Education summit invitation

Four eminent personalities from Nagaland have been invited to participate in the World Education Summit 2011 to be held in New Delhi from July 13.

English poet, scholar, novelist and Nehu dean Temsula Ao, retired director of state agriculture department Supong Keitzer, senior journalist Monalisa Changkija and state director of census and IAS officer Hekali Zhimoni have been invited to IGNOU’s Educational Development of North East Region Unit Round Table at the summit, to brainstorm on emerging challenges for development of education in the Northeast.

The summit, jointly organised by IGNOU, Centre for Science Development and Media Studies, an NGO, and Elets Technomedia, a media and events company, would run parallel sessions in three tracks — school education, higher education and skill development and vocational education and aims at creating an enabling environment to promote quality education.

The Northeast occupies a special category status in the development priorities of the country and in accordance with that, 10 per cent of the plan grant of IGNOU is allocated to promote education, training and research in the region.

The EDNERU Round Table has been organised with an aim to look at the emerging educational scenario and its challenges in the Northeast and also to explore possible solutions for accelerating educational development in the region.

Changkija has also been invited by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts to attend the 4th Kala Nidhi Lecture Series to be held on July 13 in New Delhi, with the theme — “Fighting the Digital Dark Age: India’s Digital Preservation Initiative”.

The theme assumes significance in light of the ever-increasing proliferation of information technology, with the volume of digital content produced in the social, enterprise, government and personal spaces exponentially growing every day.

This digital content, though ephemeral and non-tangible in its existence, forms a significant part of human heritage for future generations. International Data Corporate (IDC) and technology experts and researchers have projected that this unprotected digital heritage may not see the light of day by 2020, as it is constantly threatened by digital obsolescence and frequent technological changes.

In this alarming scenario, the department of information technology has taken a bold initiated to set up the centre of excellence for digital preservation at C-DAC Pune to work along with many stakeholder organisations.

This presentation gives a brief overview of the digital preservation challenges, international scenario, the Indian digital preservation initiative and the emerging opportunities.

Dinesh S. Katre, associate director, C-DAC, Pune, would be the main speaker. He is presently working as associate director of the human-centred design and computing group and is also the chief investigator of the centre of excellence for digital preservation project.