NCERT Golden Jubilee Educational Technology Lecture Series
Inaugural Lecture by
Dr. Sam Pitroda
On
29th March 2011
Prof. Vasudha Kamat, Prof. Ravindra, Mr. Singh, Ladies & Gentlemen, Good Morning!
It is indeed special honour and privilege to have this opportunity to talk to so many of
you on something that’s very dear to me: The Role of ICT in school education.
I would like to break my lecture into 5 topics.
One, I would like to talk little bit about the rise of India in ICT & what does it mean to all
of us.
Two, what is our Govt. trying to do on ICT, at a National level,
Three, ICT and education.
Four, ICT in school education and
Five some actionable items, so when we all go home, we know what we need to do.
I go to lot of these conferences in India; I find that there are very important, dozens of
conferences on same subject at every month and nothing happens.
It is good to meet people, is good to talk, is good to discuss, but at the end of the day if
we don’t take some action, it is of no use.
The other day we had a big conference of 3-4 hundred Vice-chancellors with Mr. Kapil
Sibbal at Vigyan Bhawan and I said look, we have been talking for five years, on higher
education same thing over and over again, same people, same topics, same agreements,
everybody says great ideas we should do this, everybody says I like this, everybody
says, yes-yes we understand it, nobody does anything.
If at the end of today’s interaction, we collectively agree to do two or three things I think
we will make a big difference in the lives of our children. So let’s start with First ICT and
rise of India Globally in ICT.
I remember, not too long ago in 1981, my first conversation with Mr. Rajeev Gandhi in
Delhi, I had never meet him before but we accidentally met at Mrs. Gandhi’s house, Mrs.
Gandhi was running little late so I tried to interact with him and the conversation we had
was very settled and very short and “we have to use information and communication
Technology for nation building, not for the building business”.
What does it mean? It meant that ICT could be persuasive in India, in the next 20 years.
So we will see the role of ICT in everything we do. But to do that, we will have to first
focus on caller phone. If we can really provide telecom access, to large number of people
in India over a period of time, this would trigger a whole new revolution. We were also
not very clear at that time but we had conviction that information and communication
Technology is a tool for nation building. We started with a simple idea of improving caller
phone access, then we had 2 millions caller phones for 450 million people. It used to
take 15 years to get a caller phone connection. When you got a caller phone connection,
half of the time you were waiting for dial tone. From those days to today in a span of 2025 years, we have come a long way, we have eight hundred million cell phones and we
are a nation of connected billion people which is a huge accomplishment, in the history
of this nation. I don’t think people are paying attention to these great mile stones. In the
history, that all of a sudden this nation is connected. We will go from anywhere to
anywhere, talk to anybody, any time, it is not very expensive.
So this big event, needs to be celebrated, but also this event reminds us that we need to
do things differently and not to do the same way we have been doing in the past. Along
with the connectivity with the billions people, we have now large number of experts in
IT. There are all kinds of brains in ICT in India. Experts in every little narrow field you
can find.
Smart young people, talented, well recognized world over. We have built our own
companies TCS, Infosys, Wipro and there are lots of others. No wonder where you go in
the world, people respect that Indians are full of brains, Scientist, engineers, IT,
software people are all over.
Once, I was in a very small town in Finland and I was with the Mayor and we went out
for the launch and I see on the road about 6-7 Indians walking together so I called them
and asked, what do you do? They said we are software people working for Wipro and
doing software work for the city.
We also generate as a result, seventy billion dollar worth of foreign exchange reserve
every year after year. Because of all that now we have hundreds of billions worth of
foreign exchange reserve. In Rajeev Gandhi’s time, worst time we had billion and half
worth of foreign exchange reserve.
So world is changed completely for us and the ICT success stories to gives us lot more
confidence. Great deal of pride, international recognition, to really look beyond how we
do things today, to how we have to do things tomorrow.
Indian government has recognized this now. PM Dr. Manmohan Singh personally is
committed to improving education and information infra structure. Several years ago, he
decided to launch National Knowledge Commission to look at all aspects of knowledge
including school education, higher education, vocational education, distance learning,
open courses for teachers training and lot more.
You can go to www.knowledgecommission.gov.in and you will see all of the
recommendations of the knowledge commission. Simultaneously, Govt is equally
committed to building the IT infrastructure required to improve knowledge.
