From open-heart surgery to amputations, sex-change operations to autopsies, the operating rooms of the world have gone online. One website, OR-Live, regularly broadcasts live from the O.R.  For example, tune in next week to watch a hysterectomy. These broadcasts, and dozens of other videos posted to YouTube, draw hundreds of thousands of viewers. We’ve got four words for you: advertising-supported health care.

And to jump-start the movement, we’ve curated 10 of the best surgical videos we could find. Be forewarned, though, be very forewarned: Some of these are grisly, and all of them are graphic. The autopsy and sex-change operation, in particular, are very not-safe-for-work and not-safe-for-the-squeamish.

A few other helpful suggestions we’ve compiled from personal research. Don’t watch while eating a hamburger or steak. Don’t send this link to your mom, even if she’s a doctor. And do not, under any circumstances, send one of these to your co-workers with the subject line, New From Zooborns, as a joke. It’s not funny.

Go to Wired to watch video’s >>

Posted by Alexis Madrigal for Wired. [link to original post]

Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, Datla Hanumanta Raju, who was recently elected ICSI president, said the institute had an impressive membership of over 23,000 and a student population of over 1.5 lakh, making it one of the biggest of its kind internationally.

The institute has tied up with Indira Gandhi National Open University, under which the latter will launch B Com course with corporate affairs and administration and M Com course with business policy and corporate governance exclusively for students of company secretary course and members of ICSI.

The ICSI is a statutory body that develops professionals required for high corporate governance and better known as company secretaries that every company with a paid up capital of Rs two crore or more is required to have under The Companies Act, 1956.

Students clearing the company secretary examination conducted by ICSI get to work in fields like corporate governance services, corporate secretarial services and certification services and corporate laws and advisory services among other top-level management functions, Datla Raju said.

ICSI members believe that lack of proper information to rural areas was one the reason why the CS examination was not as popular as other professions like medicine and engineering. “I do not know of any course that costs as little as Rs 20,000 and lands you right in the top management level, where you rub shoulders with the board of directors themselves,” Datla said, appealing to students to take up the course.

Posted in SakaalTimes

Yes, this is actually the “Rising India” or the “Changing face of India” in which villagers are getting as technology savvy as people in metros are, in their day-to-day life.

73% of Indians (Census 2001) live in rural India and if we want India to change or rise we need to empower these 73% Indians. This empowerment of rural Indians is not a social development aspect anymore instead it’s an opportunity for the upcoming revenue stream and this proposition is well understood by various business organizations so they have started making every possible effort to make inroads into the Indian rural market. All in all, we can say that this business objective combined with social development aspect is the new mantra to empower rural Indians. Although there are various ways to empower people living in rural areas but seeing the upsurge of Internet usage, it seems to be, one of the best ways for the development of rural India providing the villagers with the facility to communicate, extract information, perform e-commerce, e-learning and e-medicine etc. Now let us see how some organizations are using Internet to touch the lives of the Indian masses and bring about a positive change.

Taking Internet to villages

There are organizations that believe in going to villages and provide the villagers with hardware, Internet connection and guidance in order to carry out various activities like e-learning, e-commerce and e-health etc for the development of villagers.

United Villages, a US-based organization founded by Amir Alexander Hasson, which started its Indian operations in 2006, is actively working in Indian villages in Orissa to provide wireless Internet connectivity through Wi-fi to rural folk using its unique DakNet service.

Chintan Bakshi (COO) of United Villages, India in an interview with Kapil Ohri talked about the work United Villages is doing in the villages of Bhubaneswar (Orissa).

What are the various services United Villages provide to the villagers in Bhubaneswar? And what is its modus operandi?

United Villages basically provide three types of services to the villagers enabled through its DakNet services and we charge for them using prepaid cards system.

1. Information service: Villagers can order any type of information they want on career, health etc. which is difficult to get in a village. We collect information at our end and deliver them through our kiosk in the village.

2. Communication service: Villagers can record voice message in the kiosk/computer system at the franchisee’s place. A three-minute voice message costs 90 paisa anywhere in India. Similarly text message costs one rupee per message. Villagers can also send video message using web camera installed at the kiosk.

