ICT and Future Education

1. USD 25 • EUR 20 • JPY 2,300
Ericsson Issue no. 1 2012
GANDHI
REVISITED
SAM PITRODA WANTS INDIA TO BUILD
ITS OWN TECHNOLOGICAL ECOSYSTEM
What makes a grid smart
DON’T BE FOOLED BY
THE GREEN LIGHTS
Television
in the eye of its beholders
A MAGNA CARTA
Opinion
FOR DIGITAL CONTENT
YOU’RE NOT AS CLEVER
AS YOU THINK
17 PAGES THEME – HOW CONNECTED LEARNING IS TURNING EDUCATION UPSIDE DOWN

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4. contents
Ericsson
ERICSSON BUSINESS REVIEW [9] Editorial: It’s old school, really
is Ericsson’s global business
magazine, focusing on thought
Connected learning has the potential to take education back to original values. Socrates would
leadership and providing a most likely have approved.
long-term perspective on business
strategies in telecommunications. [10] Cover story: Building a better India
The magazine is distributed to Sam Pitroda, the man behind India’s communications revolution, believes that India must
readers in more than 130 countries.
build its own technological ecosystems based on holistic, sustainable, Gandhian values that
ADDRESS originate from rural realities.
Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson,
SE-164 83, Stockholm, Sweden
Phone: +46 8 719 00 00
[20] THEME: The tools of education – soon at a museum near you
Ericsson ConsumerLab’s Future School project is providing important insights into the
ADDRESS CHANGES education of tomorrow.
Strömberg Distribution AB,
E-mail: business.review@strd.se
[27] THEME: We define innovation too narrowly
PUBLISHER Ken Banks, creator of the nonprofit mobile service FrontlineSMS, says development issues
Patrik Regårdh such as education require us to start with the problem, not the technology.
EDITORIAL COUNCIL
Patrik Regårdh, Ulrika Bergström, [29] THEME: Can technology eliminate teachers?
Susanna Bävertoft, Erik Kruse, Professor Sugata Mitra’s approach is to create a self−organizing learning environment.
Dag Helmfrid
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF [30] THEME: Don’t rely too much on technology
Mats Thorén Professor Richard Fletcher believes nothing will ever replace human storytelling as the most
mats.thoren@jgcommunication.se effective and popular means of educating people.
DEPUTY EDITOR
Nathan Hegedus [33] THEME: Reinventing corporate learning
Ericsson shares its own experiences of creating a new kind of corporate learning.
ART DIRECTOR
Jan Sturestig
[38] Smart−grid communications: enabling next−generation energy networks
EDITORIAL OFFICE This involves more than just a simple bolt−on to the existing power grid.
JG Communication,
www.jgcommunication.se
[42] Content discontents: cultural protection in an internet world
COVER PHOTO The regulation of audiovisual services is becoming more complex as some states begin to
Chris Maluszynski recognize “the cultural exception.”
CHIEF SUBEDITOR
Birgitte van den Muyzenberg [45] How to get paid twice for everything you do, part 3:
SUBEDITORS
Innovation management
Michael Costello, Teslin Seale, Successful innovation management is primarily about recognizing and understanding
Paul Eade, Robert Naylor, effective routines and facilitating their emergence across the organization.
Lindsay Holmwood, Ian Nicholson
GRAPHS [51] An action plan to embrace the digitization of creativity in
Claes Göran Andersson the digital single market
PRINTER The European Commission needs to address some of the fundamental barriers preventing
VTT Grafiska, Vimmerby 2012 member states from reaping and sharing productivity and creativity gains.
VOLUME [55] Don’t be fooled by the green lights – become service−aware
17, Issue 1, 2012 Ensuring service quality isn’t as straightforward as it may appear. Customer experiences
ISSN now depend on the performance of multiple systems within the operator’s architecture.
1653-9486
COPYRIGHT
[58] What is TV these days? And do consumers really care?
Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson Understanding the multifaceted nature of TV is crucial to all players in the market.
[62] OPINION: You’re not as clever as you think
ERICSSON BUSINESS
REVIEW was awarded Innovation is hard and most of us, if we are honest, are not very good at it. The worry is that
Best Business-to-
Business publication in the internet age, things might be getting worse, not better.
2010 by The Swedish
Association of Custom
Publishers (SACP) [64] EXECUTIVE SUMMARIES
4 • EBR #1 2012

5. Jann Lipka
PHOTO
[20–35] THEME The old school – ready for the museum gallery
▶ BL ACKBOARD, CHALK AND SL ATES are already becoming we are already in a situation where education does not always
museum pieces. Soon, textbooks might follow. Technology need schools; it can take place anywhere, anytime.
is playing a key role in a radical transformation of education This issue’s theme examines the roles of the teacher, of tra−
– and a fierce debate is ongoing about whether this is a good ditional learning institutions of the teacher, and of corporate
thing or not. Is new technology being used wisely? Is it be− learning – all from the perspective of what new opportunities
ing used to cut costs, or to improve quality? The fact is that technology might bring.
EBR #1 2012 • 5

6. The big picture Enigma
THE ENIGMA OF MACHINE INTELLIGENCE
LO-TECH HI-TECH COMMUNICATION During World War II, German communications were encrypted
on the Enigma cipher machine, which has now gained cult status. While original models fetch very high
prices at auctions, there is also a healthy market for replicas and online simulators. The one pictured here is a
three-rotor model made around 1937, and is still in working order. When sold by Rau Antiques in 2010, the
asking price was USD 112,500.
As the moving rotors and wheels in the Enigma produced ever-changing alphabetic substitutions, the
secret codes were supposed to be unbreakable, even by someone in possession of the machine.
Breaking the codes or ciphers did present a formidable challenge. In fact, they had to be broken
afresh over and over again. The results of these efforts laid the groundwork for modern computing and
artificial intelligence.
The British mathematician and cryptanalyst Alan Turing was recruited to work at Bletchley Park, Britain’s
code-breaking center, devising techniques for breaking German ciphers.
It is now widely accepted that Turing was the father of theoretical and practical computing, although he
died in 1954 – just as developments in the field of computing were getting underway.
After the war, he talked about the prospect of a machine “learning” and even “building a brain.”
He wrote algorithms for chess-playing programs and regarded these as examples of what computers might
eventually be able to do. In his 1946 report on the new opportunities that computers represented, he
made his first reference to machine “intelligence” in connection with chess. ●
6 • EBR #1 2012