So, the first programme of the Government is to build the National Knowledge Networks
to connect the 1500 nodes to 40 GB bandwidth to connect all our universities, all our
major R & D institutions and all our major libraries. The idea is to improve collaboration,
exchange data and nearly provide connectivity that our R & D people need. This is going
to cost us about eight thousands Crores. All of this is approved, we are building the
network, 212 nodes are already working and this network will be fully operational in next
12 to 18 months.
In the back of it, we are connecting 26,000 colleges to fibre. So, if we have a local area
network, we have connectivity not only to national knowledge institutions, Universities
and all, but also to International, because this knowledge network is already connected
to European Union, Japan, US in a big way. So you can look at open courses material
from MIT, Stanford, Yale, Tokyo University in Japan, Cambridge now.
In addition, we are going to be connected to two hundred and fifteen thousand
panchayats with optical fibres. So every panchayat will have broadband connectivity, not
2 MB, not 6 MB, 100 of MB and that will get done in 2 years. This is going to cost us
about 20-30 thousand Crores. So, all of this investment today is being put to really look
at the future of our children. Five hundred and fifty million young Indians are below age
of twenty five, we need to educate them and provide them the tools and the jobs for
tomorrow. If we don’t do that, we won’t be able to create ten to fifty million new jobs we
need every year, year after year.
No government that I know of today, is willing to make this kind of commitments and
spending this kind of money.
When we mentioned this to Mr. Obama, he was quite surprised, that how did you
convince the politicians to make this kind of investment and that’s the kind of vision we
have. Nobody talks about these things. Our newspapers are full of cricket, bollywood and
gossips. This is the real India being created today, that hardly people know about. It
requires lots of guts, lots of vision, coupled with this network you put what Mr. Nandan
Nilkeni is doing for UID, Dr. Kasturirangan is working on GIS and various platforms for
payments, procurement, applications, securities, servers, you probably might need
hundred thousand Crores. Then the delivery of services will improve. Leakage in the
Govt. will reduce and you will create whole new infrastructure for tomorrow. All of this is
in place, is being pushed, some will happen faster, some will have some problems but
that is the part of growing up, but I can assure you in three years you will have all this
done.
Nandan will get a point of documenting million people a day, he has already documented
five million. It is the biggest programme in the history of mankind to document the
finger print, facials and all. People complain about privacy and all of that is taken care of.
Any time you do something new, it brings with it little bit of concern here and there. I
always give example of a knife; the same knife that cuts fruit can also cut somebody.
But you still need knife! So all these programmes essentially show the vision of this
government and their ability to back it up with huge amount of funding...
Third, what we will do with this ICT infrastructure in education!
I am very concerned, that we are not doing enough with ICT in education. The country
that specializes in ICT does not use ICT for education and government. One hand we
have all these commitments but we still have “Nada Wali” file that runs our government.
So I am one of those people who said “Nada Wali” file has to go. We got to celebrate at
some point in time the death of “Nada Wali” file in the government. If you can’t do that,
you can’t go too far but everyone was to resist that because that’s the comfort.
Similarly, in education there are lot of opportunities to use ICT, but mind set is such,
that we fiddled with it, but don’t change. Unfortunately, when we think about education
today, we automatically assume duster, black board, chalk, teacher, text books, exams,
grades, and certificate. None of these things matter anymore. We got to kill lot of these
things. How do we do that? Immediately teacher would react, say what do you mean,
and if you don’t kill the old we don’t create the new.
So how do we prepare to create something new? When I look at the teacher of today, I
know the teacher normally creates content and delivers contents.
I use to have a professor in Baroda and who took great pride in the fact that his notes
have not changed in 20 years. Is it good or bad? Then we thought it was great when we
learn little more we realize that this was a disaster and people would copy his notes and
will exchange his notes and students create a copy of it and says, I have a copy of his
notes and whole business of following of same notes essentially created a dumb
romance.
So, do I really need a teacher to create the content today, because best of the best
content is already available on net by great experts and I can’t do much better. Believe
me. But overall most of the content in a good way is created and lot of content is already
been added to that. Everybody is creating content right now. Nobody is paying attention
to what is already created. So I don’t need teacher to create the content, I perhaps don’t
need teacher to deliver content.
