State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Guest Post By Phil Cruver

This is a continuation from Collaborative Learning in Paksitan Part 1 which introduced the concept of collaborative learning using enhanced video technologies.

Educators can also provide students with links to their lectures and assignments to tag as a class project. With this technology they can tag “chapters” and “topics” within the media file with a descriptive text for each tag. Additionally, all tags can be exported and distributed as a blog.

Once students tag a portion of a video or locate a tagged section of a video that is relevant to what they wish to learn, they may want to share the link with others. They can embed this as a deep link on their website, blog, or even in an email message. When other students click on the deep link, they will be taken not to the beginning of the video but to that precise section within the video.

Rather than conducting a search for keywords or tags that describe an entire video, students can conduct deep searches for tags that describe specific sections within a video and then immediately jump to that precise portion of the video clip. This saves time and facilitates education because students don’t have to watch a five-minute video to find a five-second nugget of information they need to understand.

How do these deep technologies specifically enhance learning?

• They increase the granularity of indexed media, allowing specific parts of video lectures to be more easily remixed, linked, and reused.
• They engage students to co-create content via annotation of lectures.
• They make media as an instructional tool more efficient since reading or reviewing streaming video is more time consuming than print media.

Also, these deep technologies enhance the educational content. The more the commenting and annotating, the more valuable the learning asset becomes as the wisdom of numerous and diverse interested parties add layers of collective intelligence to the video. Furthermore, specific moments of time within these videos can be instantaneously identified and retrieved with the Learning 2.0 Platform search engine.

Consider the opportunity for enhancing the quality of education in Pakistan by harnessing thousands of video lectures produced by the top teachers throughout the country. This digital archive could be searched as indexed meta data by key words within the annotations. Not only would this video library compliment and extend traditional learning but it would also scale giving millions of students access to a quality education.

Hopefully, Learning 2.0 will be adopted in Pakistan as a complimentary component to the upcoming national curriculum, which would help foster a new culture of learning. It would be a positive step towards educating its students with the new literacy they will require for competing in the flat world global economy they inhabit.

Guest Post By Phil Cruver

The technological evolution of Web 2.0 tools has produced a global platform that empowers the collective wisdom and intelligence of the crowd. Powerful arrays of technologies are emerging as ecosystems for extending, enhancing and enabling learning in an accelerated mode.

Deemed Learning 2.0, these online collaborative, interactive, and just-in-time information delivery technologies are encroaching on mainstream education in developed economies. These new and innovative technologies are not intended as a replacement for traditional education, but rather as an extension for learning in deep and powerful ways.

Tagging, the practice of attaching a descriptive word or phrase to a piece of online content for the purpose of linking it to other related digital media, is a well-known web phenomenon. Students searching for those tags can retrieve that specific and relevant content; thus, facilitating just-in-time learning and creating new possibilities for creative expression.

The Learning 2.0 Platform for Teachers and Students in Pakistan has introduced a new technology that provides the capability to transcend the limitations of simple tagging for describing an entire chunk of rich media. This next generation of tagging and its derivative progeny – linking and searching – allows the creation of direct links to specific parts within a larger selection of media. By indexing metadata, which enables tagging specific sections, you get deeper data information with the descriptor “deep tagging”.

Consider the possibilities for just-in-time learning: educators record their multi-hour lectures with a simple webcam, tag and upload them to the Learning 2.0 Platform as small interactive chunks. Students can repeatedly review the relevant information without enduring the entire session. Deep tagging metadata allows them to jump instantly to that specific section within the video for the information they need to learn.

The above image illustrates how deep tagging enhances collaborative learning. Abdul Aziz Bhatti, Principal at the Federal Government Model School for Boys G-0/4 in Islamabad was videotaped giving a lecture about Chemistry. Students tag the video while watching and their tags are indexed and made available to all who subsequently watch the presentation. Students can also comment upon their peers’ tags and all comments are emailed to the teacher for response and interaction.

Continuing with E-Learning Series, here is a great example of how video based lectures can be used for education and for spreading knowledge. MIT World is a free and open site that provides on demand video of significant public events at MIT. See this video on Providing Chips and Technology for a World with Four Billion Cellular Subscribers. The video shows how industry and academia collaboration can work. Also note the telemedicine potential mentioned – see telemedicine related posts here.

After the deregulation of Pakistan telecom, PTCL was forced to compete with other companies and not only for voice but also for internet and most recently for TV. PTCL competes for triple play with Wateen and Worldcall. IPTV (previously covered here) by PTCL is branded as Smart TV, is all digital and has some interesting features such as Time Shifted Television (TSTV), Search, Electronic Program Guide and Video on demand but these are not exclusive to IPTV.

With regard to prices the smart TV service by PTCL is free till June of 2009. Note that the Smart TV is part of the PTCL Smart Package which bundles TV and broadband (phone line charges are additional). The one-time cost for the set top box is either Rs. 9995 or Rs. 500 per month for 2 years. The monthly cost is Rs. 1500-5300 depending on the broadband package you select. Get more info directly from PTCL’s Customer services at 0800-80-800.

Providing Free Smart TV Services to PTCL Customer till June, 2009 in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. The free Smart TV includes the following;
* Free BTV Channels
* Free VODs
* Free Set Top Box
* Usual Broadband charges will apply

With a single bill for all three services (phone, dsl and tv), it can be a convenient feature for many families. PTCL has announced that soon it will expand the service to other cities as well. With its broad coverage, many households will have no other choice but PTCL and will be more likely to take the triple play package. However, we at TelecomPk.net feel that Ptcl’s marketing is not effective as their competitors. Even the website design for Smart TV is not that easy to use for people on dial up connections.

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