in the field of remote learning and distance education. He expressed his hope in making knowledge and education to reach all parts of the country with cost-efficient solutions that ICTs offer. He also mentioned the special efforts put in by his ministry in formulating policies that would enhance ICT penetration in both government and public domain and make it more viable for use by the general mass.

Keynote address
The keynote address was given by Ravi Venkatesan – CEO, Microsoft India. He came up with intriguing facts, figures and insight about current conditions of Indian IT education and reminded us of the long way that we need to traverse before common people can start reaping the benefits of IT. He was specially apprehensive about the dismal state of current school-level IT education and urged the government to step up efforts for making basic IT facilities available for all. In this context, he brought forth some of the unique endeavours of Microsoft Corporation, in spearheading IT and IT-enabled education in India. He mentioned Microsoft projects like ‘Shiksha’ and ‘Unlimited Potential’ – which aims to provide basic IT skills to teachers and students across the country and about ‘Project Bhasha’ - for providing Microsoft Office applications in 14 different Indian languages, at 25-30% discounted rates (compared to English versions) for educational purposes. He concluded his speech by expressing his keen interest to collaborate with state governments, industry consortiums and NGOs for catering a larger section of the society.

Inauguration and exhibition
Just before lunch, Sharad Pawar, Union Minister of Agriculture, Government of India, along with Dayanidhi Maran, inaugurated the exhibition arena. Delegates met the exhibitors to learn about the projects, products and programmes that were on display. Although the exhibition was a small one, yet it showcased some of the most pioneering applications of ICT in various forms of education. Educational ICT products like that of ‘K-Yan’ of IL&FS Educational and Technology Services Ltd (a compact and portable PC-cum-Projector device with wireless mouse and keyboard and 60GB of memory) and that of innovative educational software for visually impaired by Enabling Dimensions (India) Pvt. Ltd. shared the space with ICT Project exhibitors like Tata Consultancy Services Pvt. Ltd. - with their ICT-based Land Information System project and Centre for Science Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) - with it’s ‘Mapping-the-Neighbourhood’ project, showcasing school-based Geo-ICT application for local development.

Panel I: Education content: Launching schools into the 21st century
The first panel discussion of the day focusing on the issue of educational content for school based IT-enabled learning had an impressive delegate group on the dais. Participants included Dileep Ranjekar - Azim Premji Foundation, Amol Goje - Principal, VIIT, Rukmini Banerji – Pratham, Neelambari Rao - Sujaya Foundation and Srimati Prasad - America India Foundation. The session repeatedly highlighted the need for creation and delivery of rich educational contents, which can be effectively used in curriculum centric IT-enabled school learning. Almost all the speakers were critical about the insufficiency in supply of curriculum relevant content and stressed upon the pivotal role of content in making any ICT programme successful. Some innovative school based projects, like that of Azim Premji Foundation and America India Foundation made for a good hearing.

Panel II: Establishing the course for life long knowledge
The second panel discussion based on the theme of exploring sustainable knowledge dissemination channels through ICT applications, brought out a number of novel ways in which modern ICTs can be used for knowledge-based social and educational benefits.

Education at the doorstep: Another mobile project VIIT, the Vidya Prathisthan’s Institute for Information and Technology at Baramati in Maharatra has initiated computer learning project in June 2004 to empower the rural poor. The institute is providing basic computer skills to the primary school students of rural Baramati. Mobile computer lab Along with the World Bank, VIIT runs a mobile education programme through its mobile bus fully equipped with the computer lab. Each bus has 18 computers installed goes once in a week to each 53 schools of the chosen 40 villages catering to 6300 students. Each bus has four teachers, trained by VIIT itself. Depending on the total numbers of the students in a school, two groups at a maximum of 36 students each are formed. Each group takes their theory and practical classes one after another. Each computer is shared by two students. The World Bank is funding five such buses. After interacting with the students, we found that they are very enthusiastic and are keen to learn the new skill. It was really good to find the student, many don’t even have proper dress are playing with the mouse. But their keen interest of learning computer boosts the morale of the teachers as well as the parents. We found that the students want the bus to visit twice a week so that they would get some more time to browse through the system. The best part of this project is that it helped in changing the mindset of the students and the parents towards learning as the attendance of the schools shoots up after the implementation of the project. Projects such as this really helps in bridging the digital divide. Also refer the story of AISECT ICT mobile vans published in i4d volume 3 No. 1 January 2005.