So what do I need the teacher for?
I really need a guru, who is a mentor, I need somebody I can go to in difficult times...I
need somebody I can look up to, I need somebody I can respect and know, he is there
or she is there for me.
But I don’t need them to teach me anymore.
This is a paradigm of tomorrow. It is going to happen. You are not going to able to resist
it. You can try for few years but its better not to resist it and join the movement because
this movement is being created. Ok. You can try!
So the ICT and education is really employing paradigm shift in learning model. It is not
about doing same thing we do, using IT, it is about doing different things that we don’t
do today using IT. So teachers will have to realize that you don’t need to do anything,
you just need to love children, help them, support them, make them feel good, increase
their self esteem, pat them on their back, if they make mistake hold their hand, lift
them, because Children are already too smart. I know that when I can’t operate my TV,
I give it to a seven year old kid and he fixes it. Because they know how to do it. They
don’t read instructions at all. I have never seen any kid reading any instruction manuals,
because instruction manuals are only for old people.
I don’t know how do they figure it out, but they just do it .You know, they just do it with
intuitive feelings. You see them playing games, there reflexes are so very fast that they
are acting in milliseconds where it takes me seconds to interact. So there is something
out there, that we don’t understand. They think all of the stuff that we all grow up with.
I had never seen TV before in my life before going to America. I never made a caller
phone call in India, in my life before going to America. This was 60s, early 60s. There
were no caller phone, hardly few phones and if somebody had a phone he used to be
rich and not be your friend. So who do you call? But these kids think this is all given. Cell
phone is, you know as you are born you need a cell phone, ok, you want a web page,
you want facebook, you want tweeter, and think of this and then, when a kid goes to
school at the age of 6-7, teacher teaches ABCD, he already knows that stuff.
It is in this kind this of ecosystem we need to think of ICT in the education. It is about
the paradigm shift. It is about the new learning model. It is about doing things we
haven’t done before. It’s about changing the whole structure of school, class room,
duster, black board, teachers, text books, exams, everything has to be changed.
I don’t think we are ready for it!
It’s a radical departure from how we have been running our educational institutions for
100s of years. I am beginning to question things. Who decided that we should take 4
years to get a degree. Why do we all takes 4 years, Chinese takes 4 years, Japanese
takes 4 years, Americans take 4 years, whosoever came up with this idea must be very
smart. Let me convince the whole world, does it make a sense? I think it is time to
question these kinds of things, that we have never questioned before and we may not
find answer to all these questions.
But the fact that we are willing to question is very important. So ICT in education is all
about the paradigm shift. It’s not about doing same thing we are doing today and I will
come to that later when we talk about actionable items.
We have given a set of recommendations from Knowledge Commission on School
Education, on Open and Distance Education.
We want to connect all schools to National Knowledge Network. But that’s long way. To
set up national education foundation to develop web page, open sources material;
establish credit bank, to effect transition to course credit system. Even in colleges, its a
shame that I can’t take one semester in Kerala and next semester in Gujarat. I don’t
know why we can’t do that. It’s weird system. It’s not rocket science. If my father got
transferred from Kerala to Gujarat, I can go to Gujarat college, but in our system we are
still following most of the processes that the British Raj left behind. And at times we are
computerising the same processes and calling ourselves experts at computerising our
governance.
If we don’t Re-engineer lot of these things, computerising is not going to help us at all.
When we say Facilitate convergence with conventional universities, set up research
foundation to support research activities on ODE, organise training programmes for
educators, increase access for learners in special needs, create a new standing
committee for the regulation of ODE, develops system for quality assessment. Today
these are all standard stuff. The big idea is, how we change the Mind set.
So we begin to do things differently.
When I met with the Vice chancellors, these are all big institutions, I told them just go,
look at your websites. These are disasters. You don’t need to go too far, can you fix your
website. Look at the websites of all our schools and universities. There is no picture of
the professor, there is no background of the professor, it doesn’t tell me anything, and
about what do they teach, what is there track record. Nothing! These are the great
institutions who are producing highly talented ICT people. I think, we really need to go
to basic stuff. Those will be two actionable items.