7. EBR #1 2012 • 7

8. details
JUST ONE “At this point, the iPhone is like a drug, and the carriers are hooked.
QUESTION
The question isn’t whether it’s worth it. It’s whether they can get
by without it.”
CRAIG MOFFETT, ANALYST AT SANFORD C. BERNSTEIN, TO CNET.
… to Samson Isa, Head
Control of personal
of Value Added Services
for Globacom Nigeria.
▶ Have African
? telecom companies
become more innovative
than their counterparts in
environments
more developed markets?
▶ WristQue is a proto- Part of the Massachusetts three simple
In terms of technolo-
! gy, Africa remains type wristband contain- Institute of Technology’s buttons: two
dependent on more devel- ing a processor; sensors MediaLab responsive en- to control tem-
oped countries. However, for temperature, humidi- vironments research, the perature, and a
there has been some real ty and light; and an ultra- project is intended to cre- third offering the
innovation in value-added wideband radio used for ate a practical way for ability to interact with
services like M-PESA
communicating with people to communicate multiple electronic devic-
(mobile money transfer) in
Kenya and specifically in home automation sys- with smart sensors in- es (computers, projec-
interactive voice response tems as well as pinpoint- stalled in a building. The tors, TVs) using gestures.
(IVR), which gets informa- ing the wearer’s location. wristband includes just New Scientist. ●
tion to customers in the
languages they understand
and encourages rural
telephony/penetration.
And we have seen
NOW READ THIS!
development in applica-
tions. We’ve seen collabo-
M
MOBILE INTERFACE THEORY: EMBODIED SPACE AND LOCATIVE MEDIA BY JASON FARMAN,
ration between original
equipment manufacturers, ROUTLEDGE, .
R The mass adoption of mobile devices – from smartphones to tablets
operators and local devel- to whatever comes next – is changing users’ very sense of self, as virtual space and
t
opers to work on apps that material space continually enhance, cooperate and disrupt each other.
m
locals in Nigeria and West ▶ BODIES, SPACE AND CULTURE. The author, an assistant professor at the University of Mary-
Africa can use, such as tra- land in the US, argues that we are using mobile media in a transformative way. The pervasive com-
ditional African games or puting model behind mobile devices allows people to connect across a range of locations, and this
localized “Western” prod- has changed the ways we “produce lived, embodied spaces.” In the book, Farman explores a range
ucts for the African market. of mobile practices, including storytelling projects, mobile maps and GPS technologies, as well as
However, in general, location-aware social networks, among many others.
African operators remain
caught in a trap of short FIWI ACCESS NETWORKS BY MARTIN MAIER AND NAVID GHAZISAIDI, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, .
life cycles, rising costs and Could the development of bimodal fiber−wireless− (FiWi) access networks be the
low average revenues per
user because of prevailing endgame of broadband−access evolution? Here is an overview of the network that
low disposable income may change everything.
and, sadly, low investment ▶ INTEGRATION CHALLENGE. Many researchers think that future broadband-access networks
in R&D. The telecom indus- w be bimodal, merging the strengths of both optical and wireless technologies. In one scenario, an
will
try in Africa also lacks o
optical-fiber network could provide a broadband connection to antenna base stations, which then
strong organizations, such w
wirelessly transmit signals to customers. The authors of this book – one of, if not the first on FiWi –
as telecom unions, and this e
explore the main technologies involved, describing both state-of-the-art fiber-access networks and
weakness can often make the latest developments in wireless-access networks, including Gigabit WiMAX and LTE, and also examine recent ad-
operators parochial and vances such as network coding.
less likely to take a long-
term view of how to devel- THINKING, FAST AND SLOW BY DANIEL KAHNEMAN, FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX, . One of the
op both their networks and leading psychologists of our age and a Nobel Prize winner in economics continues to
their services. challenge the rational model of judgment and decision−making, which carries
It is going to be very dif-
special relevance with regard to corporate strategies.
ficult to break this cycle of
▶ FAST VERSUS SLOW. Kahneman argues that we have two modes of thought: one is fast and
high costs and low profits.
emotional while the other is slower and more logical. The ways these two modes work together,
There needs to be a para-
and against each other, determine much of our decision-making, including the impact of loss aver-
digm shift that includes
sion and overconfidence on corporate strategies. The influential computer scientist Jaron Lanier
foreign investment, which
says about the book: “Before computer networking got cheap and ubiquitous, the sheer inefficiency of communica-
will help transfer skills to
African operators and spur tion dampened the effects of the quirks of human psychology on macro-scale events. No more.”
more R&D.
8 • EBR #1 2012

9. editorial
EDITORINCHIEF
It’s old school, really
▶ “I CANNOT TEACH ANYBODY ANYTHING. I CAN ONLY MAKE THEM THINK,” is a quote
iStock Photos
often attributed to Socrates.
Forget school as you know it. It’s quite apparent that the internet, computers
and mobile devices are already changing the way education is organized and
Fabrics of the future: carried out. Why must a school be a place that you go to at certain times?
To people like me, who quite frankly hated school, this is good news. But more
the new touchscreen to the point, technological advancement represents a welcome opportunity to
bring education back to its origins and founding values.
▶ SMART FABRICS that behave like the touchscreens on
mobile phones are being developed at the Polytechnique
Radical teachers have always emphasized the importance of fostering critical
Montréal technical school in Montréal, Canada. These thinking in education. The oldest and still the most powerful teaching method is
fabrics can be used to control items such as music players Socratic teaching, which focuses on giving pupils questions rather than answers.
and to adjust temperature. BMW already has plans to And that is why we, in this issue, have dared to address some of the big ques-
install touchscreen fabric in future car models. The fabric
tions about education – such as those concerning its ultimate purpose and ob-
is made from a soft polymer-based fiber that can be
woven and is easy to clean. Its electrical properties jectives. Unless you can answer these questions, it doesn’t matter what kind of
change depending on where it is touched. Finger touches technology you throw into the mix.
or swipes can modify the capacitance of the fabric, and
software can pinpoint and log exactly where it is IN SOCRATES’ TIME, SCHOOLS DIDN’T EVEN EXIST. Now, as connectivity brings peo-
touched. (New Scientist) ●
ple and knowledge together in an unprecedented way, we have a unique oppor-
tunity to go back to the drawing board. How should learners and learning insti-
FBI to monitor tutions change? This is a challenge that cuts across many traditional industrial
iStock Photos
and societal borders, and concerns policy-makers and social as well as business
social networks innovators everywhere.
The Networked Society Forum, hosted by Ericsson, recently brought togeth-
▶ THE US FEDERAL Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) plans er thought leaders, scholars and leading practitioners for a bout of inspiring
to continuously monitor keywords relating to terror- panel conversations aimed at reimagining education, learning and schools for
the global output of Face- ism, surveillance opera- the present generation and beyond. Our theme, “Connected learning,” was in-
book, Twitter and other so- tions, online crime and spired by their discussions.
cial networks. Plans show other topics of interest to Another dose of Socratic questioning is served up by evolutionist Mark Pagel.
that the bureau wants a the FBI. Agents would be From an evolutionary perspective, copying – also known as culture – has been
system that is able to auto- alerted if the searches pro- a decisive advantage for humankind. On the Opinion page, though, he wonders
matically search “publicly duced evidence of “break- what happens to innovation when the internet takes copying to a whole new
available” material from ing events, incidents, and level.
Facebook, Twitter and emerging threats.”
other social media sites for (New Scientist) ● IS IT POSSIBLE TO LEARN TO BE INNOVATIVE? In his third and concluding article in
our series on managing innovation, Göran Roos puts forward his ideas on how
companies can create structures that capture new ideas and methods.
Single interface for Two articles remind us that borders still matter: one about cultural protec-
tion in an internet world; and the other about the need for a
business users Magna Carta for digital content. It makes a lot of sense to
tear down market barriers, but policy-makers still need
▶ AT&T has launched a cloud-based unified convincing.
communications (UC) service, offering enterprises the Knowing what’s going on in your network used to be
ability to integrate chat, e-mail, voice over IP
calls and audio and video meetings simple. Not anymore. Our increasingly complex digital
over desktops and mobile devices. media behavior makes it necessary to develop advanced
AT&T UC Services consists of UC methodology aimed at making networks “service aware.”
Central and UC Voice. UC Central The Socratic question embedded here is really “what is
will give a business a single quality?” as outlined in the article “Don’t be fooled by
user communications interface
for both mobile and desktop the green lights.” The complexity of the answer is a true
computers, while UC Voice will blessing in disguise for network operators. ●
offer IP telephony from an AT&T
iStock Photos
cloud that can be used alone or
with UC Central. ●
MATS THORÉN, EDITORIN CHIEF

