Samvidha

This information and communication technology (ICT) for Development (ICT4D) initiative is designed to address the fact that most schools in rural India cannot afford to connect to the internet, but need access to relevant content in answer to their queries on subjects related to their curriculum. Students are provided with a few terminals with an offline browser to enter their queries, which are then transmitted via email to a central server with a high bandwidth connection. The central server is responsible for query processing, content retrieval, and analysis. The web-based information is then filtered to ensure that the user gets relevant teaching and learning material. Specifically, the system stores domain knowledge for the subjects of interest in the form of an ontology of the concepts, the relationships between the concepts, and the list of words indicative of the various concepts. The user requirements are stored as a set of topics. Each topic is a collection of concepts and their associated importance with respect to the topic. The common requirements of a group can be taken as their curriculum content. Individual variations among the different students can be captured by their user profile, which includes each student's individual interests and capabilities. Domain knowledge and user profile may also be used to help students formulate better and more focused queries.

This idea of offering personalised content access and presentation is also reflected in the fact that navigation interfaces are offered in Bengali, Hindi, and English. Content which is appropriate for the user's needs is then emailed to the user in the school; information located on the internet is provided to the user in English or, where available, in a given Indian language.

Technology, Education, Children, Youth.