 We set up the school of IT and we took up two major initiatives. One was a business incubator where the students and others convert their research into commercial products, product development kind of thing. And the other was distance education because we genuinely believe that IIT education style is different from most other universities which are required to teach to asset syllabus, asset examination pattern. We have significant flexibility here. Consequently the courses here tend to be very state of art. The latest developments in a particular subject are in our teaching and we thought why not we extend the benefit of the courses here to everybody else. Very much the theme of all open universities. My CMO also started the same thing. I remember the discussions in Islam. There are so many people here who have been unfortunately enough not to get an opportunity to educate themselves. But they are smart people. They are grown up people. Education is not just higher technical education at the end of PhD level but even fifth standard, tenth standard, history, geography, maths and my CMO has been doing a fantastic job over so many years. So welcome friends from NASA. Now when we started distance education there are some challenges because the same teacher is expected to address a large number of people who are physically dispersed. We did do that while using satellite technology and now we are also trying on a webcast using high speed internet technology. But we said that when you handle subjects which are being taught in some lectures which are being listened to by thousands of people it is quite likely that due to some emergency or the other some people are not able to actually attend some lectures. Second, if you are conducting a physical lecture on a campus like this and if a student has a problem, the student can come running to the teacher say two days later in the evening or something and ask for clarification. But if students are in Chennai or in Delhi or in Pakistan they are no such choice. So we looked at the models and we decided that whatever lectures we give, whatever courses we teach if it is possible to capture all those contents and release them in an easily accessible form to everyone. You would have heard of MIT's open coursework project of it is going to show some countries there. They started it roughly the same time and we started it at IIT Bombay. There is no way behind the leaders in the world with this. We have got in fact once they further, we have decided that whatever contents we have we will release them in open source. You might have heard of open source software such as Linux operating system and such things but there is an additional open source movement which relates to contents other than software and that movement is called Creative Commons. Commons is some property which commonly belongs to the whole humanity and Creative Commons was created to handle the creative contents like art, music, film, et cetera, et cetera over which copyright issues are creating lots of problems for general population to access them. Since we are transmitting these courses live we naturally have strong audio visual content capturing mechanism. If we could release these captured contents which is not just taking the contents put them on a CD like a license and release it because we realize that when we capture these contents they are not in the best form for people to retain their interest in that subject. So most of you since you come from the film editing background you will know that a raw film which has captured shots cannot be just assembled in some data and released as a good film to retain attention of people you have to edit that. The film editing at the mundane level could be editing of a marriage reception for example which you have captured. At the best level these are commercial hybrid films that you see every day and you would be aware of the enormous amount of effort that people put in editing. The difference is that in regular films the actors, the director, the technicians etc are working as a complete unit from start to the end of the release of the film. So for example if some scene has not been well shot and even at the editing stage you complain to the producer or the director that there is some problem you have the choice of calling the actor back reshooting a portion and the editing including the director. In a teaching learning environment a lecture occurs only once. Once the lecture is given the teacher disappears the students disappear and they are not available very easily. At most a teacher may be available but it is given. Consequently the post production editing of educational attempts pose additional challenges and therefore the emphasis has to be try and capture things first time right and that is why there is a huge amount of emphasis in our expectation from our friends behind the camera or from the friends who do the online mixing for the final thing that comes out because ideally once you do that that should be the final one. You are all familiar with the first that are required remember this if you are to post production editing one hour of lecture then somebody has to actually go through every second of that one hour once again and it is not an easy job. Of course it has to be done but it should be done for different reasons namely for increasing the effectiveness of that. Since we release it in open source we hope that these contents can be used by people like you saw some of the downloaded clips from YouTube. We propose to put of course our courses also on YouTube but YouTube does not permit large amount of contents to be put. We also want to create contents in different formats that one extreme would be the highest quality format which can be used by agencies such as Open University to transmit them on videos we said broadcast. For broadcast they want to be channeled for the contents. At the lowest level would be simple interactive audio and a small radio which an individual person