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Five girls from Meenakshi College take part in Microsoft’s unique initiative
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Photo: S. S.Kumar
Novel Attempt K.S. Lakshmi (extreme right) with her students
Five young women in the MCA department of Meenakshi College for Women are hard at work revamping their college website. But this isn’t just any ordinary re-vamping; all 3,000 students will get new e-mail ids and 5GB of file storage space, and t
hey’re putting in everything from blogs and wikis to e-mail chat and file transfer applications to create a dynamic, interactive website unlike anything the average college in the city is used to.
And best of all, it’s all being sponsored as part of Microsoft’s Windows Live@edu initiative — the college doesn’t spend a thing. “Tools that were once the prerogative of leading campuses such as the IITs and the IIMs are now available for a rollout in any campus without large investments in IT, in under two weeks,” says Prasanna Meduri, director Windows Client, Microsoft India. “These technology tools and customised e-mail ids are geared towards helping students and faculty collaborate seamlessly. Currently, only a small proportion of educational institutes in India have this capability.”
Meenakshi College for Women became the first college in Chennai to take part in this initiative, which includes the Microsoft Go A-Live Challenge, a national inter-college student contest that encourages them to deploy IT-based communication and collaboration tools on their campus. And that’s where A. Nathiya, Krupa Madhavan, N. Jayashri, B. Aruna and S. Preetha’s re-vamping exercise comes in.
“It’s basically about knowledge sharing between students and faculty — notes can be shared, assignments posted, doubts cleared, calendars created, etc.,” say the girls enthusiastically.
And, all of that without the college having to worry about putting in place complex IT infrastructure and back-end technical support resources. “Microsoft takes care of all that, which is a definite plus,” says Meenakshi Lakshmanan, head of the computer science department. “Otherwise, it would be a huge headache for us to maintain the back-end.”
Apart from the obvious advantages of the new interactive website for the student community, the Go A-Live Challenge is also a great experience for the five students involved, says Meenakshi. “They’re getting a chance to build an entire enterprise web application, the kind of project they’d do in the industry,” she says. “It’s great exposure for them.”
Plus there is the Rs. 2.5-lakh grand prize, X-Boxes, and Windows mobiles to be won by the top three college teams. Not surprisingly, over 200 colleges from over 30 cities across the country are taking part the Go A-Live Challenge to determine the best web application developed by students. In Chennai alone, 17 other institutions, including engineering colleges such as SRM and St. Joseph’s have followed in Meenakshi College’s footsteps.
“Our college’s relationship with Microsoft goes back 10 years,” says K. S. Lakshmi, principal of Meenakshi College. “I really admire this sort of interaction between educational institutions and the industry.”
Key features
Windows Live mail: 5 GB mailbox for each student
Office Live Workspaces: Post and share notes, documents
Windows Live Sky Drive: 5 GB of free file storage each for students and faculty
Windows Live Calendars: Plan events and send invites
Windows Live Messenger: Send text alerts to cell phones
DIVYA KUMAR
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