Date:31/05/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/05/31/stories/2005053103080300.htm

Kerala - Others

Academic rues lack of innovation

Staff Reporter

TENHIPALAM: Practically little innovation in education has taken place in the last 50 years, said A. Sukumaran Nair, former Vice-Chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University, here on Sunday. Presiding over the valedictory session of a two-day national seminar on "Knowmatics, knowledge technology and knowledge industry" on the Calicut University campus, Dr. Nair said nobody was happy about the way students were taught and schools and universities functioned.

Saji Gopinath, Associate Professor at Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode, said the inventions of knowmatics and knowledge technology had been the needs of the present century.

T.D. Saji, an expert on knowmatics, said the current software boom would be over in 10 years as software development activities became automatic and many information technology professionals would lose their jobs. He said knowmatics and knowledge technology would offer employment opportunities in the State by commercialisation of knowledge products.

K.N. Soman of Calicut University said knowmatics and knowledge technology were extensions of theories of knowledge/informatics formulated by scholars from around the world, including Raju M. Mathew, Head of the Department of Library and Information Science, Calicut University.

The seminar director, Dr. Mathew, moved a resolution asking the Government to formulate a knowledge technology policy so as to make Kerala a major player of industry in five years.