3. E-commerce: Villagers can order anything which is not available locally like books or music cassettes etc., United Villages purchases it from the city and delivers it back to the villager.

Modus Operandi

Franchise and kiosk: We appoint a villager as a franchisee of United Villages and a computer system called kiosk is set up at his place. He is provided with prepaid cards. Now the villagers who want to extract any information or send any voice message, text message or video message or want to purchase any product which is not available locally, buy a prepaid card from him and uses this card to order information, do any communication or purchase any product. This kiosk is actually offline but it stores the web pages that can be transmitted through DakNet service.

DakNet service: United Villages has buses, which are fitted with short range Wi-fi system and antenna. These buses go to the villages and using its Wi-Fi system pick up the information stored in the computer/kiosk of franchisee. The information transfer from kiosk to the system in Wi-fi bus happens at a very fast speed. After collecting the information from villages, buses come to the United Villages city office which has broadband Internet connection, here the information/messages collected from villages is transmitted to the computers in the office and from there they are finally relayed to the required destination.

The required information is collected or e-mails are received and stored or anything ordered by villager say a book is purchased. Information/messages stored in web pages are transmitted to the system in the Wi-Fi bus and goods ordered by villagers are kept in the buses. Now when the bus goes back to the villages, information and messages are transmitted to the Franchisee’s kiosk using Wi-fi system and goods are delivered to the villagers. This is similar to postal service – that’s why we call it DakNet (Postal network).

What is the reach of United Villages in India?

We started in India around June, 2006 and we have started with Bhubaneswar (Orissa) as of now covering 15 villages and 1 franchise in each village and we have around 7-8 Wi-fi buses with us.

One of the other web-based initiatives is ITC’s e-choupal launched in the year 2000 and it covers 3.5 million farmers in 31,000 villages through 5200 kiosks across six states (Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan). They help farmers in the villages to get information on crops, weather conditions, fertilizers and help them to trade in local mandi (market). Their modus operandi involves the setting up of computer system (kiosk) in the village that is managed by a farmer called “Sanchalak”. Through this system (kiosk) villagers can collect information in their local language on the weather, crop prices in the market, scientific farm practices and perform e-trading for sale of crops, purchase of farm equipments and fertilizers etc. The portal echoupal.com is available in regional languages.

Localization of content

Think global- act local. For various business organizations in India like HLL and ITC this is not a new mantra anymore but its importance is now recognized by various Internet- based organizations too and they have understood that if they want to reach the masses they have to adopt this strategy. The result of this strategy is the “localization of content” on their websites.

Various Internet portals that used to provide their content in English only have now diversified into regional languages’ content too in order to reach the masses. Like Yahoo India has launched seven regional language portals (Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Punjabi, Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu) apart from the English one. Google search is now available in Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telegu, Marathi and English. India-based Internet search engine Guruji.com also gives an option to search in Hindi, Kannada, Telegu and English.

These are the few examples which show that the importance of rural India is very well recognized by organizations ranging from United Villages, ITC e-choupal to big Internet portals like Google and Yahoo. Although they are driving in the rural areas for their own profit but the bottomline is – their web-based endeavours are actually empowering India and helping rural India get connected.

Posted in ZEENEWS.COM

Freedom through Education Plus (FTE+), an e-Learning programme for schools, has been launched in Mysore. Mysore Round Table-21 (MRT-21) and Mysore Ladies Club-9 (MLT-9) launched the programme at Sarvajanika Girls School atop Chamundi Hills.

Says FTE+ Coordinator Subbu Jois, “The project provides multimedia learning equipment to rural schools. It will help children in understanding the subject better.” The project is a supplement towards teacher training efforts, focusing on qualitative improvement of education delivered and better utilisation of resources.

Freedom through Education (FTE) is the national project of Round Table India (RTI) to build classrooms in rural areas and educate one million children.