Before that, I would tell you about two experiments that I know little bit about. There is
a fellow called Salman Khan, who runs Khan Academy in the US, some of you may have
heard of him. He went to school with my son. He was a successful investment banker,
young guy, made some money and decided to quit. I believe he is from Bangladesh. Quit
and said what should I do now? One of his cousin’s small little kid had problem with
maths, so he started teaching math in free time and then he decided that he should do
some web courses on maths.
So sitting in his bed room, on his laptop, with a camera he decided to do some courses
on maths, multiply, divide, trigonometry, algebra, Geometry, whatever. Started putting
on the You-tube and all of a sudden realized that hundreds of thousands of kids are
watching this. He set up a Khan academy, run out of his bedroom. You can go see it on
web. One man show, 2200 courses ready. In US hundreds and hundreds of schools use
this, half a million to million kids learn from khan.
See the power of one guy. So I called him and talked to him, when I said, let me take
your material out and allow me to translate it into Hindi and see if I can put it on the
web. Not that it changes maths teacher in school because he or she will fight it, that’s
ok.
But in India, we have this tuition system which I think is a biggest racket. Ok. If I go to
school, pay attention, why should I go to tuition, I don’t understand. But everybody goes
to tuition. Tuition fellow makes money, so I said can I learn at home and augment my
learning at school using Khan Academy’s user world.
We are trying to experiment with this in ten panchayats. Just planning right now in
collaboration with US government. Let’s take Khan Academy, put it in Hindi or Guajarati
and see what happens and learn little bit about the model. Then I can take ten other
smart kids to do something on physics, something on chemistry, and something on
social science. OK. And get thousands of these courses on the net and his idea is, don’t
bring more than ten minutes or seven minutes of material, because attention span then
goes away. Let the kids play after seven minutes, let him do something. Play games,
and then come back again in 7-8 minutes for a new concept.
Similarly, there is a lady I don’t remember her name, does Hey maths; Nirmala. OK, we
met her during Knowledge Commission days four years ago and we again met her
yesterday. She has series of things on maths developed in India. Connecticut school in
the US is using her material and decided to eliminate all maths text books. In US it is
done. So we don’t need any maths text book. Just take her material and that’s the only
way to teach maths.
Fascinating stuff! You need to look at it!
How do we get these, and not just say I am going to do maths, but say can we just finetune and standardize maths, standardize chemistry, and standardize physics? So you will
have at least standard material. When you have extra then you can add to augment that
material. Rather than fifty people doing same math and algebra teaching in fifty different
ways and confuse everybody.
In this background let’s talk about actionable items.
I am sure you all have challenges related to infrastructure, I am sure you all have
challenges related to hardware, software, equipments, findings, these are all given. But
can we at least get some schools to have better web sites. Can we standardize a website
for schools? A template, say all our Indian schools should have website like this. So the
people will get use to it. If you want to know about the teacher click here, if you want to
know about fees click here, if you want to know about admission click there, if you want
to know about facility click there. So everybody has same feel and touch. That much we
can do, what does it take, doesn’t have to be 100% right but we all agree to whatever
we decide.
Have 10-15 more people men & women teachers come together and say this is for
Indian school website format for the next three years, and then we will review it again
after some time.
And all schools fill that in properly, I need to go to website, learn about my school
facilities, learn about my teacher, courses, fee structure and all the other related stuff,
sports, libraries. Why can’t that we do that today? That’s the starting point. Because this
is the reaching to your school, through that website, I can see what kind of school this
is. If I look at the background of the teachers and their experience I can tell if it is ok
school or no, I will not send my kid here!
So one actionable item would be, to really focus on standardizing websites for schools
and there may be three standards. I don’t care, may not be one, may not be agreeable
to everybody. We need these websites in local language, not in English.
Second extendable item is to really start focussing on creating domain experts. In 20-30
schools domain algebra, physics, geography, history whatever you decide and create
10-15 domain experts in that subject and tell them to select standard material. Again,
standard is a broad term. Can we say, for our kids, this is how algebra material should
look like. You all are doing this in school text book, but the idea is to get rid of text book.
The other day, I was walking near Lodhi Estate and saw 6-7 young kids walking. One
little kid was about 7-8 year old, malnourished, very thin, and carrying a big bag full of
books. So I stopped him. He got confused, as I don’t look normal, with my hairs and
beard. You know, Poor guy thought I am going to rob him for something...So I said; I
want to talk with you.
