Skilling Gen Z beyond Classrooms

Venguswamy Ramaswamy discusses how TCS iON is preparing the ‘gems of tomorrow’ as ‘nation builders of the future’ by equipping students with skills beyond just academics.

In this 21st century, students are expected to constantly prove their mettle by navigating through more skills, capabilities and competition. Much of what students typically learn in schools today will no longer be relevant by the time they graduate from college. A recent Oxford University study found that 47 percent of today’s jobs will be eliminated over the next 20 years! Now consider this — most schools across our country are still largely focused on rote learning with very little input on the additional skills required to survive in this increasingly complex, competitive and rapidly changing world. The future is beyond academics just as careers are beyond the conventional ones.

SKILLS FOR THE FUTURE

In a society where routine jobs are getting increasingly automated, the best way to prepare for the future is to develop the ability to continuously learn, adapt and be flexible. Educators, academic researchers and policymakers agree that for today’s learners, 21st century skills such as creativity, curiosity, perseverance, adaptability, critical thinking, effective communication, collaboration and lifelong learning are more important than ever before.

With a vision to help schools and students across the country gain a strong understanding of these much-acclaimed 21st century skills, TCS iON has created IntelliGem — a first-of-its-kind meta-academic platform set in a unique contest mode. The goal of this national-level contest is to ignite a spark among educators and young minds and push the boundaries of growth beyond the school curriculum.

EQUIPPING STUDENTS FOR THE DIGITAL AGE

The topics covered in the IntelliGem contest are financial literacy, communication skills, creativity and innovation, global citizenship and universal values. These have been carefully chosen to give the necessary exposure to students during their formative (school) years. The jobs of the future will depend on human collaboration to design work for machines. Value is moving from cognitive skills to social skills. In the past, schoolwork was assessed on individual accomplishment. Today, teamwork and collaboration have become an important key to success.

A century ago, most scientific research was written by single authors; by the 1950s, it changed to co-authorship as the norm. Today, an average paper has four times as many authors as it did a century ago. Also, academic research is far more interdisciplinary, and is often conducted across greater physical distances than it was in the past. To co-ordinate all that activity and keep everyone focused on delivering a specific, high-quality experience, communication must be clear and coherent. Skills in collaboration will increasingly give a competitive advantage.

Routine jobs are the ones that are being replaced by automation. However, jobs requiring skills such as creativity, innovation, compassion and empathy are those, which are unlikely to be taken over by machines. The absence of empathy makes it difficult for machines to do what humans have excelled in — designing products or processes that will maximise utility for humans. Thus, design and creative skills are likely to be in high demand for decades to come.

INTELLIGEM PAVING THE PATH

Students from grades 5 to 9 from all over India can participate in TCS iON IntelliGem, which is conducted every year. In its second edition, which is underway, students from 100+ towns across the country are competing. Structured as a four-round contest moving from digital, phygital, to face-to-face rounds, IntelliGem is unique in every way — be it in using the patented TCS iON PAPERTM device to completely remove the need for printed paper or in providing digital learning content free of cost. The Teachers Network in the TCS iON Digital Hub platform significantly enhances ease of access for both students and teachers to learn and upgrade their skills, and thus keep up with the values of respecting the efforts of all the young student finalists and not just the winner and runners-up as it usually happens at contests with similar formats.

With initiatives like IntelliGem, TCS iON is well positioned to become a strong partner for the school education ecosystem.

Source –https://tatareview.tataworld.com/

DIMENSiON June 2019 | Learning

TCS iON Digital Learning

Theory concept and practical knowledge go hand in hand

Feature: Hands-On programming activity in Digital Learning courses.

Description: Introducing a new type of activity as Hands-on Programming Interface. This activity helps the faculty to assess the learners in their technical programming skills as a part of the course and provides score and grading based on it. With this activity, learners can also practice coding and equip themselves technically along with theoretical content of courses.

To configure Hands-on Activity in organisation, the organisation admin must configure the External Vendors for Hands-On in Preferences screen. Now, add Hands-on as a component while Course creation.

You can create Hands-on Activity once the Hands-on component is added in the Course.

The options include:

a) Creating Hands-on Activity with Eclipse Che IDE (No configuration required for anything).

b) Creating Hands-on Activity with configured External Vendor selection.

In case of either selection, the participants can view the Activity on Course Launch. The selected Hands-on Mode (either Hackerrank/Katacoda/Eclipse Che) displays against the Activity name.

•Key benefits: Learn theoretical concepts along with practical knowledge.

Course and community creation demarcated for user clarit

Feature: Upload supported documents for admin action to create Community or Course

Description: Now, when you create a Community or Course, it requires the invitation of two administrators. In case, if it is not a Force Invite option then, the invitation request must be accepted by the Admin to activate the Community or Course.