Classrooms built

“As part of this project, RTI has built nearly 2,000 classrooms in rural areas at a cost of Rs. 75 crore. MRT-21 has built 75 classrooms in and around Mysore,” said MRT-21 Chairman Bhanu Kiran. FTE+ is the extension of Freedom through Education.

The multimedia learning comes with a projector, UPS and Edurite e-learning software. The package caters to the requirements of students between Class III and X for Science, Mathematics, Social Studies, spoken English and computer training.

The languages available in the package are Kannada, Tamil, Hindi and Gurmukhi. The package comes with training and support at the schools.

“The advantages of the programme are audio-visual interactive learning; higher and longer retention and audio-visual animation to ‘walk’ the child through the relevant subject, thereby supplanting black boards and oral instructions,” Mr. Jois said.

The FTE had been introduced in more than 10 government schools in Bangalore, Hosur and Chennai.

“The project in Bangalore lead to 25 per cent improvement in attendance, scores and pass percentage,” Mr. Jois said. An increase in admissions was also seen in the subsequent year.

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She anticipates that the new the facility, which would be accessible on home desktops and from Internet cafes, on a 24×7 basis, will especially benefit students from rural, semi-urban and remote areas looking for company secretarial education.

“Their learning, self-evaluation, querying, interactive education needs will all be satisfied through this modern distance learning process,” says Ms Malhotra, during the course of an e-mail interaction with Business Line.

“After the virtual class room model is launched, e-learning will provide opportunity to students to interact with faculties and co-students online and live.”

Excerpts from the interview.

Are you developing courses relating to capital market needs?

Yes. The ICSI is designing training programmes and modules in various aspects of capital market functioning to make the company secretary proficient in both the Indian and international securities and commodities market.

What are the programmes about?

In collaboration with BSE Training Institute, we are launching training programmes in financial analysis, securities analysis, share valuation, derivatives, stock exchange working, market analysis, investment analysis, and functioning of market intermediaries, brokers and portfolio managers. We expect that company secretaries will acquire expertise in international securities markets, listing abroad, international finance etc. through these training programmes.

Do you see new avenues opening up for company secretaries?

Sure. One such avenue is corporate insolvency. To make company secretaries specialists and experts in managing corporates and corporate assets during insolvency proceedings, the institute has entered into collaboration with INSOL, an international organisation of insolvency specialists.

The collaboration will enable the institute conduct training programmes for professionalising the Indian corporate insolvency work. Efficient handling of insolvency work can help the investors, various stakeholders and the economy as a whole by ensuring a faster unlocking and reallocation of resources.

Any work on the corporate governance side?

Let me tell you about one of our recent initiatives: the directors’ orientation programmes organised by the institute. These aim at imparting better legal and financial knowledge, for effective business orientation, to ensure better boardroom management, board leadership dynamics and visionary team direction, all of which add crucial long-term value and vision to corporate functioning.

We are aware that there are more important factors than the qualifications or legal criteria in deciding who will be better directors for providing board leadership and better governance in corporates.

Factors such as the integrity, quality, independence, judgment, knowledge and experience count while acquiring and applying skills of better directorship. Our programmes equip professionals with the necessary knowledge and skills so that they are able to contribute effectively as corporate directors, especially as independent directors.

On the new syllabus.

The institute is aware of the fast changing knowledge and skills requirements for top grade corporate professionals that are in demand today and will continue to be so in the future. Taking inventory of the demands on company secretaries 10 years down the line, the institute constituted a syllabus review committee and adapted a new syllabus to be implemented from 2008.

Adopting contemporary nomenclatures for the three courses to be offered for company secretaryship, the new syllabus will term the three stages as Foundation Programme, Executive Programme and Professional Programme.

Apart from rationalising the present syllabi to make them more contemporary and relevant to the needs of corporate, the new syllabus also introduces new concepts and papers, new emphasis and futuristic trends. While too theoretical and quantitative topics are given a go-by, those who pursue company secretaryship under the new syllabus will also acquire the path to mastery over intricacies of corporate finance, international economics and developments, corporate sustainability, ethics and governance and due diligence techniques.

On the new training templates.

