Education
Realising the importance of Indian sign language dictionary

Source: Education Times
The dictionary is expected to give an impetus to inclusive education, but will be more effective in the digital format
Indian Sign language (ISL) is set to receive a boost as an Indian sign language dictionary of 10,000 words was recently released by PM Modi. “The Dictionary along with NCERT textbooks in ISL accessible teaching-learning resources will benefit special needs students, their teachers, parents and even the general population who would like to learn a new language like ISL. These resources will also promote the use of Indian Sign Language across the country, and thereby give an impetus to inclusive education,” says Sharita Sharma, assistant professor, Sign Language Linguistics, Department of Linguistics at Central University of Rajasthan (CURAJ) who is currently a member of Government’s NEP (2020) Task Force Committee for Standardization of Indian Sign Language, Ministry of Education (MoE).
What is ISL
Indian Sign Language is not only a means of communication for the hearing-impaired, but a is a symbol of their pride and identity. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act 2016 which came into force from April 19, 2017, recognises sign language as a means of communication which is especially useful for communication with persons with hearing disability. The Act further mandates governments to promote use of sign language to enable persons with hearing disability to participate and contribute to their community and society.
“But it would be inappropriate to assume that a sign language is only for the hearing impaired as it can be used by everyone for making our societies more inclusive and accessible. The ISL has incrementally evolved from 4000 words to 10000 words and evolved the purpose of wider implementation,” says Gaurav Raheja, professor & head, Department of Architecture & Planning and professor in-charge, Inclusion and Accessibility Services, IIT Roorkee where he is also engaged in the management of a school called Anushruti Academy for the Deaf.
Raheja adds that the ISL has been developed through contextual research and purpose suiting the Indian landscape. The other well-known formats of sign language include American Sign Language, which uses a single hand system and the British Sign language, which uses a two hand system much like the Indian sign language. “The priority of words or vocabulary chosen for India by the Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre (ISLRTC) are well defined and ranges between words for everyday use with representation from diverse regional contexts of India (like Bihar, Uttarakhand, etc) to a range of legal terms,” Raheja explains.
Reaching out
Preparing the ISL Dictionary was no mean task and one that involved following the good practices of lexicography (process of dictionary making) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) – where a set of principles provide teachers with a structure to develop instructions to meet the diverse needs of all learners. “It is at par with most western sign language dictionaries and has been created by both hearing impaired and hearing staff,” Sharma says.
Elaborating on the efficacy of such a dictionary, V Srinivasa Chakravarthy, professor at IIT Madras, says, “Apart from enriching the vocabulary of special needs children and empowering them to communicate their thoughts efficiently to the rest of the world, such a dictionary gives a common ‘meaning to a visual gesture’ for communication amongst people. This is especially important when students move from different schools to colleges for higher education.” Chakravarthy, in collaboration with Sunil Kopparapu from TCS, has come up with Mudrabharati, a fingerspelling system for ISL that is based on the phonetic similarity among the major Indic scripts. A project associate in the team, Amal Jude Ashwin, has developed an AI-based system that can convert the video of a signer signing Mudrabharati into running text.
Digital medium
“A digital dictionary that plays the video of the sign and explains its meaning will be better than the conventional paper based one. Another desirable development is creation of an AI based tool that can convert 10,000 signs in the new ISL dictionary into words and offer that tool as a mobile app. After all, it is not easy for a person to look up a hardcopy of 10,000 symbols,” Chakravarthy says.
Wider access
In terms of the Dictionary’s wider dissemination, Sharma explains it is freely available in Open Source platforms such as Youtube and DIKSHA. While most schools for specially abled students have access to these resources, in the pandemic, the education of special needs children did suffer due to the digital and socio-economic divide with physical classes on a pause. Sharma calls for a dictionary app to be made available to all the schools for special needs students, while the government too can distribute dictionary pre-loaded digital tablets or smart phones, so that those without access or means are not left behind.
Are faculty equipped
Since the last few years, several schools have made efforts to include qualified teachers with hearing impairment to teach special needs children. The schools have also recruited ISL interpreters to assist in the teaching-learning process. “Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI) has introduced teacher training courses such as Diploma in Teaching Indian Sign Language (DTISL) which is exclusively for hearing impaired students. The BEd Special Education course of RCI has also made changes in its curriculum to include modules of ISL. The existing teachers have been provided training in Indian Sign Language by the government and other organisations, Sharma says.
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Business
Device Management Is Crucial in Enhancing Cybersecurity for Interactive Touchscreens

By Nadav Avni, CMO of Radix Technologies
Elevate your cybersecurity defenses with effective device management strategies for interactive touchscreens. Unleash the power of secure interactivity while safeguarding sensitive information.
