Panelist:

• Shubhranshu Choudhary, Founder, CGNet Swara
• Pushpendra pal singh, HOD, Journalism Department, Makhanlal Chaturvedi National Communication & Journalism University

Moderator :  Prasanto Kumar Roy, Advisor & Eminent Journalist, CyberMedia

Focus

• Discuss the best digital initiatives in the Education, Learning & Empowerment and News & Journalism sector.
• Highlight the effect of digitization for increased outreach of Education and Learning
• How digital content have made learning more convenient and have given birth to digital classrooms
• Discuss moving towards a paperless journalism using digital tools
• How new form of journalism like blogs, websites, Forums etc have replaced traditional mediums.
• Future mediums which will be used for Education and Journalism

Presentations- Education, Learning & Empowerment

• e-thaksalawa, The National e-learning portal for General Education
• Buddy4study.com- A Scholarship Portal, Smiling Star Advisory Pvt Ltd., Ashutosh Burnwal, Founder, Director, Buddy4study.com
• AllExamsPreparation.com, SphuronLabs
• Procurementlearning.org, The World Bank, A K Kalesh Kumar
• Edu Squares, Raghu Kanchustambham, CEO, Concept Waves Software Solutions Pvt
• iChemist – Titration Simulator, X Fast Games, Isuru Kusumal Rajapakse
• Xomidhan, Anshuman Dutta, Core team member, Xomidhan Society
• ADB TA7872- Khan Academy Localization Project , Ministry of Education, Sri Lanka., Chrishan Pereira, Consultant
• NEKTech-Linux, Pankaj Saraf, Founder & Director, NEKTech Research Labs

Presentations- News & Journalism

• Citizen Matters, Meera K, Co-founder, Oorvani Foundation
• Magzter Stay Informed, Girish Ramdas, Magzter Inc.
• EnvironmentMove.com, Md. Tawhid Hossain, CEO & Editor in Chief, Environment move Communication

Ms. Rucha  Deshpande , Programme Manager, Digital  Foundation opened the session with a welcome note and invited  session moderator, Mr. Prasanto Kumar Roy, Advisor & Eminent Journalist, Cyber Media to brief discussants on the thematic areas of discussion to be followed in the session.

Mr. Shubhranshu Choudhary, Founder, CGNet Swara and Mr.Sarman Nagele, Editor, MP Post were panelists for the day.

A total of 12 presentations were made. Presentations were divided into two categories- Education, Learning & Empowerment and News & Journalism.

Mr. G.M.Niel Gunadasa, Director of Education Information & Communication Technology from e-Thaksalawa was the first presenter of the day.  E-Thaksalwa  is an e-learning portal initiated by Government of Srilanka. The portal offers interactive content designed to suit the educational needs of the school children. The project is entirely run by Srilankan Government, currently used in 10, 300 government schools across Srilanka, has reached out to 4 million students as of now.  Everything from content generation, content development to content management is entirely done by the teachers themselves.

Ms. Meera K, Co- Founder, Oorvani Foundation, Bangalore made a presentation on Citizen Matters, a Bangalore focused citizen- oriented web news magazine. Citizen matters does a lot of in-depth reporting, investigative and watchdog Journalism on issues ranging from  civic ,  city public affairs, community, culture and citizenship.

At Citizen Matters, we look at why things happen, where they happen and how change can be brought in the society”, shared Ms. Meera.
Mr. Ashutosh Burmwal, Founder, Buddy4study made the next presentation. Buddy4study is an online repository of educational scholarships and fellowships. The portal offers exhaustive list of scholarships and also assists students in filling the application forms. Students can register and avail information on various scholarships and fellowships. There are over 77,000 registered users.  Buddy4study works on AAP model- Awareness, Application and Preparation.  Scholarships are categorized on the basis of merit, means, gender, minority etc… Besides academic scholarships, the portal provides information on scholarships in subjects- Arts, paintings, literature, sports, science and innovation.

Getting the verified information on the scholarship was one the major challenge “, noted Mr. Ashutosh.
Ms. Ajnita from Magzter gave the presentation.  Magzter is a global digital magazine, launched in June 2011. It can be accessed through any smart phones or tablets.  The application allows publishers to distribute digital editions of their magazine globally without any upfront cost.  The newsstand has over 4500 magazines and 25000+ books from over 1500 publisers.

Next presentations were made by Mr.  A K Kalesh Kumar of Procurement learning.org. He explained that they have launched a portal www.procurementlearning.org to help capacity building in public procurement. The portal offers a range of courses in public procurement. These are: Certificate Program in Public Procurement (CPPP), Professional Diploma in Public Procurement (PDPP) and Certificate Program in Contract Management (CPCM). The CPPP is the first ever, free procurement certificate delivered as Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).

Mr. Raghu of EduSqaure has explained that it is a cloud based platform for managing any educational institution. It offers some 24 different modules such as Sales, Admissions, Fee Handling, Expenses, Operations, Attendance, Question Bank, Assessments and so on for ICT-enabled management of different aspects of the activities of any education service provider.

Mr.  Chrishan Pereira , Khan Academy Localization Project explained  that they have initiated the project to localise video tutorials of the globally acclaimed Khan Academy. The search function allows students to search the videos in English, Sinhala and Singlish (Sinhala typed in English – the SMS language) for better access. He explains that the prime objective is to enhance the mathematics skills of Sri Lankan school children while making the subject more acceptable and enjoyable in a school environment.

Next presentation was made by Xomidhan , online career counseling portal. The portal provides free career counseling services to students from North East using the concept of crowd sourcing. Apart from career counseling, the website also provides free access to articles customised specially for students from North East India and written by Xomidhan counselors. It also collaborates with other regional newspapers/magazines to answer career related queries as part of its efforts to reach people who cannot access the Internet.

Rapporteur Comment:  Few presentations were cancelled due to time constraint.  Revenue generation and project sustainability were the commonly asked questions.