Extension lecture held on Language and Educational Technology
ALIGARH : The Department of Linguistics, Aligarh Muslim University organized a University Extension Lecture on “Language and Educational Technology for a Multilingual India” delivered by Prof Girish Nath Jha, an eminent scholar and the Chairman, Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology (CSTT), Ministry of Education, Government of India.
Prof. Jha extensively spoke on the triadic issues of language, technology and multilingualism in Indian scenario. He talked about multilingual classroom set up of India in the light of NEP 2020, with the mandate to have primary education in mother tongue. He said India needs trained teachers and experts in multiple languages and dialects for specialized teaching in each subject and stated that educational technology can address these challenges easily.
He pointed out that the total contents in regional languages on internet are not more than 0.1%, while at present a large population of India needs resources in their mother tongue. Educational technologies include server based technology for easy content creation, deployment and delivery of dynamic and interactive contents with sufficient multimedia support. He said India’s own AI data centers and mobile based access and delivery system, could be able to comprehend this challenging task. However, several institutions in the country, including the IITs, IIITs, C-DAC, IISc Bangalore are working in this field. He cited projects like Bhashini Machine Translation project, PSA initiative, MEITY initiative, Vidyapati- Hindi-Maithili MT, ILCI, etc., successfully resolving the issues in multilingual context.
Prof. Jha has also highlighted the role of Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology (CSTT) in the development of multilingual lingual resources and dictionaries for Indian languages.
In his presidential remarks, Prof. Arif Nazir, Dean, Faulty of Arts emphasized the importance of acquiring linguistic skills as the application and advancement of computers would be beneficial for students in their career. He quoted Stephen Hawking that “computers obey Moore’s Law and double their speed and complexities in every 18 months.”
Earlier, welcoming the guest speaker, Prof. M. J. Warsi, Chairman, Department of Linguistics, said that University Extension lectures are important academic deliberations and these lectures are delivered by eminent scholars who have contributed immensely in their respective fields.
Dr. Nazrin B. Laskar conducted the extension lecture and also proposed the vote of thanks.