The education sector’s digital transformation is helping students keep pace with modern technology. The internet has made it easier than ever for kids to access learning materials, submit assignments, and participate in group activities. In addition, schools now use interactive touchscreens instead of antiquated tools such as whiteboards, projectors, and video cassette players. All that’s remaining is to ensure school devices have the right device management support to keep them safe.
Like everything else, technology also has a dark side. For the education sector, cybersecurity breaches often mean great risks to student privacy. Awareness, best practices, and device management can help minimize the damages from cybersecurity breaches. After all, when school districts commit to a full and safe digital upgrade, students win.
Identifying Cybersecurity Challenges in Education
What’s the best medium of instruction for students who grew up immersed in the internet, usually via their parent’s smartphones and tablets? Interactive touchscreens, of course! Touchscreens provide a natural extension for kids who learned to type letters on phone screens and play videos with touch controls.
Unfortunately, school devices aren’t totally immune to cybersecurity issues. Many students and teachers alike fall for phishing scams, where they inadvertently share their user accounts and passwords with online thieves. These criminals will then access their private data to steal whatever they can.
Additionally, cyber gangs can also use brute-force hacking and SQL injections to gain access to restricted servers. In some cases, institutions fall victim to ransomware, where they’re forced to pay gangs to return access to critical data in exchange for money.
Negligence in cybersecurity measures
is the major reason for online breaches. However, the use of obsolete technology is also a factor. A single device that has yet to update to the latest software version leaves the entire system vulnerable to attacks. Reminding users to practice online diligence is a good way to minimize attacks. However, school districts also need reliable device management software to protect and update devices.
Implementing Comprehensive Device Management Solutions
Comprehensive device management solutions enable school districts to enforce area-wide security protocols. A key feature of modern device management is remote ability. This allows IT administrators to remotely connect to one or all devices on demand.
What’s more, management can monitor each device to see if it runs the latest software versions and allows access only to authorized users. Remote management also allows IT teams to schedule automatic updates during device downtimes.
Another key feature of device management is assigning user access levels consistent with their duties. For example, students receive access to scheduled modules and their personal records.
Meanwhile, instructors get wider access to their student data and the course curriculum. School administrators and board members can collect user data to gather insights into school and individual performances. Finally, IT teams have access to system settings and administrative work.
Basically, each user only gets to work on their defined area of responsibility. Partitioning access reduces the risk of users overstepping their bounds and records any such attempts or incidences.
Monitoring, Patching, and Vulnerability Management
Touchscreen devices are some of the biggest expenditures schools can make as they embrace the digital classroom. Ensuring a great return on investment (ROI) for these devices means having them work optimally beyond their expected lifespan.
Providing expert care and maintenance on these machines will extend their operational years. Additionally, IT administrators should consistently apply the latest updates and fixes to system software, firmware, and applications. This ensures all school equipment uses the latest software versions. More importantly, malicious entities can’t exploit documented vulnerabilities in the software.
For this reason, remote management should remain a key feature of your device management platform. The ability to connect with one or more devices remotely lets administrators apply critical updates and patches immediately. It also enables admins to attend to devices reporting unauthorized access attempts.
With a single command prompt, admins can freeze, shut down, or disable devices to prevent any further action. If there are attempts to steal data or devices, admins can wipe all stored information or incapacitate devices. At the same time, geolocation services can identify the location of stolen or missing devices.
Educating Users: Promoting Cybersecurity Awareness and Best Practices
Embracing a totally digital educational system means being aware of the risks that come with it. Many of today’s students are digital natives, having grown up in a computerized environment. Sometimes, this familiarity leads students to boldly attempt to override school systems or hack local databases. While many will do so with malicious intent, some will do so just because they can.
A good start for school districts is to educate students about the need to protect their own data. This includes assuming the responsibility of securing and updating their passwords and encrypting or protecting their documents. Additionally, students should learn to always log out of shared devices after use.
However, awareness is just the beginning. School districts should also enlist the help of reliable device management software, which can take the pressure off individual users.
Having a platform that monitors, manages, and secures all school devices is a great deterrent against wanton online aggression. More importantly, a good device management platform has the tools to secure devices and counter any unauthorized access attempts.
Enjoy the Full Digital Experience With Reliable Device Management
Touchscreen devices and other digital school equipment are great tools students can use to learn proper cybersecurity. With their assigned accounts and devices, they can practice diligent password management and proper document storage. Instructors can also spend a few sessions teaching students about common cybercrimes such as phishing, malware, and ransomware.
In short, awareness combined with reliable device management practices can set up a great learning system in schools with digital equipment. Embracing technology means recognizing the possible dangers that go with it. Doing so is a win-win situation for both school districts and the students themselves.