10. cover story Sam Pitroda
Basic facts NAME Satyanarayan (Sam) Gangaram Pitroda TITLE Adviser to the Prime Minister on Public
Information Infrastructure and Innovations EMPLOYER Government of India AGE 69 HEADQUARTERS New Delhi and Chicago
10 • EBR #1 2012

11. Building
a better
India
Western development models
are not sustainable, scalable
or desirable, says Sam Pitroda,
a top Indian government
adviser and the father of the
Indian telecom revolution.
Instead, he says the answers
to India’s challenges lie in
the “Gandhian model” of
development.
TEXT Nathan Hegedus
PHOTOS Chris Maluszynski
EBR #1 2012 • 11

12. Pitroda on… Indian versus Chinese development
Culturally, the two countries are very different. India is going to
focus on democratizing information. India is going to focus on
young talent. The Indian innovation model is very different.
AM PITRODA is the man who brought life cycles of Sam Pitroda” as if he were one of in the family had died.
S telephones to rural India, essentially
connecting India to itself.
Today, at the age of , this son of a carpen-
the groundbraking digital switches that he
once developed as a young immigrant in
Chicago.
“So we knew that he was ‘part of the fami-
ly.’ He taught us… Make sure you do the right
things. So a sense of sacrifice, love for every-
ter remains tirelessly true to a vision deeply body, truth, simplicity: all these things are em-
rooted in his familys devotion to Gandhi. As PHASE ONE: STARTING OUT bedded in me, in my lifestyle.”
influential as ever in India civic life, Pitroda One of eight children, Pitroda was born and But there is another side to Pitroda: the
preaches that India must drive its own open- raised in Titilagarh in the state of Orissa, a deep- American side.
source tech revolution, one based on sustain- ly poor town with no running water or electric- In , inspired by the romanticism in us
able and rural-based values. In its latest form, ity and certainly no telephones. His father, an President John F. Kennedy’s speech about put-
he describes it as thedemocratization of in- immigrant from the faraway state of Gujarat, ting a man on the moon, Pitroda – newly grad-
formation through connectivity. was a small-time lumber dealer with a drive for uated with an MSc in Physics and Electronics
“We are a nation of over a billion people and his children to become something more. – boarded a boat, the start of a long journey
we cannot afford to follow a short-term mod- “In those days, he used to sell nails to the away from India and to the us.
el meant for a population of less than  mil- British,” Pitroda says. “But he couldn’t speak It was in the us that Pitroda made his first
lion people,” Pitroda said at a recent confer- English. So he felt inferior to them. He said, phone call, home to India, and it was in the us
ence on Gandhi and connectivity. when his children grew up, that he wanted that he got a degree in electrical engineering.
But Pitroda is not simply a visionary tech- them to speak English.” He found a niche in telecom in Chicago, work-
nocrat grounded in Gandhian philosophy. He And then there was Mahatma Gandhi – a ing with digital switching for the US telecom
is also a gifted electrical engineer with more fellow Gujarati and a central figure for both company gte. Later, after his father told him
than  patents to his name. Even now, talk- India and the Pitroda family. he was too young to get into the habit of work-
ing to Ericsson Business Review, he sits up “When I was growing up, Gandhi was al- ing for other people, he started his own com-
straight and says with a says with a spreading ways in our midst,” Pitroda says. “I still remem- pany with two partners.
smile that he can most certainly “still do the ber when I was a little kid, six years old, I Around this time, Pitroda was also editing
bits and bytes.” was playing outside my house, and my father an issue of an ieee magazine that focused on
So it is no surprise that when he considers came in and said Gandhi had died. I didn’t telecom development in the third world.
his career, he uses the language not of a poli- quite understand it. Then everybody in the “I said, ‘Don’t focus on telecom density,
tician but of an engineer and speaks of “the household had to take a bath, as if someone focus on accessibility,’” he says now.
Sam Pitroda: walking the telecom talk
▶ SAM PITRODA SAYS “ percent” of his fo- bile money. He is no longer the ceo of which made him a millionaire. During the
cus is on India and innovation, but it is im- c-sam, but the business has thrived as the same period, he also patented an idea for a
portant to remember that this is a man who concept of mobile payments – and the tech- personal electronic diary. In the s, this
can back up his tech talk. He holds more than nology surrounding it – have finally caught patent was incorporated into the popular
 telecom and technology-based patents, up with his vision. Casio Digital Diary, a precursor to the per-
and his visionary mobile-wallet technology “It was too far ahead of its time,” he says of his sonal digital assistants of the late s and
may soon be in millions of smartphones. initial idea. “Now is the time to build (on) it.” the smartphones of today. In the past five
In , Pitroda had recently returned to years alone, that patent has been referenced
the US after living in India for most of the CSAM’S FIRST MOBILE wallet was launched in by the likes of ibm, Microsoft and Nokia.
previous decade. He noticed his wife writ- Japan in  and has since been used in the But Pitroda’s most fun idea was probably
ing personal check after personal check to us, China, India and Mexico, among other Compucards. Developed in , this is a
pay their household expenses. Then he con- places. And the company keeps gaining new, deck of cards with binary numbers (, , ,
sidered all the other daily financial tasks that ever bigger customers. In August, , Isis , …) for the computer generation. Any-
could even then be carried out online, and – the joint venture formed by at&t Mobil- one who reads the instructions closely can
he came up with the idea of a digital wallet, ity, T-Mobile usa and Verizon Wireless – use the cards to play family games such as
complete with “id cards,” “money,” “receipts” adopted c-sam’s platform to provide its poker and rummy. The joker is a hairy soft-
and branded “credit cards.” mobile-wallet service. ware bug complete with legs and antennae.
Pitroda patented his mobile-wallet idea in Yet the mobile wallet is just one of Pitro- But the most interesting card is probably the
, founded a company (c-sam) to devel- da’s many innovative ideas. In the s, he king, who appears to resemble none other
op it in , and later wrote a book on mo- created the  dss digital switching system, than Sam Pitroda. ●
12 • EBR #1 2012

