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This workshop was conducted by Prof. Deepak B. Phatak, Prof. Uday Gaitonde, Prof. Kannan Moudagalya from November 10th, 2012 to November 11th, 2012

Introduction:

It is now well established that the quality of education can be improved considerably by proper use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), to supplement the conventional mode of education. Aakash tablets were launched by MHRD in October 2011. These are Low Cost Access cum- computing Devices. The National Mission on Education using ICT (NME-ICT) envisages that these tablets should be deployed for empowering our students and teachers. The first project under this scheme, aims at deploying 1,00,000 tablets in the engineering colleges of the country, for their effective use in higher education. Adequate number of tablets will be issued at no cost to each participating Institute. Any development of contents and applications done by the students and faculty will be released in Open Source. The documentation and testing is expected to meet global standards of quality. It is expected that participation in this project will enhance Research and Development activities in this area, in all the participating Institutes. Larger deployment is being planned in the coming years.

Under this project, IIT Bombay plans to deploy the Aakash tablets in select engineering institutions in India, with two objectives. The first is to test and enhance the effectiveness of these tablets for use in class rooms. The second is development of new educational applications and contents on Aakash, largely through final year Research and Development projects done by BE/ME students at these Institutes.

Objective:

The objective of this workshop is to introduce the tablet computers in general, and Aakash tablets in particular, to the participating faculty. The emphasis will be on using applications specially developed for Aakash at IIT Bombay, for effective use of these tablets in the educational process. Following topics will be covered in the workshop

• Introduction to tablet computers and Aakash.
• Applications available on Android platform
• Special educational applications:
• Clicker software for conducting tests.
• Proximity application to develop interactive lessons
• Programming environment on Aakash(C, C++, Python)
• Engineering application – Robot Control
• No. of participants: 144 from Anurag Group of Institutions.