Business
Building a Greener Web: Six Ways to Put Your Website on an Emissions Diet

By Roberta Haseleu, Practice Lead Green Technology at Reply, Fiorenza Oppici, Live Reply, and Lars Trebing, Vanilla Reply
Most people are unaware or underestimate the impact of the IT sector on the environment. According to the BBC: “If we were to rather crudely divide the 1.7 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions estimated to be produced in the manufacture and running of digital technologies between all internet users around the world, it would mean each of us is responsible for 414kg of carbon dioxide a year.” That’s equivalent to 4.7bn people charging their smartphone 50,000 times.
Every web page produces a carbon footprint that varies depending on its design and development. This must be more closely considered as building an energy efficient website also increases loading speeds which leads to better performance and user experience.
Following are six practical steps developers can take to reduce the environmental impact of their websites.
- Implement modularisation
With traditional websites that don’t rely on single page apps, each page and view of the site is saved in individual html files. The code only runs, and the data is only downloaded, for the page that the user is visiting, avoiding unnecessary requests. This reduces transmitted data volume and saves energy.
However, this principle is no longer the standard in modern web design which is dominated by single page apps which dynamically display all content to the user at runtime. This approach is easier and faster to code and more user-friendly but, without any precautions, it creates unnecessary overheads. In the worst case, accessing the homepage of a website may trigger the transmission of the entire code of the application, including parts that may not be needed.
Modularisation can help. By dividing the code of a website into different modules, i.e. coherent code sections, only the relevant code is referenced. Using modules offers distinct benefits: they keep the scope of the app clean and prevent ‘scope creeps’; they are loaded automatically after the page has been parsed but before the Document Object Model (DOM) is rendered; and, most importantly for green design, they facilitate ‘lazy loading’.
- Adopt lazy loading
The term lazy loading describes a strategy of only loading resources at the moment they are needed. This way, a large image at the bottom of the page will not be loaded unless the user scrolls down to that section.
If a website only consists of a routing module and an app module which contain all views, the site will become very heavy and slow at first load. Smart modularisation, breaking down the site into smaller parts, in combination with lazy loading can help to load only the relevant content when the user is viewing that part of the page.
However, this should not be exaggerated either as, in some instances, loading each resource only in the last moment while scrolling can annihilate performance gains and result in higher server and network loads. It’s important to find the right balance based on a good understanding of how the app will be used in real life (e.g. whether users will generally rather continue to the next page after a quick first glance, or scroll all the way down before moving on).
- Monitor build size
Slimming website builds is possible not only at runtime but also at a static level. Typically, a web app consists of a collection of different typescript files. To build a site and compile the code from typescript to JavaScript, a web pre-processor is used.
Pre-processors come with the possibility to prevent a build to complete if its files are bigger than a variable threshold. Limits can be set both for the main boot script as well as the single chunks of CSS to be no bigger than a specific byte size after compilation. Any build surpassing those thresholds fails with a warning.
If a build is suspiciously big, a web designer can inspect it and identify which module contributes the most, as well as all its interdependencies. This information allows the programmer to optimise the parts of the websites in question.
- Eliminate unused code
One potential reason for excessive build sizes can be dozens of configuration files and code meant for scenarios that are never needed. Despite never being executed, this code still takes up bandwidth, thereby consuming extra energy.
Unused parts can be found in own source code but also (and often to a greater extent) in external libraries used as dependencies. Luckily, a technique called ‘tree shaking’ can be used to analyse the code and mark which parts are not referenced by other portions of the code.
Modern pre-processors perform ‘tree shaking’ to identify unused code but also to exclude it automatically from the build. This allows them to package only those parts of the code that are needed at runtime – but only if the code is modularised.
- Choose external libraries wisely
One common approach to speed up the development process is by using external libraries. They provide ready-to-use utilities written and tested by other people. However, some of these libraries can be unexpectedly heavy and weigh your code down.
One popular example is Moment.js, a very versatile legacy library for handling international date formats and time zones. Unfortunately, it is also quite big in size. Most of all, it is neither very compatible with the typical TypeScript world nor is it modular. This way, also the best pre-processors cannot reduce the weight that it adds to the code by means of ‘tree shaking’.
- Optimise content
Designs can also be optimised by avoiding excessive use of images and video material. Massive use of animation gimmicks such as parallax scrolling also has a negative effect. Depending on the implementation, such animations can massively increase the CPU and GPU load on the client. To test this, consider running the website on a 5 to 10-year-old computer. If scrolling is not smooth and/or the fans jump to maximum speed, this is a very good indication of optimisation potential.
The amount of energy that a website consumes — and thus its carbon footprint — depends, among other factors, on the amount of data that needs to be transmitted to display the requested content to users. By leveraging the six outlined techniques above, web designers can ‘slim’ their websites and contribute to the creation of a more sustainable web whilst boosting performance and user experience in the process.