13. Sam Pitroda cover story
Pitroda is an accomplished painter who first
started drawing in meetings: “When people
talk, they spend useless time talking. And
their message takes just two minutes of a
30-minute conversation. So I learned early
that the best thing you can do is to doodle.
Meetings and all… That’s how I started.”
EBR #1 2012 • 13

14. cover story Sam Pitroda
In 1993 Pitroda described how US success
influenced his work in India: “I was almost
brutal in my determination to root out hierarchy
and bureaucracy: I once shouted and made
a thoroughly mortifying scene in order to get
typists to stop leaping to their feet every time
a manager entered their work space.”
14 • EBR #1 2012

15. Pitroda on… the future of telecom
You can’t say telecom like we did in the eighties.
It is more pervasive. You have to talk about
the role of telecom in research. You have to
talk about the role of telecom in medicine. You
have to talk about the role of telecom in education
and the role of telecom in government.
Nobody paid attention to his articles, he Over the following years, in a series of
says. But if they had, it would have been jobs culminating in a minister-level tech-
no surprise when, after he sold his digital nology mission, Pitroda created the infra-
switch business to Rockwell International structure that placed now-famous yellow
in  and made millions, Pitroda turned phone boxes in almost every Indian vil-
back to India to put his words into action. lage. It is this achievement that garnered
In a Harvard Business Review article in him the unofficial title of the father of In-
, Pitroda said that he had dreamed all dian telecom. It also put him at the center
his life of wealth and success, but that af- of debates about whether or not technol-
Background check ter he sold his business, he was suddenly ogy was a luxury, about the balance be-
confronted with the fact that he had tween the state and the free market, and
▶ 2010–present: Government of India, walked out on India. The selfishness of his about whether it was possible to move In-
Adviser to the Prime Minister on Public success set him off in pursuit of another dia forward without the help of big mul-
Information Infrastructure and American dream, he said: the exploration tinational corporations.
Innovations of a new frontier. The frontier? Using tel- Pitroda believed fervently that technol-
▶ 1998–present – C-SAM, founder, former ecommunications as a bridge between the ogy was as crucial a developmental tool
CEO and current Chairman, Chicago, US
first world and the third. as education or clean water. And he used
▶ 2005–2009: Government of India,
National Knowledge Commission, his faith in connectivity to push for core
Chairman, New Delhi, India PHASE TWO: GROWTH Gandhian tenets such as indigenous
▶ 1993–2005: started a series of business On his first trip to Delhi in the early s, development and an emphasis on rural
ventures, including World-Tel Limited (an Pitroda tried to call his wife in Chicago. It development.
International Telecommunication Union took four hours. So with a mixture of what For this, he was branded an Indian na-
project), and served on several United
Nations commissions he calls “arrogance and ignorance,” he tionalist and an enemy of foreign firms.
▶ 1987–1991: Government of India, decided then and there to “fix” telecom “Look, we took Intel’s processor,” he
Adviser to the Prime Minister of India, in India. says. “That was collaboration. We took
with the rank of Minister on national “I saw that it and telecom could change software from other companies. We took
technology missions, New Delhi, India the face of India,” he says. “I just saw it. In- Motorola’s switch. The idea was ‘Don’t
▶ 1987–1991: Government of India, dian culture is a rural culture. India was give me lock, stock and barrel products.
founder and Head of Indian Telecom
Commission, New Delhi, India disconnected. If I could just connect eve- Give me components.’
▶ 1984–1987: Centre for Development of rybody … Maybe it was because I was “It was not homegrown just for the sake
Telematics, founder, New Delhi, India poor. Because I lived in a village. If I had of homegrown. If we had not used the
▶ 1979–1983: Rockwell International, Vice been from Mumbai, it would have been homegrown technology, we would not have
President of Advanced Technology and very different.” the it business we have in India today.”
Engineering, Chicago What follows is Indian political legend, Pitroda and his team soon had phone
▶ 1974–1979: Wescom Switching, founder,
as the man The Economist later called “the booths rolling out to one village a week,
Chicago, US
▶ late 1960s–early 1970s: General
Indian with the long hair and the manner then to a village a day, then to three villag-
Telephone & Electronics, various of an American superbrat” fought to get es a day. There are more than , of
engineering positions, Chicago, US an unthinkably long one-hour meeting these pay phones today. But then Rajiv
▶ 1966: MSc in Electrical Engineering, with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. After Gandhi lost an election in , and while
Illinois Institute of Technology, US eight months, he got the meeting and, Pitroda stayed at his post, things got
▶ 1964: MSc in Physics and Electronics, The most importantly, he also met Rajiv Gan- tougher. He was accused of corruption,
Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda,
Gujarat, India
dhi, Indira’s son, who would become and there were threats that drove his fam-
prime minister in  and Pitroda’s great- ily back to the us. He had a heart attack
est ally. and a quadruple bypass. Then in ,
EBR #1 2012 • 15

