Government working towards building national e-library

The government is working towards building a massive national e-library and providing wi-fi connectivity to classrooms, Amita Sharma, advisor, ministry of human resource development, said here Wednesday.

"The government is working on creating a MOOC (massive open online course) platform called Swayam. Work is in progress and students will soon be able to log into the web and access free content created by our own premier institutes," Sharma said.

"Activities relating to building a massive, national e-library and providing wi-fi connectivity to classrooms has already been initiated," Sharma added.

She said that IIT Bombay had signed an agreement with Edex to carry this venture forward.

Sharma was speaking at the Indo-US Technology Summit 2014, which was organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, the Department of Science and Technology, the government of India and the US Department of State.

"While the government is taking aggressive initiatives to improve the scenario of higher education in the country, close collaboration with the industry should also be encouraged to build world class academic institutions to nurture Indian students and attract global talent," R. Chidambaram, principal scientific advisor, government of India, said.

While talking about emerging technology, which holds the potential of revolutionising the higher education system, he listed some key classroom breakthroughs like cloud computing, mobile learning, tablet computing, MOOC, open content, learning analytics, gamification, 3-D printing, virtual and remote labs and wearable technology.

"Technology-driven higher education is a must to help drive the vision of creating a 'knowledge economy'," Chidambaram added.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Aug 15 Independence Day address to the nation announced a Rs.1 lakh crore project to transform the country into a digitally empowered and connected knowledge economy.