I asked, what is this?
Keetab hai!
I say, but why so much?
He said, I have to carry all this to school!
I said look, you should just go get a cart with wheel that we get at the airport. You
should carry books in your bag. It must have been at least 35 pounds. And some books
were so thick and I said,
Do you do it every day?
Yes i do it every day. I said, why can’t you leave these books at home?
He said no, my teacher will fire me.
Poor kid was so miserable, because parents and teachers have told him, that you got to
carry these 35 pounds it may be 40 pounds.
Nobody is concerned about it. I just don’t get it.
Everybody thinks its normal things to do. I don’t think when I was seven year old,
carried so many books and I studied. Something must be done! What is that we are
doing that requires 35 pounds of books? I think, we need to look at some of these things
very carefully.
I think we are losing the interest of our customer. Our customer is out there, poor
customer has no voice, because parents know what is good for them and teacher knows
what is good for them and this is the way, this is how it is supposed to be. Our kids are
not being taught to question.
I remember growing up as a Indian father. I assumed that I know what is good for kids
and first shock I had when my daughter was 7 year old. I told her something, and she
said, that’s not fair! I said, what do you mean? And she said, dad it’s not fair, and I
started thinking. She has a point here. You know. I think its fair but it is not fair. Then
after everything I did, first I asked question, is it ok with them, then its ok with me.
So never asked them what grades you make. Never in my life!
I have two kids. Never asked them where you go. What do you do? Why did you come at
3 O clock in the morning! That’s o.k. I trust you. I love you, I am there for you. You are
a free bird. Only thing I can do is as father you can look up to. That is in my control and
nothing is in my control except that.
But I guarantee to you, I will give you father, that you look up to, that is this guy is ok,
doesn’t hide income tax, doesn’t cheat, does his stuff, he is fair to everybody, he is ok,
and that makes a big difference. I learned that in my life. Our children don’t have the
voice in the system and I think we need to really listen to them as what they need. What
are we trying to teach them? We need teaching them the right stuff. Do they really need
all of these stuff we think they need to know? Does that really help them? Be a good
citizen. If after all these they turn out to be “kharaab” useless, what have we taught
them then?.....
When I get chance to speak in America, which I do a lot--- Once I was invited to speak
by Condoleezza Rice, to 400 Vice–Chancellors, in Washington, Presidents of universities
including Harvard, MIT, and many others. I said look, on one hand we are talking about
great higher education in this country in America and 2% of Americans are in prison.
This is huge number! And they are building more prisons and everybody says more
police. What’s wrong with your education? How could be 2% of people prisoners, in a
country where education system is so very great? Because, we are focusing more on
quality of products. We have quality controlled all these mathematical modelling for a
quality of a product but not of people.
We don’t produce six sigma quality people, we produce six sigma quality product. There
is the huge difference. We want to produce six sigma quality kids and the actionable
item is to really get these domain experts, prepare material, put it online, eliminate text
books. I know printing press guys will be very unhappy, I know book publishers should
be very unhappy. But too bad!
That’s the transformation we are talking about.
So kids have one little device ultimately, may be not now, may be in 5 years, may be 10
years down the road and everything is online and everything is searchable and
everything is worth exploring and the world out there opens up all of sudden.
I remember, Rahul Gandhi and I had gone to Amethi and we had inauguration of some
computer lab and one little kid was there. They had dressed him up and poor kid had no
idea what is thing was. He goes in and was asked to do something and he does it quite
nicely. So I said, do you know what is the thing is? He said no! From here you can see
the world. You don’t need to go anywhere. This is not software, not computer, its a new
window for you. In Hindi I said :khidki se dekh sakte ho, ye wo khidki hai”
I asked him, who do you want to see? After looking at three other people he said;
Tendulkar. So we typed the name Tendulkar. This is Tendulkar. I said what you want to
do. He says I want to play.
He was amazed! Kids thought, this was magic. Think in his or her term. I think
everything we do has to have kid as the focus.
I thought, I have taken longer, but i don’t get chance like this, you know to talk to real
teachers who are concerned about this.
But, I would say we have lot of actionable items we can worry about. I hope I have
conveyed my concerns to you. I am very concerned about the future of our children. I
am very concern about using IT for a paradigm shift. I am not happy with the
incremental thing we do and the way we do things today. It has to change and we need
people like you to make that change.