Projects and initiatives highlighted in the session covered an array of topics, ranging from dynamic brail system for ICT education of visually disabled students; school-based technology education program in Latin America; ICT education for organic farming community and that of kiosk-based information services for poultry and dairy farmers. Presentations of the session was followed by a round of interesting discussion, with an attempt to find the innate strengths and impending challenges coming across the way of new ICT applications. ICT for the blind got a special attention in the session, invoking questions from the audience regarding the success-levels achieved and it’s improvement potential in implementation mode.

Panel III: Best practices/ lessons learned on content
The third and final panel of the day focused on best practices and lessons learned through practical experiences, about content in ICT-driven education. Speakers from places like SMARTLab Centre, Cornell University, British Council and Zensar Technologies infused deep understanding about the relevance of making e-Contents to conform to quality standards of curriculum and value-based knowledge.

Day III

Panel lV: Government initiated efforts - Examples from across the world
The third day of the conference began with a special panel; categorically focusing on Government led initiatives in ICT enabled education. Speakers comprised of people from various national government departments, as well as from international non-governmental organisations. The tone was set towards evaluating the efforts of national and international Governments for spearheading universal education and finding newer and better ways of accommodating public-private initiatives in current and future government programmes.

Panel V: Corporate initiated efforts - Examples from across the world
The session on corporate initiated efforts found participation of eminent organisations like Intel, HP, TCS, IL&FS and Yes Bank, who showcased their ICT-based community development work in the sphere of ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’. While Intel, TCS and IL&FS focused on rural education initiatives, others like HP candidly presented their ICT driven livelihood improvement program (HP i-Community) in Kuppam district of the state Andhra Pradesh in India. The presentation of Yes Bank primarily focused on their organisation policies and business models for providing micro-credits towards ICT infrastructure development in rural areas for livelihood options through Small and Medium Enterprises.




Indian IT minister visiting CSDMS stall
Panel VI & VII: Innovative delivery mechanisms - Kiosks, mobile ICT labs
Two back-to-back sessions on Innovative Delivery Mechanisms highlighted on various technology platforms through which educational and knowledge-based contents are being delivered to rural learners. Organisations that presented in these two session were – CDAC-India, Grameen Telecom-Bangladesh, ASAFE-Cameroon, e-Convergence Technology Limited, VIIT, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society, University of Washington, Taleem Foundation and Microsoft Research Lab. Speakers discussed about various platforms like – rural internet kiosks, community information centers, mobile ICT labs and such other means through which e-Services are being made available to communities. Along with issues of delivery infrastructure in terms of hardware and connectivity, these sessions spruced up interesting debates and discussions on associated themes like – content creation and relevancy, content updation and even economic feasibility and sustainability models of such services.

Expert lecture: Conversations with Dr. M. S. Swaminathan - Chairman, M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation
In his lecture Dr. Swaminathan elucidated about his ambitious program – ‘Mission 2007: Every Village as a Knowledge Centre’ and it’s relevance in the present day for bridging the ever widening digital divide. He talked at length about various innovative ICT experimentation going across the world that with insightful comparison and contrast of one against another. The hour-long speech was followed by an encouraging round of open-floor discussion, which provided the audience with a scope to clarify and consolidate their understanding on contemporary developmental issues, from the expert himself. Together it made for a great learning experience for everyone who participated.

Conclusion
The deliberations over the three days of the conference emphasised many crucial aspects of ICT in education. New ideas and concepts of innovative ICT-usage in addressing issues of universal education and livelihood improvement were addressed by various sections of the participants. Proposals were put forward for possible improvement of current efforts and attempts were made to gauge challenges of the future. Content and delivery of ICT-led education were also analysed to arrive at common consensus on issues of knowledge feasibility and effectiveness. < Reported by:

Dipanjan Bannerjee and Gautam Navin, CSDMS