Corporate professionalism comes not only from contemporary theoretical grounding and knowledge base; it also requires acquisition of practical skills, life skills and corporate cultural intelligence. The institute has designed new training templates for students who pass the Professional Programme before they acquire Company Secretaryship qualification.

Under a memorandum of understanding with Symbiosis Institute of Management, the institute will be able to provide training in not only current corporate work of all kinds but also in critical skills like leadership, communication, presentation, group discussion, public speaking, negotiations and cultural integration.

The aim is to enable company secretaries excel in adding value to corporate functioning in mergers, takeovers, international trade and finance, corporate communication and public relations.

Bio:

Ms Preeti Malhotra, a fellow member of the ICSI (1991), did her graduation in commerce and law from Delhi University. Elected as the first woman President of the institute, she is the Group President–Corporate Affairs and Company Secretary of SpiceCommunications Ltd, a cellular service provider.

Ms Malhotra was a member of the Dr JJ Irani Expert Committee constituted by the Ministry of Company Affairs for inputs on the new company law. An ex-officio member of National Advisory Committee on Accounting Standards in India (NACAS), she is also the member of the Governing Council of National Foundation for Corporate Governance.

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There has always been the apprehension about how can E-learning help the masses in the rural part of the country, despite the ‘digital leap’ that India has made.

But the initiatives of Gandhigram Rural Institute, a provider in distance education and a deemed university in Tamil Nadu, shows how the possibility of E-learning can be utilised to reach out to the masses.

Gandhigram has created an E-learning programme for creating literacy campaign in the rural areas and it is a classic example of the effective reach of technology in helping towards the development of rural India.

An E-learning center is set up by the institute in every village, where the people are taught how to read and write by using visual and audio content.

Content are developed on various issues particularly faced by the villagers such as Panchayati Raj, right to information, human rights, self funding, sanitation, environment restoration, superstitions, etc.

“The criterion is to educate the rural masses on the basic knowledge and about the current happening around the globe,” said L. Raja, director, Gandhigram Rural Institute, while speaking to CyberMedia on the sidelines of the two-day knowledge conclave being held in Bangalore.

He said, people from various sectors such as media, educational organization, government organization etc are invited to conduct workshop through which we get information for generating the content.

The villagers so far have welcomed this initiative openly and are very excited about e-learning as the content in form of audio and visual are very appealing to them.

The idea to initiate such kind of e-learning campaign was generated to this institute by TCS’s literacy model.

This initiative was started by the institute five years ago and is funded by UGC.

The university so far has covered 100 villages and educated about forty to fifty thousand villagers.

This campaign shows the power of technology to transform the entire country in to a high knowledge base.

Here lies the answer to the question; of how effective is e-learning not only for higher education but also for increasing literacy rate and as well as rural development of the country.

Posted in CIOL

In view of such concerns, the recently constituted Rural Education Cell, department of educational surveys and data processing, NCERT, organised a national seminar on ‘school education in rural India’ at its Delhi headquarters. The seminar provided a platform to policy analysts, administrators, researchers and practitioners to analyse the current scenario in rural education, identify problems and come up with recommendations to improve the situation.

EMPOWERING THE GIRL CHILD
Talking about the philosophy and success of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBVs) — a scheme for girls from rural and disadvantaged groups from educationally backward blocks (EBBs) — Gouri Srivastava, a professor with Department of Women’s Studies, NCERT, says: “The scheme is aimed at realising the constitutional commitment of providing free and compulsory education to all children in the age group of 6-14 years. The programme also aims to bridge gender and social gaps in education, which is an important objective of SSA.”

Currently, the scheme is operational in over 3,000 EBBs in 24 states, where rural female literacy is below the national average and the gender gap in literacy is more than the national average. At present, there are 2,578 KGBVs, of which 2,383 are operational and the total number of girls enrolled is 1,76,713, according to Srivastava.

Similarly, the Mahila Samakhya Programme (MSP), working in the field of women empowerment through education, aims to promote ‘skill-development’ and ‘entrepreurial skills’ to make women self-reliant. Rashmi Sinha, programme director, MSP, says: “We are not into imparting skills like sewing or tailoring. Instead, we impart skills like plumbing, repairing and so on to break gender stereotypes and empower girls. So, when flooring has to be done in classrooms or taps are not working, our students are in a position to handle the situation.”