can view on one's own monitor or something like that and in between there are various forms. We have been fortunate in that in the last 8 years we have done a lot of experiments we have come up with multiple options and we have decided that we will always release our material in more than one option. In this effort we have been funded by a agency called Tyfact which found this effort to be useful and they funded a project called eOutreach project for India. We are planning to extend this project starting next year for a different purpose. You know engineering colleges are opening practically every day in the country. The last time I went to Nase 8 years ago or 6 years ago in my sabbatical there were I think 3 or 4 colleges now there are I think 10 or 15 in the discipline. In Mumbai at one time there were 3 colleges JDI, I think Sardar Patel there is one more. Today I don't know there are about 50 Indian colleges. Same thing is true about schools same thing is true about other colleges the numbers are increasing and what is lacking in those places is teachers. Teachers are not available. So, we have teacher as a crucial resource critical resource which is lacking and that is another reason for us to say that if we capture a good course which is useful for students across the country then no matter whether good teachers are available or not available in that particular city or town they should be able to use this course material to study that subject and launch it. Additionally if we could use the same technology to teach the teachers on how to use the produced material and also how to create such material in a collaborative manner. So, we have thought of a particular scheme which I thought I will share with you whereby we will conduct a workshop for teachers but not for 25 or 30 teachers at a time that we conduct like this course for example we have conducted for 1000 teachers at a time. These 1000 teachers physically assemble so they will assemble at 30 or 40 different centers one could be in Nasi, one could be in Chennai one could be in Akola one could be wherever and Indian college teachers around those centers will come there in a pre-planned manner. We are launching this pilot starting this April in the month of April we are conducting a workshop for the coordinators of these 30 centers not the 1000 teachers. We will identify coordinators who will work at the respective centers when the workshop is held and they will provide the classroom environment like this video environment or visa environment like this and they will also provide laboratories and tutorials sessions and other things. We will conduct a one week workshop where we will decide not only the logistics but we will also decide what should be the syllabus and this is something that all of you should keep in mind that when you teach a subject at one particular place it is not taught with the same syllabus at other places. The questions asked in the examination other places are different. One of the reasons why such candidate material even if you release it in open source people may not use because they will fight it which is not useful. This is IIT syllabus, this is IIT standard questions I am studying in Nagpur and my Nagpur University has questions in a different style syllabus is different. So what is this? So what we are doing in the coordinator workshop we are asking them to come prepared with the syllabus of all the respective universities and we will frame a subject with syllabus which will encompass all of the syllabus and we will teach not only in the IIT style but ultimately the objective is to bring everybody at a higher level like MIT and Stanford but we will also teach like how it is taught in those followings. The examination questions that we will have not only will reflect IIT style but we will also reflect the questions which are asked in the respective university exams because then the material will be found useful by people. Now all of these material will be collected after collecting this material we will train the teachers for two weeks and then we will ask the teacher the following we will tell them that look these lectures which you have listened to and the tutorials that you have attended are now being captured this is the audiovisual record. Now go back to your colleges and work for two more weeks to add some more material. So just like post-production editing you guys are going to do they are also required to do post-production. Why I am saying this? The post-production editing at one level done by competent professionals like you will reflect the best for it but at the other extreme level an ordinary student or a teacher using webcam should be able to capture some useful contents and should be able to add it. I will give you one example take Nasik since our friends from Nasik are here I have seen this not only in Nasik but in Andhra Pradesh in Tamil Nadu when first year students come to an Indian college the lectures are given in English but the question answers are often done in local land. So if you go to Andhra Pradesh the fellow will ask questions in Telugu if you go to Nasik Nasik may be in Marathi may be the question and in Shikshaksudha Marathi is the answer there is no problem there but in a course where we conduct we cannot do that so what we are going to ask these teachers you go back to your colleges and ask some students who ask questions in webcam doesn't matter if they are in Marathi answer them in Marathi prepare an English transcript and send the webcam snippet that you have which we can attach that with so consequently if we give a 30 hour course the total video length of all these imports could be as many as 90 hours then students in Andhra Pradesh can select only the main course and Telugu editions students in Banaras can use this course with Hindi editions etc that's a large dream besides you run a portal there will keep all this material available in professional education or your visual contents are not the only thing