16. Pitroda on… the impact of moving to the US as a young man
It really opened up possibilities. I could talk about this for hours…
For example, the most fascinating thing for me was the door
knob, because in India, we had only this latch.
Then I saw a revolving door and I thought, “What a good idea!”
Then I saw a post-office box in the US and said, “What a design!” I had
never thought that way. There had been nothing in my village. Nothing.
while campaigning to return to power, Rajiv people out of poverty and to find jobs for only a dream because the “information
Gandhi was killed by a suicide bomber. the hundreds of millions of Indians under element” had been missing. But now, final-
“It was the biggest shock of my life,” Pitro- the age of . ly, India had built the tools to realize
da says. “I just didn’t know what to do. Went “Who am I to do it? I don’t know,” he says. Gandhi’s dream.
to the house, thought about what to do next, “Do I have the authority? I don’t think so.
and realized that this phase had to end in But I try to get it done. That’s the advantage PHASE FOUR: THE NEXT STEP
life. I had to go back.” (of my position). A lot of times, people ask: Even after a fight with cancer and a second
Plus, after years of working for a token sal- ‘Why don’t you become a minister?’ No, I heart attack, Pitroda is busier than ever, his
ary of usd  per year, Pitroda was out of mon- don’t want to be a minister. That precludes life reduced to a transcendent simplicity of
ey. Yet he refused to do business in India. my entire flexibility to operate.” work – now in Chicago, now in Delhi, now
“I didn’t want to work in India in telecom,” He still believes in centralization as a pre- at a conference in Oslo, Norway.
he said in an interview with India’s Skoch condition to decentralization and in build- The new plans keep coming too. Now he
Consultancy Services. “I didn’t want a spec- ing a scalable India-centered ecosystem. wants to build an indigenous hardware
trum license… didn’t want people to say: And he still gets exasperated at being tagged industry that would match India’s strength
‘Oh, that’s why you did all this stuff. So that as an anti-colonial leftist. in software. Otherwise, hardware imports
when the right time comes you cash in.’ I “We need to centralize the thinking in could someday be more costly than petro-
didn’t want them to say: ‘He had this mas- setting up infrastructure,” he says. “That is leum, he says. Now, since Indian companies
ter plan.’” very different from saying, ‘Centralize eve- have missed the g opportunity, he says,
He went back to Chicago sick, broke and rything.’ But the kind of infrastructure we they need to get a jump start on “g”
on a tourist visa. are trying to build… no private enterprise Gigabit Passive Optical Network (gpon)
would ever build it. It’s not viable. You have technology.
PHASE THREE: MATURITY to do it from the top because it is a nation- “I am Gandhian in many ways,” he says. “I
During the rest of the s, Pitroda looked al infrastructure.” don’t have personal needs. I don’t go shop-
after his business interests and made some Yet he insists there remain great business ping. I don’t have my own bank account. My
more money. He put his kids through col- opportunities in the Indian market. wife takes care of that. If she buys me new
lege and stayed close to his dying mother, “Where is the money in telecom in India? shoes, I wear the shoes. If she buys me a new
who had moved to Chicago. Applications. Local applications, local lan- shirt, I wear the shirt. I don’t give much
But India and public service never guage, local content. There is a huge oppor- thought to these things. They don’t matter.”
stopped calling to him and, in , he was tunity in applications, applications, appli- For Pitroda, being Gandhian goes far be-
named head of the National Knowledge cations.” yond studying or emulating Gandhi him-
Commission. From that point on, Pitroda He has big numbers to match his big self. He doesn’t like to talk about Gandhi as
has been a whirlwind, advising and work- plans. The government is working to con- a person. It is more about asking the bigger
ing on everything from fighting hunger to nect , key nodes – libraries, universi- questions, such as “How do I run my life?”
reforming the railways, to reorganizing ties and research facilities – with high- This brings him back to his childhood in
state telecom operator Bharat Sanchar speed fiber. There are plans to connect Orissa, back to the focus that has brought
Nigam Ltd (bsnl). , local governments with fiber. In him so far and back to the long-term vision
Today his official title is Adviser to the January he announced a usd  billion gov- he has for a prosperous and sustainable In-
Prime Minister on Public Information In- ernment investment in creating an “infor- dia. It will not be easy to achieve this vision,
frastructure and Innovations, though he is mation highway,” including usd  billion for he says. But it must be done. And who bet-
most often referred to in the Indian press a national fiber-optic network. ter to construct this future than the son of
as a “technocrat.” His position allows Pitro- At the  World Economic Forum, a carpenter, a man who builds things?
da to operate freely across the political and Pitroda talked about how Mahatma “Technology is just a tool. At the end of
economic spectrum, as he relentlessly push- Gandhi’s dream of the development of the the day, I am the son of a carpenter. I look
es his agenda to lift hundreds of millions of villages and decentralization had remained at tools.” ●
16 • EBR #1 2012

17. Sam Pitroda cover story
“When I came back from the US (in the
1980s), I had made money, so I used to
dress very nicely,” Pitroda says. “After
about three months, I realized my clothes
were intimidating. So I said, ‘Trash all
these American clothes,’ and got some
visibly Indian-looking suits stitched.”
EBR #1 2012 • 17

18. technology report
VOICE RECOGNITION: A STEP TOW
Istockphotoi
Voice interfaces will soon be everywhere: in strides in voice recognition, network connections. Many
cars, home appliances, medical equipment, largely due to two factors: the media outlets ran practical tests
capability to collect huge comparing Siri with Google
production lines, and on websites. They are amounts of voice data, and then Voice with mixed results, and
already helping us to make phone calls. But the ability to process it quickly. both systems still required
these services have yet to find business Google is running several ar- some of the stilted formal com-
models that actually make money. tificial intelligence programs – mands so typical of early voice
TEXT Nathan Hegedus others include language trans- systems to get the right results.
lation and the image searches Until recently, Google was
▶ “Call Mom.” “Am I busy Tues- little sense on their own. It must necessary for highly function- the leader in the mobile field,
day afternoon?” “I want pizza.” also use sophisticated logic to ing augmented reality – that introducing Google Search by
People have waited a long find the appropriate answer and depend on the kind of massive Voice for Android in February
time for their machines to be be able to intelligently ask for computing power of which the . However, Jared Cohen
able to understand simple clarification if wrong. company is in a special position from Google says the industry is
speech. And now it appears The most relevant field for to take advantage. still years, if not decades, away
that machines are beginning to developing voice recognition is For voice recognition, Google from seamless voice recogni-
find their voice, so to speak, computational linguistics, has collected voice samples – tion on the mobile phone. But
with voice control poised to which marries linguistics with the data – from Android’s that doesn’t mean the systems
become the latest paradigm- data-driven processing. Reflect- speech-recognition system, will get much better very fast in
shifting innovation in computer ing this dual focus, models may Google Voice’s e-mail transcrip- the next decade.
interaction, after the mouse be “knowledge-based” with tion service and the now de-
and touchscreens. written linguistic rules or “data- funct information service Where does this
The hottest buzz surrounds driven.” These two approaches Goog, among other sources. conversation go from here?
Siri, the voice-recognition sys- have often been in conflict, In both the Apple and The real power of voice recog-
tem included in iOS, the latest though the gap between them Google voice-recognition nition may not be in our mobile
version of Apple’s mobile oper- has closed in recent decades. It systems, most of the comput- phones, but in applications in
ating system, as well as similar turns out there are too many ing is done not on the user’s everything from our TVs to our
efforts from Google in Android- possible sounds in human phone but on the Apple or cars, especially if systems like
powered phones. speech for a computer to un- Google servers. With Apple’s Siri Siri become able to interact
derstand using only linguistic system, the voice command is with third-party apps with
Just hard work rules – the data is needed, too. recorded, compressed and sent artificial intelligence capabilities
Scientists have worked on voice Computational linguistics is back to Apple’s servers, which of their own.
recognition and natural-language used in a wide array of products process the request and return Norman Winarsky, the
processing for more than five besides voice recognition, a text answer for the phone to cofounder of Siri, said in Tech-
decades, with voice-recognition including text-to-speech “read” to the user. nology Review in October
technology included in some synthesizers, automated voice- For all this, current voice- : “It’s clear that it would be
computers since the early s. response systems, web search recognition systems are far technically possible to integrate
So it is not hard to do, but it is engines, text editors and lan- from perfect. any web service into Siri; you
extremely hard to do right. guage instruction materials. Both Siri and the Google sys- can put a Siri front end in front
A good system must recognize tem often fail to register slang of anything.”
the context of a question, includ- Talking about big data and regional accents, and they And almost to prove him
ing follow-up questions that refer In recent years, both Google depend on both external serv- true, within weeks of its Apple
to an original question but make and Apple have made great ers and sometimes unreliable debut, Siri had been hacked to
18 • EBR #1 2012

