‘Telecom sector is changing the face of education’

With a Post Doctoral Research Fellowship from Ministry of HRD on Telecom Technology Transfer and PhD in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, Pande carries out research in technology transfer, ICT innovations in rural education, smart sensing networks and international business.

A dedicated professional with 19 years of academic experience specialising in personnel management, interpersonal and communication skills, Pande is well-known as an effective communicator with strong relationship management skills. He speaks to Rajesh Rao on how the telecom industry is changing the way education is imparted.

Q: How is the telecom industry changing the way education is imparted?
A: It has been indicated that mobile devices are a scalable technology assisted with learning alternative to address the gaps and has helped to reduce 50% dropouts from primary education. Students with a camera enabled cellphone can annotate their everyday assignments with pictures.

Handhelds can also function as ubiquitous educational resource if graphing tools, language dictionaries, logarithmic tables, historical and geographical factoids are bundled along with the device. 

Learning Lab project is unique as it does not adopt a technologically deterministic approach. Rather, it strives to let user needs and contextual factors shape the choice of technology.

Q: Will the telecom connectivity help in overcoming limitation of providing education especially in rural and remote areas of India?
A: Mobile enabled platform has opened new fields such as m-infotainment, m-connectivity, m-enterprise, m-commerce, m-health and m-education.

M-infotainment content focuses on current trends in music and movies among others. Education is related to training and learning through mobile; a platform when used effectively in rural areas will not only benefit education but also the overall development of rural India.

Q: How will m-learning and e-learning help achieve government’s initiative of ‘Education for all’?
A: The launch of 3G, LTE and WiMAX services will play a key role in increasing rural telephony and options for rural education. Through m-learning and e-learning, we can easily overcome geographic barriers as it provides learning at anytime from anywhere.

Another advantage is that it will remove the need to physically attend a course, eliminating travel time and costs. Also, with the increase in rural telecom density, m-learning will be the most feasible way to achieve government’s initiative of education for all. This will benefit rural areas where even transportation is a problem.

Offline learning is possible through CD ROMs and DVDs as broadband penetration is still a long way to go in rural India. The technology can be deployed rapidly in remote location and will be able to support the minimum capacity and speed requirements that will be laid down by the government in its national e-governance plan initiatives.

Q: Tell us about the importance of instant communication for knowledge dissemination?
A: With technology increasing at a great pace, people want information instantly. Emails, blogs, instant messaging and social networking sites plays a major role in instant communication for knowledge dissemination. People want to keep themselves updated via gadgets.

They prefer reading newspapers on their gadgets. Education is also heading in the same direction due to technology that facilitates fast, cheap, equitable, and resource-efficient access to information, accumulated knowledge, learning opportunities and co-operation support tools.

As information becomes accessible to anyone and anywhere, it is increasingly becoming a basic economic resource and a structuring factor in today’s society.

The rapid development of information and communication technologies and their application present the world community with unlimited opportunities.

Q: What are the career prospects for freshers in the booming telecom sector in India?
In the next few years, telecom sector is going to expand at a neck breaking pace. There are fifteen verticals such as value added services, network security, service providers, handset manufacturers, telecom infrastructure, billing companies, service marketing, telecom software, telecom equipment manufacturers, quality of service, telecom regulation, customer grievance and support, telecom health services, telecom education services and telecom agriculture services.

These verticals are in need of unique technology and skill management sets. The telecom sector will certainly grow at a rate of over 20% in the near future and according to the projection, jobs in this sector will grow at 7% every year.