Additionally, the invited moderator of a Course/Community can upload the supporting documents in My Actions screen for the Administrator to review and accept the invitation to administer the Course or Community.

In Moderator View, you can View and Remove the uploaded file.

In Administrator View, the admin can view an eye icon to review uploaded documents, based on which the invitation is accepted and rejected.

Key Benefits: Objective behind Course or Community creation gets clear to the administrator.

Highlights of the month –

Introducing Post display on timeline with Admin approval

• Feature: Configuration to display post on timeline with admin’s approval.

• Description: Now, you can display Enablers on timeline with admin’s approval, in iDL. With this feature, once you create a post, it displays with a tag Pending for Action. Once the admin approves the Post, it displays to others on timeline. The Post does not display to others until the admin declines or does not take any action on it.

You can view the options related to the Post such as Vote up, Vote down, Comment, Favourite, Share with/Copy link and so on once the admin approves the Post.

The admin can view the community Posts along with the buttons to approve or decline the post, on timeline.

Admin can also filter out all post, which are pending for action on the timeline using the icon provided.

• Key benefits: Admin can filter out any offensive or objectionable post before they appear on timeline.

Highlights of the month

Introducing upload supported documents for admin action to create Community or Course

• Feature: Upload supported documents for admin action to create Community or Course

• Description: Now, when you create a Community or Course, it requires the invitation of two administrators. In case, if it is not a Force Invite option then, the invitation request must be accepted by the Admin to activate the Community or Course.

Additionally, the invited moderator of a Course/Community can upload the supporting documents in My Actions screen for the Administrator to review and accept the invitation to administer the Course or Community.

In Moderator View, you can View and Remove the uploaded file.

In Administrator View, the admin can view an eye icon to review uploaded documents, based on which the invitation is accepted and rejected.

Key Benefits: Objective behind Course or Community creation gets clear to the administrator.

Introducing Face Verification and System Authentication for course Access

• Feature: Face Verification and System Authentication in courses for participant access.

• Description: Now, the course admin can configure Face Verification & System Authentication to access the TCS iON iDL courses. Course Admin can enable this feature.

Here, the course Admin can select the required participant data for Registration and verify the data captured during Registration, at the time of authentication.

Perform authentication in two ways:

1. Course Admin can authenticate by providing the access code to launch the course. You must enter the access code after clicking Launch to launch the course.
2. You can authenticate to yourself by capturing your photo through the webcam-enabled system, at the Course Launch, which once verified allows you to access the Course.

In case, if the authentication fails, then the course admin has the option to Generate Access Code forcefully for the user.

• Key Benefit: Admin can authorise the Course content access using this feature.

Introducing new ODRs for logs of Course or Activity launch

• Feature: Two new ODR added in Report and Communication solution

• Description: Now, you can find Community or Course launch logs details and Course or Activity Launch Stats using two newly added ODRs in Report and Communication solution of Webtop.

Following are the two new ODRs:

• Community/Course Launch Logs ODR: The Course Launch details of a user are available in this ODR with details like System IP, browser used, device used for Course launch and launch date.
• Course/Activity Launch Stats (Daily) ODR: You can track the launch count details of a Course or Community through this ODR. These details include Launch date, activity, entity type, entity title and launch count.

DIMENSiON May 2019 | Learning

TCS iON Digital Learning

Enablers can create short URLs for easy sharing

• Feature: Introducing short URL feature for enablers
• Description: Now, you can create short URL for enablers, in iDL. Provisioning for URL shortening is required at back-end after contract is established with the organisation. Post provisioning, the short URL configuration is visible to all users in Enabler Creation screen. Once you select this configuration, the permalink of that enabler is created as short URL. Short URL creation of each enabler is cost effective and depends on the purchase package as per the contract.

• Key benefits: Compact and easy to share the Enabler URL.

Faster Performance Achieved by Disabling Notifications Panel

• Feature: Configuration for notifications icon display in top panel

• Description: Earlier, the notification icon was visible to all the users of organization and hence the real time fetching of all notifications was making solution performance slower. Now, a configuration introduced for the organisation admin enables the admin to set the configuration to show/hide the notifications icon display in top panel. You can always access these notifications in mail inbox. By default, this configuration is set as No and the notifications icon does not appear in top panel until the organisation admin enables it.

• Key benefits: Enhances the performance of Solution.

Playback Speed Control Enabled on Both HTML and JW players

• Feature: Adjust the playback speed in video player
• Description: Earlier, you could not change the video playing speed. With this feature, you can control the video running speed in both video player: HTML Player and JW player.
• Key benefits: Adjustable Video playback speed.