Thank you
Q-A
Audience: sir hum paradigm shift ki baat kar rahen hain to students and teachers ke
beech me dialogue ka kitna importance hai?
SP: Very important, I think the dialogue between teacher and student is very critical, but
in what way? It can’t be in hierarchal way. It can’t be in command and control.
It has to be with love, affection, passion. Student should feel that this is my mentor. I
can got to this person with any problem, personal problem with my mom, problem with
my father, you know, he/she will be there for me. I think that’s huge for kids. It’s not
about have you done your home work, behave properly, stand up ...kids are kids. If they
behave always properly, then there is something wrong.
When my kids were very young (8-9 yr old), I use to go to schools and talk about
inventions. So I go to school in US where they will get 500 kids in a basketball field and
there I go and talk about inventions. Every time after my talk, I used to ask these kids
to write to me. I will never forget one little kid wrote to me and said, Mr. Pitroda, I have
never seen a live inventor. It is for the 1st time in my life I saw somebody who is
inventor. I have invented something; I want you to check it out. This is an automatic cat
feeding machine.
Both of my parents work. Every day when they come home at 5 O’clock, they ask me;
did you feed the cat? What did you feed? Did cat eat? They never ask me, did I eat. I am
sick of this cat thing. So if this works, I would tell them feeder is already doing it, don’t
ask about the cat.
Look at the mind. But how many children have these opportunities, so going back to
your question. Yes, teacher-student dialogue is very important!
Question:
SP: Agree with you. It’s not possible there. Let’s not try to solve everybody problems all
the time, because there is no power, no food ,there are all kind of issue ,so we need to
deal with that ..I am not saying that it’s not important don’t get me wrong!
Question:
SP: All I said is I saw that little kid, and I felt sorry for him.
All I am saying is to work toward eliminating hard copy of the text books over a period
of time. It doesn’t happen everywhere over night, it happens in Mumbai first, Delhi
second, Lucknow later on...It will happen over a period of time, It depends .....
We could not get telephone to everybody; it took us 20 years, but let’s starts the
process somewhere. Can we really think of experimenting with no text books, everything
online, can we take all our material and put it online? Why can’t we put all materials
online and then tell kids they don’t have to buy text books.
Prof Punam Agrawal: First of all I enjoyed every bit of your lecture and NCERT has
taken some initiatives in the direction. You have given actionable points. Our director
probably and Joint Director CIET will throw some light on it. You said the best content is
available on the net, and very rightly so, but to some extent is it not giving rise to CAPS
syndrome! (Cut/Copy And Paste Syndrome). In one way its killing the originality!
Creativity. Do you have some approach to suggest for that?
SP: Yes, I think originality and creativity doesn’t come from fundamentals format.
Algebra is the Algebra, If somebody says 2+2=4. I don’t know how much you will be
creative in teaching 2+2=4 and if there is creativity in teaching that may be on net. It is
not going to solve all your problems..You see, we in India we specialize in identifying the
problem.
We don’t require lot of talent to identify the problems, question is how do we solve these
problems? if we don’t standardize, if we don’t bring quality, how do we include millions
of our children in the main stream? So finally ...I don’t want to kill originality, so
somewhere there will be some balance to be drawn.
Do you kill originality of fifty people, or you teach fifty million? You take a pick.
When you do both some people just worry about keeping originality and some people
worry about scale! Because you got to do everything, you can’t do one.
So you got to standardize the material to some extent and you also need extra material
for creative kids. Either do both, its not this or that and some more!
Dr. Anjlee Prakash: Regarding the open educational resources today, it’s great to see
lots of valuable. We at Learning Links Foundation, work with teachers across the country
and I feel, the biggest thing that we can contribute is, how to bring a mindset shift in our
teachers. And my question is, are there any models that have worked where we can
facilitate teacher on paradigm shift more effectively.
SP: US is also struggling with it, Europe is also struggling with it. I meet with people
there, they have also strange vested interest, teacher unions are stronger there, you will
realize. Same problem. Why in US Universities tuition fee is forty thousand dollars per
year? What do you do for forty thousand dollar? What do you learn from forty thousand
dollar a year? If you take admission to MBA, it will cost you 150 thousand dollar to get
you MBA! And now a days if you get a MBA, you cant get a job! So everybody is in the
same boat.
