FOSS Community India
Register
Advertisement

Syllabus Review of Indian Educational Institutes to filter out Brandings

If we hope to make the next generation of Indian students digitally literate, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is the most logical choice. However, the syllabus in many academic institutions *mandates* proprietary software and mentions them by brand names.

This prevents teachers and students from choosing the software that best suits their needs and budgets. It makes the education system teach products not principles. And the benefits go to the owners of the brand names, not to the country, or the students or the teachers.

To bring the benefits of FOSS to Indian students, one of the first steps we need to take is to remove the proprietary bias from the syllabus.

How you can help

If you come across examples of brand names being mentioned in the syllabus in Primary Education, Secondary Education, Professional Colleges or Others, please bring them to our attention. If you can find a link to the syllabus, add it to the appropriate section and add information on the brand names mentioned in the syllabus.We aim to have a substantial database built up by the end of May 2008. We will take this information to education policy makers and political parties and get the syllabus changed.

Please join and see the Campaign mailing list HERE


Getting Started

You can help us by collecting information for the Syllabus Review drive. This drive is intended to identify instances where proprietary software is mentioned in the syllabus. Therefore the best way to get started is to use search strings like:

<state name> primary education secondary education Windows Microsoft Word Visual Basic

When your search discovers proprietary software mentioned in the syllabus, please do add them to the appropriate section of http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Syllabus_Review.

Or if you find it difficult for you to edit the wiki,please add it to the discussions page,or just mail to the mailing list with the details you have,so the list can help you editing the wiki.

Thanks for the support and we look forward to your contributions.

Primary Education

Subject Objections Remarks Softwares
NCERT
IT CURRICULUM, NCERT IT TOOLS section says to use Windows operating system and internet explorer. Though NCERT keeps a good status of using standard words, they still prescribe MS Windows OS, MS Word and IE. Both students and teachers are to required to know about detecting virus in floppies to start with.Urgent Vigil against Viruses are only required in proprietary platforms. MS Windows,MS Word,Internet Explorer
Department of School Education, Govt. of Tamil Nadu
CLASS 03 ICT Defining computer Interface with Windows desktop How came one chapter about GNU/Linux in 9th class ICT? see Objections
CLASS 04 ICT GST Typing tutor,MS Power Point ,Star Impress
CLASS 05 ICT MS Word,Star Writer,Creative Writer
CLASS 06 ICT Unique features of MS Windows GUI,MS-word,Star Writer,QBASIC,BASIC
CLASS 07 ICT MS Excel,Star Calc,BASIC,Adobe Flash,GIF Animator,Internet Explorer
CLASS 08 ICT MS Excel,visicalc,star calc,MS Notepad,Wordpad,Ms Frontpage
CLASS 09 ICT MS Frontpage,MS Access,MS Visual Basic
CLASS 10 ICT MS Access,Star base,Visual Basic
Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board
CLASS 8,9,10 Class 8:MS Windows,MS Word;Class 9:MS-Power Point;Class 10:MSAccess one module is about ANSI C!a smell of standard is there!
Himachal Pradesh Board of School Education
ClASS 10 MS-Office,Internet Explorer;practical:MSAccess,Infrastructure suggestions:MSWindows,Internet Explorer,LeapOffice,Microsoft training software,C-DAC's ADIT course material Full of Microsoft Softwares and CDAC's too!
BOARD OF SECONDARY EDUCATION, MANIPUR
IX and X Additional Subject:Computer Science:MSDOS,BASIC,DBASE III Lagging by atleast 15 Years!

Secondary Education

Subject Objections Remarks Softwares
CBSE
Secondary Curriculum 2010,INTRODUCTORY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY(CODE No. 165) CLass-IXth:Unit 2-IT TOOLS-Windows GUI basics,MSOffice and its practical in Unit-3 A Microsoft Course.. Windows,MSOffice
Senior School Curriculum 2009,Informatics Practices (Code 065) XI:

Unit -I Computer System And Business Applications:Windows,Unit 2 Introduction to Programming:Visual Basic,UNIT 3 RDBMS:ORACLE XII:Unit 2:Visual Basic,Unit 3 RDBMS:PL/SQL