Likewise, the ‘Pehchaan’ project is a model that attempts to ensure that out-of-school girls (9-14 years) are provided with educational opportunities and brought on par with the other children of their age in schools. The project is a collaboration between Unicef, NGOs Digantar and Culp and the community.

COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION
Recognising community participation as one of the effective strategies to improve access and quality in education, Kashyapi Awasthi, lecturer from M S University of Baroda, Gujarat, cites an example: “A rural school of Surat owns an LCD projector through community funding and children of 9-10 years of age can use it effectively for teaching-learning processes.”

Similarly, she adds, “There is a government school in Gujarat with 70 herbal plants that involves students in activity-based learning like planting seeds, encouraging concept learning like the germination process, and so on. It turned out to be such a successful venture that four private schools in the vicinity had to close down, with students from the private schools moving to the government school.” It is the devotion of individuals, innovative practices employed, the joint efforts of the school and community that works wonders, she added.

INNOVATIVE PRACTICES
Participatory videos can best be used to empower underprivileged students from rural areas, feels Vedavati Ravindra Jogi, an educational professional from Pune. Breaking away from producing educational videos for children, she believes that innovation and creativity of children should instead be tapped to enable maximum learning. Thus, she conducted a study on class VIII and IX students where students were imparted lessons in script writing, video-shooting and editing, using various formats. Today, her students are creative individuals producing video clips on concepts like force, pressure, covalent bonds, and so on.

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Bangalore-based Comat Technologies Pvt Ltd has decided to initiate e-learning English classes through compact discs and VSAT in the villages of UP.

Sensing the state as a potential market, the company will establish rural centres in various parts of the state by September 2008 and then start the e-classes by year end at the centres.

“Our decision to enter the UP market is well deliberated. There is a huge demand to learn the language in the hinterland,” said Rathi Gangadhar of the Comat Technologies.

“Two computers will be installed at each centre to be connected with Internet through VSAT. Later, other courses could also be taken up like coaching classes for engineering, which already heavy been a big success in Karnataka and Haryana,” she said.

Considering that the erratic power supply could be a major hurdle in the implementation of the project in UP, 24-hour power backup for the computers has been included in the set-up cost by the company.

The fee of the course is expected to be between Rs 500 and Rs 5,000, depending on the course undertaken by the students. A short-term course on compact discs, for instance, will cost less than a four-month course on VSAT. For courses provided through VSAT, a village classroom will be connected to specialised centres in other parts of the country, enabling the students to interact with their teacher through video conferencing.

Though it is still to be seen how many villagers will pay the given amount for a course, the company is

optimistic and claims that their survey reveals that people are ready to shell out the amount to learn the language.

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• Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
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While learning and stimulating your own brain, you are also helping hungry people!

The BJP is a leading opposition party in India’s parliament, and is using online advertising and its own Web site as key elements of its campaign strategy for the elections that start next month.

The party’s promise to standardize on open source is a departure from the party’s earlier policy not to take sides with either open source or proprietary software, leaving these decisions to individual government agencies.

The party ruled the country from October 1999 to May 2004. The subsequent United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government also continued with the hands-off policy on selection of open source or proprietary software.

Some state governments, however, have programs around open-source software.

An “IT Vision Document” released by the BJP on Saturday also proposes a Multipurpose National Identity Card (MNIC) with a unique Citizen Identification Number (CIN) for every Indian citizen in three years. The cards will replace all other identification systems, the party said.

BJP also plans to distribute laptop computers at Indian Rupees 10,000 (US$200) to 10 million students, with interest-free loans offered to students who can’t afford a one-time payment.

It has also promised to create 12 million call center and business process outsourcing (BPO) jobs in India’s rural areas. The outsourcing boom in India has not reached India’s rural areas, prompting large scale migration of people from villages to cities.

Source: Posted in Yahoo! Tech.