Amrita learning app enters the finale of a global contest

A learning app for adults with low literacy skills developed by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, has entered the finals of the Barbara Bush Foundation Adult Literacy XPRIZE in the US, earning the top private Indian university $100,000 in prize money.

It’s one of the five teams that entered into the finals of this globally prestigious competition in which one has to develop apps to help reduce illiteracy among adult learners within a time span of 12 months. The finalists were announced at the 2018 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans.

A team of 18-members, led by Dr Prema Nedungadi, from the university’s Centre for Research in Advanced Technologies for Education (Amrita CREATE), developed the app. The team has created a personalised app with interactive, socially discreet e-content that’s linked with life skills, which stipulates instructions for adults starting from alphabets to fifth standard reading level. .

A grand prize of $3 million will be awarded to the team, whose app would give the best performance over a period of 15-months where around 12,000 adults would test these apps, which is currently being held in Dallas, Los Angeles and Philadelphia as the winner will be announced in 2019.

Diplomas on blockchain

Globsyn Business School (GBS), Kriparampur, West Bengal, will be using Blockchain technology to issue digital diplomas to students of its post graduate management programmes. The rollout of the diplomas on Blockchain will allow the students and their prospective employers to access the diploma credentials from any geographical location, without any need to send or present physical certificates. GBS has partnered with Mumbai-based Blockchain strategy and applications company Zeonlab for developing its certification management service.

Rahul Dasgupta, Group Director, Globsyn said, “Our deep competencies in technology have helped Globsyn stay ahead of the curve in adopting technology to aid the various systems and processes of an education institution. Following this legacy, GBS is now set to disrupt yet another age-old system of providing paper diplomas to its graduating students.”

All students graduating from post graduate program of GBS will now be able to share the credentials of their diplomas with future employers and higher education institutions around the world without any hassles. They will be granted a private and encrypted digital key linked to their diploma. This digital key effectively reduces the time and hassle of having to go through traditional processes for documentation and verification of academic credentials.

The move to Blockchain Technology also warrants the diploma to be tamper-proof and eliminates the possibility of production of a fake diploma.

“The adoption of Blockchain Technology is still in its infancy in the education industry, but we believe it can help make the Indian education system more dependable and trustworthy. We at Globsyn Business School are very excited about the adoption of Blockchain to issue our diplomas and are sure it will be a move that every other education institution adopts soon,” Mr. Dasgupta added.

Zeonlab will provide end-to-end management of the service including managing student queries, uploading and managing certification, aiding in placement process for employers to be able to verify student certificates.

Dell Campassador of the year award

Blessin George Varghese, a second year BTech Computer Science and Engineering student of SRM Institute of Science And Technology, Chennai, has bagged the first rank among 4,000 competitors in Dell’s Campus Ambassador Program. Dell Campassador is one-of-its-kind students outreach programme in which students are given a chance to test their overall skill sets and also to get a peek into the corporate world. It is initiated in association with Microsoft’s Windows 10.

Blessin applied for the programme online in his first semester and had to clear an aptitude test, followed by several levels of interviews. Then, he had to complete several competitions and tasks in order to keep himself ahead of the rest. Blessin was named the first quarter topper too. He is from Idukki, Kerala and is currently pursuing his undergraduate degree and research. He is also a part of Developer Student Clubs-initiated by Google Developers. His interest lies in the area of performance oriented computing by improving hardware’s capabilities.

He was announced as the programme’s overall winner during the Grand Finale at the Dell Office in Bangalore on June 20. He also won an opportunity to intern at Dell. He has won several competitions and scholarships in the field of technology from his school level.

“Confidence, deeper thoughts and out of the box thinking is what helped me to achieve this”, he says.