19. technology report
Technology at
your fingertips
▶ For more on technology,
ARD THINKING PHONES Ericsson Business Review
has a partner journal
designed to encourage dis-
cussion on a wide range of
R&D topics and innovative
solutions. Written by em-
ployees since 1924, Ericsson
What’s the killer app? Review is now available as
an app for Android tablets
Your voice. in the Android Market, and
for iPad through the App
▶ In , Steve Jobs stood before the crowd at MacWorld and Store. To download the app,
go to the Ericsson Review
introduced the iPhone for the first time. And what did he think
page, ericsson.com/review,
was its most revolutionary function? The touch screen? The in- and select the link for your
tegration with iTunes? device.
“What’s the killer app?” he asked. “The killer app is making
calls! It’s amazing how hard it is to make calls on most phones.”
And he was right, maybe more than he knew at the time.
allow people to start certain cars Voice is the gold standard for communication (video too, but
with voice commands. only when it includes voice). Humans love to talk. They always
Google already offers voice have, and they always will.
commands for searching on Sure, many voice minutes are going “over the top.” But people
Google TV, and earlier this year it are still going to talk, in both old and new channels, and they
introduced Android@Home, a will likely always value voice higher than data apps. Plus, at least
for now, many, if not most, consumers seem to value the inter- Smartphone
framework for controlling light signaling storm
switches, alarm clocks and other operability and reliability that comes with their phone number
home appliances through An- and carrier billing. a growing
droid-powered devices using voice
problem
But that is just the beginning, and the most conservative ▶ NTT DOCOMO and
as well as other means of input. Verizon Wireless have
Apart from Google and Apple, guess at the future of voice. With Siri in the new iPhone, we suffered several network
the most promising develop- have seen voice recognition hit the mainstream. And even if outages caused by the
ments have come from Microsoft most iPhone owners are not chatting with their phones just yet, signaling behavior of
many are at least thinking about voice commands. Think of the modern smartphones.
and Nuance, with its Dragon According to Nikkei News,
products. Microsoft’s Kinect con- possibilities as we expand the realm of voice communication
this has caused DOCOMO
troller for the Xbox now features from human-to-human to human-to-machine (and vice versa). to demand that Google
a voice-activated system that lets Soon every context that can support voice will support rein in the signaling and
voice. You’ve got voice in cars, voice on medical equipment data loads imposed by
users speak directly to the Kinect
and voice on production lines. With the advent of HTML, you Android. In particular, the
console to search for music, problem is the way devices
games, movies and TV shows. could soon have one-click voice services on every website out are transmitting control
Plus, the automaker Ford has in- there, which opens up a so-far unexplored range of communi- signals to the network
stalled a Microsoft Sync voice- cation possibilities. and pinging the servers
All these voice services will need developing and organizing, automatically to support
recognition system in even its constantly updating apps.
cheapest models. and the answers may not always fit the wishes of the telecom
industry. Plus, someone needs to find a business model that ac-
What is Siri? tually makes money, as “freemium” is far from a sure thing. Shopping sites
Siri has a distinguished pedigree. slow to load
It started in  as CALO (Cog- ▶ It takes an average of
10 seconds to load a retail
nitive Assistant that Learns and In  Siri was acquired by No machine has ever defini- website, according to a
Organizes), a project funded by Apple, which removed the inde- tively passed the Turing test, and study by Strangeloop Net-
the Defense Advanced Research pendent Siri app from the market neither Siri nor its Android coun- works. The 2,000 retail sites
Projects Agency (DARPA), an and introduced it exclusively in terparts are close, though their tested were from Amazon’s
Alexa list of top sites. The
agency of the US Department of the iPhone S, which was un- increased “natural language” speed-testing tool used
Defense. According to its web- veiled the day before Apple functionality seemingly brings in the test added delays
site, DARPA’s mission is to “pre- founder and CEO Steve Jobs died. them closer than any other mass- called latency to round-trip
vent technological surprise to the market product. communications to better
US, but also to create technologi- Will phones think like us? The most successful example of simulate how consumers
several steps removed
cal surprise for its enemies.” The Many people consider the defini- artificial intelligence has been the from a website see it. The
agency has played a central role tive test of artificial intelligence to IBM supercomputer Watson, study shows that web-
in the development of computer be the “Turing test,” proposed in which beat two human contest- pages are becoming more
networking, including creating  by English computer scien- ants on the TV quiz show Jeop- complex at the same time
as economization measu-
the predecessor to the internet. tist Alan Turing. ardy! in the US in . ● res and browser speed are
improving.
EBR #1 2012 • 19

20. 20 • EBR #1 2012

21. Beyond educational technology «« Connected learning «« THEME
Connected learning – theme in short
▶ As education reinvents itself, new opportunities for growth abound.
▶ Technology makes it possible to bridge educational gaps on all levels of society,
and globally. ▶ The market for education is set to grow, primarily by diversification.
CONCLUSION ▶ Broadband, computers and mobile devices are key enablers in
the creation of a whole new market for education. ▶ Network operators can choose
from a range of different roles in the new value chains, even becoming schools
themselves – or they can remain bitpipe providers.
The
tools of
education
– soon at a museum near you
Technology represents a provocation to
schools’ traditional ways of working. But
investigating its role in tech-savvy schools
clearly shows that, by building on two
fundamental human needs – communication
and curiosity – technology can be used to
broaden students’ horizons.
PHOTOS Jann Lipka
▶
EBR #1 2012 • 21

