Syllabus Review

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

Secondary Education

Subject	Objections	Remarks	Softwares
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
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
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++

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)