there are text material there are programs and most important there are laboratories so how do you teach people laboratory where laboratory equipment does not exist IITs have good laboratories can we replicate them there are some labs like electronic labs where you can create a remote lab all these experiments and research is going on in IIT in IIT Bombay and many other places we want to capture the essence of all of this we made a big proposal to the ministry and ministry has just the other day considered approving a pilot project for about 6 months when we do this pilot and along the 3 year project then we are planning this we realize that we will require high quality post production editing resources then we went around and we found out that there are no professional courses of the kind which will give the skills which we need there are people who either learn on their own or something else as Samir will tell you during the course I as an outsider can see two very important and crucial components of the skills that you require the mindset that you require one is the professional component where the technology techniques is essential the other is the creative come out essentially films and people have to be creative in there that's the reason why we require producers, directors who can look at comprehensively the whole thing to make it maximally now we have such people at the senior level if we have Samir, if we have Fred from Nasi well why do we require these additional things elsewhere that is because we believe, why personally believe that in a pyramid of people which is participating in any activity although the people at the top of course would be professionally most scared and most experienced but every person at the leaf level not of the pyramid must also imbibe that philosophy suppose I am just a new person doing simple technician work as a cameraman you will say what is the advantage in my knowing post production editing the advantage is if I know what are the problems that are going to be faced by my colleagues in post production editing I will be careful while I use my camera so that I keep that in that's the reason we believe that although there are courses like this we believe that we should design a course of our own which will comprehensively look at everything from the perspective what I said creating useful educational so it is e-learning content that we want to focus on there are some special concessions that have been given in science and technology and everything else including the creative it is not an easy course I am very happy that my colleague Sameer came forward to design that course we actually presented it to the TIFAC and department of science and technology professionals they liked it and we said that this entire course will itself be recorded edited and released in open source so tomorrow if some friend from Nasik or some friend from Akhola or some more people in CD want to understand this we don't have to conduct the course again they can go through recalculations by their course if their course do the assignments on their own with the help of science the name Ekavya project signifies that an individual at any place who does not have opportunity to be mentored by experts like you but still has the Vijay Kisha to learn something has the capacity to do something great and has the desire to do something great should be able to do that towards that end we provide this small help in terms of this that is the nutshell effort and although this course is a very originally peculiar fashion although you have 5-6 days of continuous course but all of you are working professionals and nobody is willing to give you a shunti for 6 days I tried to talk to Professor Kannan for CD my own people in the office said no that is not possible normal work cannot stop conducting classes and everything and then of course our friend was very keen that they should come and participate could not possibly be extended a full one week so we decided that we will hold it on 3 different weeks weekends and you use the week so I told Samy that don't leave them alone during the week give them assignments so even when they go back to their work they cannot sleep easily because that is one thing IIT is well known about in IIT what is the difference between IIT and other places what difference? same human beings who study there or who is there come here to learn and study the difference is the energy levels the difference is the energy levels the difference is the commitment level we don't count holidays we don't count Sundays we don't count whatever nights day whatever work is our first commitment and we claim that we have a twist with excellence that means whatever we do nobody else in the world should be able to do better than us of course we don't always succeed but that's our ambition and we work towards that so our lifestyle is anybody who comes to IIT we chew him up completely if he dies we leave him alone if he survives we give him a degree and then send him to the real that is the style in which we have worked for 50 years and I am very proud that if you look at the students our students who have passed out and gone out and what they have done you will agree that this training somewhere has been useful this style of training so with this passion and with this commitment we work this is a new experiment to the best of my knowledge such a course has not been conducted in the country anyway this is the first style that we are doing please participate with all your energy please make all the suggestions please participate in the assignments as if the success of the whole course depends upon how well you do your assignment because all the assignments that you do all the experience that you show Chandra will be captured and will become part and parcel of the material that you will release below so don't forget your face is going to be seen later the better you look the better your work take care all the best and thank you very much