After traveling to India this Fall and beginning the work on a collaborative GIS project with students from the Indo-Asian Academy I am happy to see Microsoft Research India working on a way to geocode addresses in countries lacking a standard addressing scheme like the United States. While in India, I was wondering how you would perform geocoding in a country growing so fast with infrastructure stack on top of infrastructure not to mention the vast diversity of housing that would be required to geocode.
Here are a couple of posts on the topic ...
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/RLS.aspx
http://apb.directionsmag.com/archives/5137-Microsoft-Research-Tool-Geocodes-Unstructured-Addresses.html
Showing posts with label india. Show all posts
Showing posts with label india. Show all posts
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
CORE Projects and Technologies - Bombay
Monday was spent in Bombay with people at CORE Projects and Technologies discussing how their 3D immersing technologies can be integrated into some of our classes. CORE Projects and Technologies is a products and solutions driven company with many PPP's (Public Private Partnerships) in many domains within the education arena. They focus on both the Business of Eduation and the Delivery of Education. Primarily and education company, CORE has domain expertise in the following domains:- Assessment / Achievement
- Accountability
- Grants and Financial
- Safety
- Student Information
- Communication
- Professional Development
Agra and the Taj
A brief break from long days, much travel and many meetings brought us to the town of Agra and the Taj Mahal. The Taj was greater than expected and it's hard to imagine we were there. The Taj Mahal was built by a king in honor of his second wife. There are two other tombs flanking the Taj where his first and third wives are buried. In addition to the Taj, we visited the Red Fort across the river where the King was imprisoned by his son before the Taj was completed. His son imprisoned him because he thougth the Taj was too excessive and expensive. This was a nice break considering the week after consists of flying 3 cities in 5 days and having countless meetings. Enjoy the pictures of the Taj Mahal.
View Larger Map
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Where's Pete? (and Pam and Russ)?
Please ignore the straight line going southeast from the airport ... I turned on the GPS unit in a town southeast of the airport and it drew this line. I don't have the software to edit it our currently.
View Larger Map
View Larger Map
Saturday, September 20, 2008
India pics
Check out the pics from Dehli. A couple of thoughts ... the traffic is every bit as crazy as you hear. Actually, crazier. Also note the differences between the very nice buildings (not the norm) and the areas that do not seem so nice (more the norm).
Friday meetings with IBM and IGNOU
Friday started with the first meeting of our trip at IBM with the Country Manager for Government and Education, Satish Kaushal. Satish gave us a great overview of the education system in India including past, present and future hopes for the country. We also discussed IBM's role in the country with higher education and their unique position to assist with infrastructure and delivery of educational content through hardware and other solutions. This meeting was initiated by Amita Mehta, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technology Officer with Core Products and Technologies Ltd who we will be spending time with in Mumbai (Bombay) early this coming week exploring 3D visualization technologies.
From there, we went to Indira Gandhi National Open Universtiy (IGNOU), a very large university with a major campus in Dehli. IGNOU has 1.8 million students (yes ... 1.8 million) throughout 20+ countries. We met with the chair of the School of Engineering and Technology, another professor in the School of Engineering and Technology, and a professor in the School of Sciences. This meeting provided an opportunity to discuss education in the 21st century for students in North Carolina, India and the entire world. The purpose of this open University is to 'reach the unreached'. They have a very similar goal the Community College in the United States has of working with non-traditional students.
IGNOU highlights:
* Reaches the entire country of India using a model of 48 Regional Centers. The Regional Centers cover all the states in India and take care of all admistration tasks including student advising and registration.
* 2000 Study Centers where various subjects are taught. These Study Centers work with other colleges and Universities in varied geographic locations to share/contract resources such as lab space.
* Vast distance learning initiative including their own TV station with 25 channels, FM radio stations and other ways of reaching students that are not on campus.
* 'Self-instructional material - many text books are written collaboratively by teams of faculty and other experts.
* Many courses are offered in several languages.
* Classes culminating with certificates, diplomas, Masters and PhD's.
* Just beginning to have first classes online.
Potential collaboartion between our colleges include opportunities to develop curricula that may be shared through learning objects. Other collaboration may include international collaboration between students and faculty on school work and projects.