Dr. Prakash: Learning links: but we have seen fare amount of success and hope to
replicate that
SP: Good! We got to expertise, our demand is very different. Their demands, equation is
very different. Supply demand is pretty much balanced. In our system supply–demand is
not balanced over all in education. Demand is much higher than the supply. At least
now.
Audience: Sir you talked about Six sigma quality kids, I just want to know in your view
what would be the parameters we should look, it should be scholastic, behavioural,
attitudinal, cyclic?
SP: above all, I am not an expert, in lot of this stuff. Let’s be very clear. I am an
engineer.
Same audience: Sir that’s why I said in your view only
SP - I will tell you what I used to tell my kids. That might help. I have two great kids.
Best of the best you can find, no complications, nothing... I have a boy and a girl now
pretty old. I have a boy of 36. Girl of 33. We are great pals. No confusion, no conflict
nothing.
I use to tell them that, look, given a choice I want our children to be one disciplined, two
analytical, three creative, four respectful, five ethical, six global, seven multi disciplinary.
Just focus on these seven things.
First be disciplined- Getup early morning, do things & exercise read/write read properly.
Two: be analytical- and I remember my kids use to ask me what is analytical? I said
when I am giving a talk some place, I know exactly the size of the room; I have already
counted the number of people here, I know the bulbs. So when you scan something, you
immediately know that-this is a sort of eco system. That’s analysis. It is not
mathematical modelling... So, you need to develop that ability.
Then, if you can analyze something then you can be creative. There is no science in
analyzing, if you can't come out with something new.
Ultimately you got to be respectful. That there are other people with different opinion
from yours, is equally important. They may come from different directions. You got to
respect them, you are not the only one who is right & you got to take other’s opinion.
Five you got to be ethical- ethics is very important in life in the long run. Don't try to
cheat anybody. Not worth it. He catches up some day, some place.
Then be global- world is too small now. And be multidisciplinary. Don't say I am in
marketing, so, I will only learn about marketing. If you are in marketing learn about
science & technology. If you are in science & technology, learn about psychology,
Philosophy, Economics, make a physiatrist friend. Do all kinds of crazy things. Learn
about environment may be it will add up someday.
Audience:- (In Hindi) Puri duniya me ICT role jo hai bahut accha raha hai sabhi duniya
ke log isko swikar rahen hain. lekin corruption or pollution ye bhi duniya ki hakikat hai.
isko control karne ke liye ICT ka role ya ICT people ka role kya hai?
S.P - (In hindi) Bhoot bada hai. It’s already happening. It will happen! Wikileakes is a
classical example. Information is being democratized. Our job is to democratize
information, make it more open. You must remember information brings about
openness, accessibility, connectivity, networking, democratization, decentralization by
definition. So, it will help....
Thank you.
Dr. Sam Pitroda again came to the podium after vote of thanks to share his thought on
important aspect with the esteemed audience.
I just thought of one idea.
Prof. Vasudha Kamat, JD,CIET and I just talked about an idea, which has been with me
for long time. I would like to work on training million teachers in India, on the role of ICT
in education, not on ICT. Prof. Vasudha Kamat and I talked about it, I have a
presentation, and the idea is that “a 15 years old, a 12 years old kid will teach a
Teacher”, on role of ICT.
So, I want to reverse the roles for a while. So, we set up an exchange, where if I am a
teacher in small little town, so I go on the net, at least I need a laptop and one place to
go. I go there and I say look, I want to learn about ICT. Then, there is a kid in Delhi,
who is hot shot ICT kid, he said ok. I will take as a teacher in Timbuktu and teach him.
So, he gets fun in using Skype and they both connect, they both sort of bond and they
both talk, talk about certain things. Then he will teach her or him, games and what to do
with this, and how to connect on Skype and how to connect on Facebook, do a Facebook
page and do all kinds of interesting things. We have a plan ready. I just need at least 56 people to drive it. If you want to drive it, I will connect Natakshara with you on this. I
tell you this will make a huge difference, for kids also.
Can you imagine a ten year old kid saying I am teaching some body and I am working
with some body, she is my pal, out there in some little town out there in Orissa. Let’s do
that! Thank you.