22. THEME »» Connected learning »» Beyond educational technology
▶
The school of the future will require hybrid forms of
connectivity, including wireless, fixed and mobile broad-
band, to meet the need for flexible but reliable high-speed
internet access.
B
Y COMBINING the results of expert inter- mobile phones as flexible multipurpose tools –
▶ Jon Eddy Abdullah: views, literature searches, and ethno- mostly for recording information and communicat-
“The real question graphic case studies carried out in five ing, but also for listening to music while working.
schools (for students aged four to ) in Stock- During interviews with teachers, we were told
is: what’s next? In holm, Chicago, and Hong Kong, Ericsson Con- that the touchscreens on mobile phones were too
this industry we sumerLab’s Future School project is providing im- small to write on. However, we later observed stu-
have spent years portant insights into tomorrow’s education. dents using digital pens to “write” on their tablet
Schools have always been a reflection of the so- and laptop screens. Older students may favor key-
trying to get mobile
cieties in which they operate. In agrarian socie- boards, but younger ones often use pen and
handsets into the ties, which tended to be small, homogeneous and screen instead of pen and paper.
hands of people. socially cohesive, the model was one village, one Whether the school of the future uses laptops,
We’re almost there school, one teacher. Later, the birth of the indus- tablets, mobile phones or something in between,
trial society led to the emergence of the factory- the future will demand individualized, mobile,
with 100 percent model school, with clocks, scheduled lessons, easy-to-use devices. Having said that, it is inter-
coverage in many standardized tests and national curriculums. To- esting to see that several schools are also making
countries. Some day, with the rise of the Networked Society, great use of interactive whiteboards. Like an
people might think schools are changing yet again, this time in re- analog whiteboard, an interactive whiteboard is
sponse to the process of modernization and in- a fixed device, but it can support – like a moth-
it’s game over for dividualization – a trend that network theorist er screen – interaction with each student’s com-
telecoms – but it’s Andreas Wittel at Nottingham Trent University puter. Some experts view these devices only as a
not. We can help in the UK calls network sociality. This develop- stepping-stone on the road to a classroom that
ment is based on an individualization that is has no fixed devices at all, while others recognize
other industries to
deeply embedded in new technology – an infor- the potential of interactive whiteboards for sup-
use this technology mation-focused, ephemeral but intense way of porting both individual and collaborative work.
for good.” living, characterized by an assimilation of work
and play. WORKSPACE
What will schools be like in the Networked So- In the new ict environment, where mobile de-
ciety? To understand the ongoing paradigm shift vices are more common, a classroom filled with
in education, the Future School project identified rows of individual desks no longer fulfills any pur-
the following six key areas of change... pose. Students carry their mobile work tools
around throughout the day. Several of the schools
WORK TOOLS studied in the project have broken down walls to
▶ Bill Clinton: Today, : programs, in which every student and make large rooms with plenty of lightweight,
“The great genius of every teacher has a computer, have become the movable desks and chairs that can be rearranged
model for progressive schools that focus on inte- to suit the needs of each class or group of stu-
the network is that
grating ICT into education. Often, students have dents. Students can work in “islands of learning”
it is a continuously their own laptops to use both at school and at in large rooms, creating flexible classrooms that
evolving exper- home. However, in schools that are underfund- enhance collaboration.
iment. And as long ed or are located in economically disadvantaged Breaking down walls is one way for schools
neighborhoods, : programs can also consist of with old architectural structures to redefine their
as our goal is to mobile carts with laptops that students loan for classrooms. Schools that are renovating or build-
do things smarter, a specific class or throughout the day. ing new premises are better able to adapt their
cheaper and better, The : model is not restricted to laptops. architecture to include new technology and new
we don’t have to be Schools now increasingly favor tablets, especial- pedagogical methods. Two of the five schools in
ly for use by younger students who find the app- the study are currently renovating by building
afraid of not having based devices easier to handle. rooms of various sizes with movable furniture.
all the answers. Even though the mobile phone has been pro- Work space includes not only physical but also
We don’t have to claimed the epitome of modern society, the virtual space, extending the classroom through
Future School project has not discovered much the use of e-mail, Facebook, Skype, Google Docs
be afraid of trying
support for mobile phones in education, at least document-sharing software, OneNote planning
something that not in formal educational activities. However, in- and note-taking software, Prezi presentation soft-
doesn’t work.” formally, students and teachers frequently use ware, and many other open or closed forms of
22 • EBR #1 2012