From there, we went to Indira Gandhi National Open Universtiy (IGNOU), a very large university with a major campus in Dehli. IGNOU has 1.8 million students (yes ... 1.8 million) throughout 20+ countries. We met with the chair of the School of Engineering and Technology, another professor in the School of Engineering and Technology, and a professor in the School of Sciences. This meeting provided an opportunity to discuss education in the 21st century for students in North Carolina, India and the entire world. The purpose of this open University is to 'reach the unreached'. They have a very similar goal the Community College in the United States has of working with non-traditional students.
IGNOU highlights:
* Reaches the entire country of India using a model of 48 Regional Centers. The Regional Centers cover all the states in India and take care of all admistration tasks including student advising and registration.
* 2000 Study Centers where various subjects are taught. These Study Centers work with other colleges and Universities in varied geographic locations to share/contract resources such as lab space.
* Vast distance learning initiative including their own TV station with 25 channels, FM radio stations and other ways of reaching students that are not on campus.
* 'Self-instructional material - many text books are written collaboratively by teams of faculty and other experts.
* Many courses are offered in several languages.
* Classes culminating with certificates, diplomas, Masters and PhD's.
* Just beginning to have first classes online.
Potential collaboartion between our colleges include opportunities to develop curricula that may be shared through learning objects. Other collaboration may include international collaboration between students and faculty on school work and projects.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
INDIA!
We made it ... 14 hour flight from Newark wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. We left Asheville around 5:30pm on Wednesday and arrived in New Dehli at 8:30pm on Thursday.
Tomorrow, we will be picked up at 7:30am and be driven to IBM to meet with the Director of Education for the country and then on to Indira Gandhi National Open University- IGNOU - for another meeting before flying out to Agra for the weekend.
Highlight of the flight for me ... GPS tracking of the plane all the way so we could see exactly where we were the entire time. I took a picture of the screen in front of me but it is pretty blurry. You get the idea though - we heade NE out of Neward towards Greenland and then across towards Moscow and down through Afghanistan and Pakistan into India.
Second highlight for me on the flight ... viewing the mountain range between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Not the northern Hindu Kush region we all know so much about thanks to Al Qaeda taking refuge there but impressive none-the-less.
Tomorrow, we will be picked up at 7:30am and be driven to IBM to meet with the Director of Education for the country and then on to Indira Gandhi National Open University- IGNOU - for another meeting before flying out to Agra for the weekend.
Highlight of the flight for me ... GPS tracking of the plane all the way so we could see exactly where we were the entire time. I took a picture of the screen in front of me but it is pretty blurry. You get the idea though - we heade NE out of Neward towards Greenland and then across towards Moscow and down through Afghanistan and Pakistan into India.
Second highlight for me on the flight ... viewing the mountain range between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Not the northern Hindu Kush region we all know so much about thanks to Al Qaeda taking refuge there but impressive none-the-less.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Monday, June 30, 2008
India Cities and Itinerary - *** preliminary ***
View Larger Map
We are getting things nailed down for our trip. Looks like we'll be gone September 17, 2008 through September 27, 2008
So far we'll be visiting:
Monday, June 16, 2008
INDIA
It is all but official (no plane tickets booked as of yet) - we are going to India this fall.
As part of an iniative to better understand and prepare our community for working in a global economy, this will be the second trip (my first) to India. We will focus on building relationships and learning about the the culture to prepare for workshops we will conduct once we return for businesses and the community as a whole.
I will, of course, be documenting as much of the effort as possible here on this blog... and yes, you'll see a lot of maps and spatial information about the trip here ... as you can see below.
View Larger Map
On this trip will be:
Russ Yelton, Executive Director of Entrepreneurial Ventures and Business Incubation on the Enka Campus of Asheville - Buncombe Technical Community College.
Pam Silvers, Chair of the Business Computer Technologies Department at Asheville - Buncombe Technical Community College.
Pete Kennedy, GIS and Computer Technology Instructor. GIS Certificate at Asheville - Buncombe Technical Community College.
Come back often and see how the planning for our trip is going.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