MS Visual Basic,ORACLE PL/SQL
Himachal Pradesh Board of School Education
CLASS 11 Informatics Practises: MS-Windows,MS Visual Basic,ORACLE Complete MS Windows Course
CLASS 12 MS Visual Basic,ORACLE, PL/SQL
Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board
CLASS XI and XII CLASS 11 AND 12:MSOffice,Mathematica,gnuplot More scientific syllabus,but totally Unethical
Board of Secondary Education,Rajasthan
IXth Class 7th Subject ComputerLiteracy Unit-II:DOS,Unit-III: MS-Windows GUI,Unit -IV:Windows Applications Ultimate education package to create a youth of slaves MSWindows,DOS,MSOFFICE,CDAC fonts
Xth 7th subject Computer Literacy Unit-II Windows GUI Internet Explorer,Other apps,Unit-IV web tools in Windows Windows,and its webtools
XIth standards 5th subject Compulsory Computer Science Unit-II IT TOOLS:Windows GUI,MSOffice,UNIT-III IT Application-Practical works on the above tools Windows ,MSOffice
XIIth Standard- Computer science(Application and programming)optional-(subject code 3) Paper-I Unit II-Visual Basic Introduction ,Unit -III Visual Basic Programming,Paper -II:Unit-II:Ms Access,Unit-III:(Non Standard,ORACLE,not explicit) SQL,practicals Visual Basic,MSAccess,Non Standard SQL
Board of School Education, Haryana
CLASS IX Ist sem:Computer Fundamentals:MS Windows;IInd SEM Theory & Practical:MSWord2000,MSPowerPoint2000,MSExcel2000 according to such a course curriculum,"Computer is a Microsoft Device"
CLASS X Ist Sem:MSWord2000,MSPowerPoint2000;IInd Sem:MSAccess
CLASS XI Ist Sem:MSWord,MSExcel,MSPowerPoint,MSAccess
Department of School Education, Govt. of Tamil Nadu
11th Std Computer Science VOL1,VOL2 VOL 1:Chapter-6 Computer Communication:Internet with Windows tools

VOL 2:Chapter 1 Introduction to Windows Xp,Chapter 2 Windows Explorer

Though there is a chapter for (GNU/)Linux in Volume 2,This too is not a bad way towards slavery Windows,its net tools,Internet Explorer
12th std Computer Science VOL1,VOL2 VOL1:chapter-1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9:STAR OFFICE Course

VOL2:Non Standard C++(Turbo C++)

No Scope for Vendor Neutral Software Star office,Turbo C++

Others

Colleges & Universities

College/University Courses Papers Remarks
Kerala
MG University, Kottayam, Kerala Btech,CSE
RT503 - Database Systems Case study in Oracle
RT502 - Operating Systems General Structure of MSDOS, Windows 2000.
RT704 - Advanced Software environments Windows API, MFC
RT706-4 - Windows programming !
R707 - Hardware Lab MASM
RT805-5 - Distributed Computing Sun Network file system
MCA

Insists students for using Oracle

Calicut University BSc Computer Science Visual Basic, Visual C++,MASM,Oracle,adobe Flash,ASP.net.Windows,PowerPoint
Btech,ECE
EC04-111(P)ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS WORKSHOP-PART B 9th experiment- "PCB layout using software like ORCARD,CIRCUITMAKER,EDWIN"
EC04-805(A):SOFT COMPUTING TECHNIQUES Internal Assignment on MATLAB
EC04-806(P):ADVANCED COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING LAB "Objective:To make students familiar with microwave devices,MATLAB,DSP kits,PSPICE"


Tamilnadu
Bharathiyar University, Distance education BCA COBOL,Windows
Maharashtra
University of Mumbai BSc (IT), MSc(IT) Turbc C,C++,Visual C,Visual Basic in sem 5 Bsc(IT),Use of Emulators (Wipro UWin),WINDOWS
Pondicherry
M.G.Govt. Arts College,Mahe, under Pondicherry University B.A.Malayalam Introduction to Malayalam Softwares OS is Windows,since at the time of framing the syllabus,GNU/Linux distribution with Malayalam support was not available. Currently that syllabus requires an overhauling.Windows operation system and ASCII encoded text editing and Word Processing applications are the softwares
Andhra Pradesh
Osmania University, Hyderabad, AP B.E. (Computer Science) CS 481 : Visual Programming Lab The Entire course is taught using visual studio in all colleges affiliated to Osmania University and also in the university itself. This course requires proprietary Visual studio on proprietary Windows Operating system thereby limiting the learning curve as both of the softwares are not available for free and not everyone can afford it. The course is mostly taught using visual studio .NET
B.E. (Computer Science) CS 431 : Distributed Systems Lab Sounds like a linux based distributed system lab? No, it isn't, this course is a preliminary to the above course for preparing the student getting accustomed to the Microsoft proprietary studio development tools and knowing the basics. The entire course covers the basics of visual studio c++


See also

NRCFOSS's FOSS based syllabus (to supplement the use of FOSS (or may be vendor neutral software)

Advertisement