23. Beyond educational technology «« Connected learning «« THEME
▶ Hans Vestberg:
“The ICT industry
software that allow students to do schoolwork meeting the school’s needs. The answer was has now reached
without being restricted to the physical class- found in students’ informal internet use. In our a point where
room. With connectivity, schools start to inter- observations of students between classes, we saw it’s possible to
act and learn from each another. Classes in dif- their informal use of devices and the internet.
ferent countries are using Skype to communicate The total number of devices connected to the bring education
with each other and take virtual tours of each oth- school’s wireless system was not equal to the and learning
er’s schools. Teachers are using blogs and social number of devices owned by the school – not by opportunities to all,
media to exchange ideas and lecture materials, a long shot. Most students had smartphones,
driving forth new pedagogical ideals. which they had connected to the school’s Wi-Fi
no matter where
Virtual schools can and will be a great comple- network. Some also carried personal tablets. they are. It’s time
ment to physical schools, especially in areas The school of the future will require hybrid to act to close the
where students and teachers must travel long dis- forms of connectivity, including wireless, fixed education gap.”
tances to school, or when individual disabilities and mobile broadband, to meet the need for flex-
make participation in physical schools difficult. ible but reliable high-speed internet access. And
However, the physical school with eye-to-eye that connectivity will be required not only in
communication is still the norm. But in a socie- schools, but also when students are on the way
ty with omnipresent connectivity, the focus to and from school, in locations such as the li-
Using
should not be on whether to work online or of- brary and even at home, in districts where they video to
fline, but rather on using the best work tool and would otherwise be unlikely to have internet
space for the specific task and situation at hand. access at home. reinvent
education
INFRASTRUCTURE REQUIREMENTS WAYS OF WORKING
▶ The Khan Academy,
The schools of the future will rely heavily on con- New technology represents a challenge to schools’
based in Mountain View,
nectivity. As computers are used more frequent- traditional ways of working. As the work tools California, started out in
ly, additional control mechanisms, backups and used in schools change, the ways of working are 2006 by teaching math
filters will be necessary. Teachers will use ict to also changing. online for free through
manage, observe, coach, protect and evaluate stu- With increased connectivity, information is simple conversational-
dents. Without stable, high-speed connectivity, available anywhere, anytime. This raises ques- style YouTube videos. The
many of these tasks will fail. The schools studied tions about the future of textbooks. Although company was able to ex-
in the Future School project are building heavily textbooks (both analog and digital) are still being pand after receiving sig-
nificant donations, and
on wireless systems, but also using fixed broad- used in the schools studied in the Future School
now it has grown with
band for components such as printers and serv- project, extensive amounts of schoolwork and the addition of features
ers to reduce the load on the Wi-Fi network. One lecturing are taking place without them. Text- such as exercises that test
school in Chicago has also begun looking at mo- books only represent one collected interpreta- students’ understanding
bile broadband as a complement to Wi-Fi. tion and presentation of a subject. If students are of the videos and track
Even in the tech-savvy schools studied in the not satisfied with the explanation – or lack of ex- their progress with met-
project, connectivity is lost from time to time, planation – provided in a particular textbook, rics. The focus is primarily
forcing teachers to improvise and always have an they use Google to search for another perspec- on math, but topics rang-
analog backup plan. All the schools in the study tive on the topic. ing from algebra, calculus
and economics to history
reported problems with “dead spaces” and lagging All the schools in the study are moving away
and preparation for
Wi-Fi connectivity when large groups of students from the idea that all students should do one spe- standardized assessment
moved from one end of the school to another. cific thing at one particular time in one place. tests are included.
A sometimes unreliable Wi-Fi network is not Project-based learning seems to be the way of the Teachers or coaches
the only problem being encountered by these future. Like many adults working in projects, stu- can monitor student pro-
schools. In several of the schools studied, we have dents are learning how to divide and take respon- gress in groups, and stu-
also seen that school administrators do not have sibility for different parts of their projects. In one dents can earn badges to
a clear understanding of students’ media habits. Chicago school, the students appointed project keep their interest up. The
idea is that teachers inter-
For example, in one school, administrators were managers and gave them the mandate to fire team
vene only when a student
trying to figure out why their modern Wi-Fi sys- members who did not do their jobs. Promoting gets stuck; ideally, they
tem was not up to scratch. Their calculations were leadership skills through project-based learning are only needed as cor-
accurate – they knew how many connected de- is meant to prepare students for future work at rective influences.
vices the school owned – yet the network wasn’t the management level.
▶
EBR #1 2012 • 23

24. THEME »» Connected learning »» Beyond educational technology
▶
Looking at these schools, it is evident that an ICT revo-
lution in a school is never the end; it is the beginning of
a continuous evolution.
Working in projects redefines the concept Through the use of ict, parents are also gain-
of a class of students. When most work and ing greater opportunities for involvement in their
socializing takes place in project groups instead children’s education. Technology is making
of classes, the class exists only for administrative schools more transparent, offering new ways for
purposes. parents to keep track of their children’s perfor-
In projects, students need to work both indi- mance at school and to establish direct contact
vidually and in groups. Despite extensive fears with teachers and school administrators. Teach-
that the : model risked isolating students, the ers do not always welcome this development, since
schools and experts in the study now say that mo- it places greater demands on their shoulders.
bile digital tools actually promote both individ-
ual and collaborative work. As Stephen Heppell, SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE  AND GAMES
Professor of New Media Environments at the Schools are facing new challenges in their mis-
Centre for Excellence in Media Practice at sion to prepare students for their working lives.
Bournemouth University in the uk, put it when With the rise of the Networked Society, we are
we interviewed him: “With the : model, we see seeing changes in the skills demanded from young
that kids are doing it together. Who would have people. Basic skills such as reading, writing and
thought that personal computers could be a great arithmetic will always be important. But integrat-
collaboration tool?” ed technology is creating the need for new, st-
▶ Sir Harold Kroto: century skills, such as information and ict liter-
NEW ROLES FOR TEACHERS acy; communication; collaboration; and critical
“The internet is the Teachers will clearly continue to play a central and analytical thinking.
most remarkable role in students’ learning process. However, with A school that has access to almost unlimited
innovation since new tools and changed ways of working, a new information must teach students how to search
the invention of role for teachers is emerging. Teachers will have for relevant, trustworthy material and how to an-
to accept being more of a “guide by the side” in- alyze and understand information in different
the printing press. stead of a “sage on the stage.” contexts. The focus in education is shifting from
We need to use This does not mean that students are left to rote memorization and worksheets to collabora-
this technology to learn entirely by themselves. On the contrary, the tion and content creation.
teacher is more important than ever – not as an Laptops and other devices provide students
unlock the creative
all-knowing deity, but rather as an instructor or with access to global information, collaborative
potential of every coach whose wisdom goes beyond mere textbook tools, and creative applications that enable them
kid on the planet facts, expanding into the realm of everyday life to create their own content. Projectors and inter-
and to inject the and including the use of Facebook and Skype. active whiteboards are used for collaboration and
Several teachers we met had set up teacher pro- presentations. What’s important is not only
ideas of every files on Facebook as an additional way to com- knowing all the right answers, but also under-
brilliant teacher municate with their students – meeting the stu- standing how to formulate and present the best
into every school.” dents where they were, using their preferred tools. questions.
South Koreans launch mobile school T Smart Learning allows
parents to check on and
books, and allows users
to buy each chapter
▶ South Korean operator education companies and and learning style. It also assist with their children’s separately.
SK Telecom’s T Smart groups, including the Ko- provides constant motiva- learning progress. It is also SK Telecom will pro-
Learning is a tablet-based rean Federation of Teach- tion for the student expected to contribute to mote the South Korean
education platform for in- ers’ Association. through diverse measures reducing household government’s policy initi-
teractive learning. An on- Designed to support including text messages. spending on education. ative on smart learning by
line support community classroom coursework, The platform includes Its online content store, actively cooperating in
enables students to share T Smart Learning suggests support tools such as a called Library, offers a the development of digi-
study tips via a knowl- a customized study sched- dictionary, vocabulary wide variety of electronic tal textbooks, new after-
edge-sharing system. ule, tips and learning ma- boxes, review notes, smart study materials at prices school programs and a
For this project, SK Tele- terials that reflect each notes, and educational 30 to 40 percent lower smart learning system for
com is partnering with 12 student’s academic level games. than those of printed students with disabilities.
24 • EBR #1 2012