Six ways education in India will evolve in the coming years

The education sector is going through a paradigm shift. The future of education is far from what it was even a decade before. And it is time we start foreseeing the trends, so that we are better equipped to turn this revolution to our advantage.

But before diving headfirst into the future, let us take a look at the past. After all, the future is to create, but the past is what we learn from. If you look closely, a very pertinent parallel can be drawn between the evolution of media and education. In the beginning, there was just broadcast media. Remember the early days of television broadcast, when the remote was not even a thing, because what would you even use it for! There were not many choices when it came to what to watch, where to watch or when to watch. Then came the multichannel format, and the fight for the remote. We had choices galore in terms of the content, but not much in terms of when to watch or how to watch. And finally, today we have the OTT format that is content-flexible, time-flexible and device-flexible.

That is exactly how our education system has also evolved. First, we had the Gurukul system, where the learner had no choice in what to learn, when to learn, whom to learn from. Everything was pre-decided for the learner, and he or she had to make do with it. That might have been a very efficient system for that point of time, but with globalisation and modernisation, that system gave way to schools and colleges, which came with a lot more choices. The prevalent system today is still in this stage, and while it has worked fine till now, the education sector is standing at the cusp of a major shift. We are taking steps towards a stage in education that will be equivalent to the OTT media format. The learner today is much more aware of what they want and how they want it. And it is this freedom of choice that is going to reshape the education sector. The emphasis today is more on gaining skills than just knowledge. ‘Hands-on learning’ is the keyword here, and it is going to be time, space and distance-independent. How? Let us figure out.

1. Campus boundaries will start fading

The world is on its way to becoming the classroom. Well, to speak in theological terms, it already is. But it is only now that the realisation is dawning upon us. And now it is up to us to explore this opportunity to the maximum, whether we do it by making online courses the norm, or by making gaming modules the primary method of instruction. Trend analysis by Research and Markets predict that global e-learning market will reach US$325 billion by 2025. In the sector of online education in India, we can expect a growth reaching US$ 1.96 billion and around 9.6 million users by 2021, predicts a 2017 survey by KPMG, in association with Google. The same survey also tells us that the three primary reasons learners will continue to adopt open resource learning materials are convenience of access, flexibility of time and variety of materials. All of these will contribute to making learning a truly time and space-independent process and education will cease to be restricted to brick-and-mortar spaces.

2. ‘Phygital’ will be the way to go

In the ‘phygital’ (physical + digital) way of learning, the digital solutions are overlaid on top of the physical assets of education. This approach helps bridge the distance between the learner and the teacher, with the help of digital channels. However, in an Indian context, to make digital channels truly inclusive and impactful, we need to complement them with physical touch points. Imagine a student learning how to drive. In a ‘phygital’ mode of learning, the physical process of the student driving will be integrated with the instructor providing guidance over digital channels, so that learning happens in real time, and it is pertinent, to-the-point, and applicable in real life.

3. Tomorrow, professionals will be the teachers

Trends show that the goal is not just acquiring knowledge anymore, but acquiring skills. And to facilitate that, not just the learner, but the teacher must also be someone with hands-on experience in the subject domain. In the years to come, practical classes will not be limited to the last two periods of a school day, but will be the heart and soul of a learner’s curriculum. If a student wants to learn about welding, he/she will not just read about the properties of different kinds of steel, but will work with an experienced welder to imbibe how the properties of different kinds of steel affect their usability in welding works.

4. Students will learn without being aware that they are learning

The environment will be conducive to a homogenous format of learning, which will translate into learners ‘learning’ while they are ‘doing’. Think video games. Think augmented reality. Imagine a scenario where you are a character in an adventure game, every time it falls, exclaims, “Hey there Gravity, say ‘hello’ to Newton!” This way, the learner’s engagement level will be high, learning will be more immediate and retention will be easier.

5. Exams will test application skills, not knowledge

According to the survey by KPMG, re-skilling and online certification courses is currently the largest category in the Indian online education industry, with a preference towards online trainings for skill development/certification. In May 2017, it dominated 38% of the total online education market in India. Industry-aligned training courses in industry-trending topics and domains are in high demand. And it is this demand for hands-on skills that will dictate the exam sector’s shift in focus from testing of knowledge to testing of skills. Let us take a very basic example to delineate the advantages of this. Do you know that nitrogen is denser than carbon dioxide? What do you do with that knowledge?

This is what tomorrow’s examinations will test. Because as long as you do not apply that knowledge to the use of a fire extinguisher, you will never know that, that is the reason why carbon dioxide is the chosen medium in a fire extinguisher and not nitrogen — because the low density of carbon dioxide helps in the medium’s easy maneuverability.

