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Teaching on the Net
Ethanol safe for
environment
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Teaching on the Net
The shortage of qualified teachers and high cost of tutoring services in the USA have thrown up a huge opportunity for India’s education companies specialising in online teaching and e-learning. Now the scale of the economy is tilted in India’s favour. While Indian education service providers charge between $l5 and $20 for an hour of online teaching, US education companies charge between $35 and $50. According to the American Association of Employment in Education, a large number of US high schools have difficulties in finding qualified teachers, especially those teaching maths. Therefore, many of the Indian online education companies have started their operations by initiating online teaching of maths to American students. It has been estimated that the US faces a shortfall of about two million teachers. In this scenario, India’s huge pool of English-speaking manpower, which is also conversant in teaching Maths and related disciplines, has a major advantage in promoting India as an EPO destination par excellence. Prime Minister Manmohan Sigh has rightly noted: “It is often said that the 21st century will be the knowledge century. We, in India, are proud of our inheritance in this regard.” Thus, a number of companies specialising in providing online teaching and Web-based education for the student community across the world have sprung up in Indian cities such as Kochi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and New Delhi. For instance, Hyderabad based Highpoints Learning Inc has singed up for online teaching projects in the US and is in the process of providing tutoring services to the students and teachers in countries such as Spain, South Korea and New Zealand. Highpoints Learning Inc provides Web-based educational services to over 100,000 registered users and 5,000 teachers. The genesis of this “high-tech gurukulam” can be traced to a decade back when a young girl had tough time sorting out a maths problem and was forced to approach a tutor. It was then that
Gopikrishna Mamidipudi, one of the founders of Highpoints Learning Inc, came out with the idea of creating the content on the Web. On the other hand, the New Delhi-based Educomp, which has been listed on the stock exchange in the aftermath of the huge success its Rs 500-million IPO (Initial Public Offering) notched up, is now running pilot projects in California, in addition to targeting another seven Indian states for providing online educational services. “The online tutoring is emerging as mature business. The zest for the process comes from factors such shortfall in supply matching the demand for the tutors in the US besides the flexibility of timing for a student to study anytime during the day,” says Educomp Managing Director Shantanu Prakash. In fact, Educomp is quite bullish about the increasing fund being set aside by various states in the US to promote education with a thrust on improving the performance of high school students. According to the Wall Street Journal, e-tutoring and online teaching market in the US is now a $3-billion industry. Another prominent player in the online teaching segment catering mainly to the American student community is Carrier Launcher, where professional teachers provide coaching and tuition from their homes. “The e-tutoring industry is still in blossoming stages. In order to corner a share of the e-tutoring market in the US, we have set up an office in Texas,” says Anirudh Phadke, head of the EPO division at Carrier Launcher. Incidentally, the expression Education Process Outsourcing (EPO) is derived from Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO), a term coined by Kiran Karnik, President of NASSCOM (National Association of Services and Software Companies). In fact, Karnik is quite optimistic that the outsourcing industry, including EPO, would be India’s sunshine business opportunity of the future.
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Ethanol safe for
environment
The technologists expressed their views while participating
in a one-day seminar on “Latest Trends in Sugar, Alcohol and Food
Technology” sponsored by the Industry-Institute Partnership Cell of
AICTE, New Delhi, and organised by the Department of Applied Chemical
Sciences and Technology in collaboration with the Department of Food
Technology of Guru Nanak Dev University under the University-Industry
Linkage Programme (UILP). The experts were of the view that in the
sugar industry, a plenty of biomass fuel was available in the form of
bagasse, which could be used to generate power with high-pressure
boilers. Similarly, they opined that the distillery effluent could be
utilised for the irrigation of crops after rigorous treatment. They
suggested that the twin clarification process of syrup and filtrate
juice was the economical solution to produce better quality white
sugar. They said the micro-propagation of sugarcane was a well-tested
technology for quality seed production, one of the major inputs to
fetch potential yield. Vice-Chancellor, Dr S.P. Singh, while
presiding over said the university had established links with the
industry under UILP by which the GNDU had already initiated R&D
programmes in various science and technology disciplines. He informed
that in addition to a dyeing testing lab, the university had also
established water and pollution testing labs for the use of
industries. Dr Satinder Kaur, an eminent chemical technologist,
speaking on “Co-Generation” emphasised that it not only reduces
the cost of production, but also saves the loss of energy. With the
changing scenario in globalised industries, she said, it was more
important to reduce the cost of production than to increase in
production. In sugar industries, the plenty of biomass fuel was
available in the form of bagasse, which could be used to generate
power with high-pressure boilers.
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Architecture National Institute of Advance Studies in Architecture, Council of Architecture, India Habitat Centre, Core 6-A, 1st Floor, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110003 Armed Force Indian Navy, Po Bag No. 04, R K Puram P.O. (Main), New Delhi 110066 Art & Design Symbiosis Centre of Design, Viman Nagar, Pune 411004 (Mah) Engineering National Institute of Foundry & Forge Technology, Hatia, Ranchi 834003 (Jhar) (GoI Society, under M/o HRD) — Pervin Malhotra
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Advances in communication and information technology in tandem with India’s excellent track record in education—teaching and learning—have opened up a new and exciting business opportunity for India in the form of Education Process Outsourcing (EPO).
Stressing on the development of new technologies to produce
ethanol from agro wastes, distinguished food and sugar technologists
said ethanol had a great potential and was environmental friendly
fuel. According to them, ethanol has a wide application in various
fields like perfumeries, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. It
can even be used to run automobiles without any modification in
engines.