6. Not just learning, even evaluation will become space, distance and time-independent

There are systems in place through which examinations taking place in Japan are being marked by evaluators in Vadodara, sitting in an Indian office. It utilises the human capital, a resource that India abounds in. No constraint of time and space ensures that the best minds are engaged in evaluating exactly the subject they excel in, which, in turn, results in a faster and fairer evaluation system guided by well-defined marking scheme.

Now, the question remains, when and how will these changes take place? But what is certain is that the challenge of embracing this evolution is more on the teachers and the administration, than on the learners. While the learners are already on their way, teachers need to put in the extra hours to manage the technology-overload. But global data shows that the inevitability of an overhaul of the education system is universally accepted, and what remains to be done is taking the bold steps towards it.

Author – Venguswamy Ramaswamy, Global Head, TCS iON

Source – https://www.educationtimes.com/article/260/201906172019061715515228541d1c15

DIMENSiON April 2019 | Learning

TCS iON Digital Learning

Direct social media sharing of TCS iON Digital Learning posts is now enabled

• Feature: Introducing enablers sharing with Social media

• Description: Now, you can share the iDL posts with social media. To enable this functionality, you must configure the share level of the post to “Open to All”.

You can share the posts with following platforms: Twitter, Facebook, Google Bookmarks and LinkedIn.

You can also copy the social link to clipboard and use the same on other platforms to display the iDL posts.

After sharing, the blogpost content displays the content and the image (if present) in the description while for other enablers, only title displays in the social media platform along with a message to login to view the complete post.

• Key benefits: Share TCS iON Digital Learning Post with social media.

Presenting TinCan for secure and reliable Data

• Feature: Introducing TinCan in courses

• Description: Earlier, only SCORM was supported in course. Now, A new feature is introduced which allows you to upload the TinCan package as content.

The TinCan content works like a SCORM which is secure by default and has richer data.

TinCan is an open source API which adds some needed extra functionality to SCORM and lifts many restrictions of the older specifications. All the options of content creation in iDL are similar to SCORM package content.

• Key benefits:
• TinCan provides simplicity, extra security measures, and the ability to run the courses.
• Supports better for offline and mobile learning with more detailed reports, when used outside the LMS.

Cloud Computing- Data On Your Fingertips

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Computing Power To Stay One Step Ahead

“Sharing is Caring”- and cloud computing is the perfect example of this. When it comes to the IT world, the most common topic of discussion in recent times is cloud computing. Cloud computing has created a wave of progress like no other.

What is Cloud Computing?

In simple terms, cloud computing refers to massive data storage and distribution without a single user intervention. It can also be described as online data centres which are made available to multiple users to store and access data on demand.

The largest cloud in the public domain is Amazon AWS which was launched in 2006. The humongous system provides companies, individuals and even governments a space on their cloud to manage and run operations.

Software professionals are looking to make the most of this technology because as per market trends and the world becoming a smaller place, cloud computing seems to be most coveted profession of the future.

Advantages of Considering a Career in Cloud Computing

Given the growing popularity of the field, cloud computing is fast becoming a profession to reckon with. Some of the reasons for you to consider cloud computing as a serious career option are:

• Demand for computing professionals is on the rise

Corporates are looking for professionals who have mastered this new technology to further advance their company goals. Organizations nowadays need strong cloud support to ensure the smooth functioning of their hardware and software. A cloud computing certification bolsters your resume and proves to the company that you’re the right candidate for them. It is a technology that is here to stay, so a certification will give you an edge over others.

• Computing professional enjoy a handsome pay

Since this is a relatively new technology, professionals in the market are emerging. This raises the demand for certified cloud computing professionals and increases your bargaining power as well. It also gives you the chance to choose from a list of favourite companies. Given that it is still a niche field professionals with a valid certification are handsomely recompensed.

• Job Security

Cloud computing aims to maintain and sustain massive amounts of data. A certification proves your credibility with your employer and helps you cement your position in the organization. Another reason for this to be a secure field is that it is not affected by market conditions. Cloud computing is independent of volatility and serves as a long term and fruitful profession.

Cloud computing has transformed the way businesses operate. From multi nationals to start ups all employ some form of cloud computing to further their business. If you’re looking for a career that will keep you in demand and allow the freedom of choice, then this is the way to go.

Before you decide to take the plunge, consider all options to enhance your resume so that prospective employees can bank on your expertise. One such certification that can give you the much needed impetus is TCS iON ProCert – Cloud Computing.

This certification helps your gauge your proficiency and provides inputs to improve your skill set. An added bonus is that it gives you the chance to connect with global corporates who are on the lookout to hire certified professionals. Opt for a recognized Cloud Computing certification today and watch your career soar!

Visit http://bit.ly/Cloud_Applications for more details.