Education
How schools can improve employee experiences amid the cost of living crisis

By Dr Angelina Sun, Workforce Management Solutions Director at WorkForce Software
It is a grim fact that the cost of living crisis is hitting some of our most crucial workers the hardest. With reports this month finding that a third of primary school teachers are struggling to afford essentials due to soaring prices. For example, the rise in fresh produce costs broke records at 12.1% in September, putting the impact of inflation into stark context. Similarly, researchers at the University of Portsmouth recently warned that the cost of living crisis is seeing schools lose teaching assistants to better-paid roles in supermarkets, which not only pay more but also offer other benefits such as flexible working hours.
It is no surprise that the National Education Union (NEU) has issued a fresh warning of strikes as teachers demand an above-inflation pay increase. As the Union warns, if poor pay and conditions continue, the trend of 1 in 3 teachers in England leaving within the first five years will only get worse. Similarly, it has been found that 1 in 8 college staff leave within a year.
There is no doubt that the question of teachers’ pay must be addressed, but it is also clear that there are broader barriers to recruitment and retention in the education sector. Across other industries, there is an increasing awareness and appreciation of the importance of delivering a rounded, positive employee experience. Beyond remuneration, this encompasses other aspects of work-life from flexible working to support for wellbeing. Education has struggled to adopt a similar approach, both for practical reasons (the nature of this work often prevents certain flexibilities from being offered) and because culturally, the profession has often been slow to adapt.
However, this must change. There are ways to allow educators access to similar elevated employee experiences enjoyed in other sectors, and these must be considered if vital teaching staff are not to be lost to other competitively placed professions.
Flexibility in practice
The nature of the school day may lead educators to assume that flexible approaches to working are off the table. As a recent report from the NASUWT-The Teachers Union found, more than half of teachers (52%) say that their school/college does not offer flexible working and is now calling for flexible working to be a day one right for all teachers. As its General Secretary, Dr Patrick Roach highlighted, “There is a great deal of evidence showing that some schools continue to believe that flexible working is not compatible with delivering high educational standards for pupils. This is patently false.”
There are ways to explore more flexible working arrangements and schedules that give teachers greater autonomy over their time. In fact, the government has shown support for flexible approaches, recently announcing investment of £750K in a ‘culture change programme’ to embed flexible working in schools and multi-academy trusts, such as offering compressed hours, adjusting start and end times based on personal needs, and removing the requirement to spend non-teaching hours at school. When teachers can complete planning, preparation and assessment tasks at home, and even run parent conferences online, there is no reason they cannot be offered the same kind of remote flexibility as others.
Schools also enjoy the rewards of flexibility – retaining experienced staff, recruiting from a broader pool, promoting wellbeing and improving work-life balance, which leads to more engaged, productive teams.
There are also options to apply flexibility to financial rewards. While schools’ hands may be tied when it comes to salary uplifts, there are ways they can support staff to manage finances more flexibly. For example, pay-on-demand gives educators access to wages when needed. Staff can access money as it is earned, meaning there is no waiting for payday. This can make managing personal finances a lot easier, alleviating some of the financial stress that teachers increasingly find themselves under.
Delivering such elevated employee experiences across a school or college workforce can be a challenge. However, there are successful examples of similarly dispersed, deskless workforces that have adopted intelligent workplace management technologies to help manage flexible working and pay-on-demand. Using cloud technologies educators can access streamlined, personalised digital processes that mirror the technology-enabled employee experiences now enjoyed across private sector roles.
For example, modern workforce management technologies that utilise sophisticated AI and machine learning, alongside user-friendly design, can reinforce better working practices for all staff, whether frontline in the classroom, or supporting staff in the back office.
As highlighted by the Shared Headship Network, “schools need to be smart about the use of technology to enable certain aspects of school life to be more flexible.”
Modelling effective communications
If flexible working is to become a workable, embedded culture in education, it must also be supported by a foundation of effective communications and dialogues between teachers, staff, managers and leaders. For deskless workforces, such as teachers and lecturers, maintaining communications can be a challenge, – even simple administrative tasks such as leave requests can become burdensome and protracted.
Automating routine management tasks can save time, streamline workloads and improve efficiency while also allowing managers and leaders to focus on supporting teachers with the real work. Workforce management solutions are an easy win in this regard. Not only that, but they can also help leaders take the temperature of their organisations in the moment. For example, ‘pulse surveys’ can pick up on work dissatisfaction very quickly. Achieving consistent two-way communications through technologies can give the individual employee a voice while empowering employers with the insights they need to address trends affecting their larger workforce groups.
Seeing the bigger picture
There is no single solution to the issues facing recruitment and retention of teachers. Technology is not the panacea, especially when teachers are rightly fighting for better pay. Teachers deserve salaries that reflect their vital role in society. However, pay is not the only issue facing the profession. Too often educators are looking at their workplace experience in comparison to private sector roles and seeing a whole host of tempting benefits they do not have access to.
Digital provision, innovation and modern workplace cultures that are increasingly embraced in the private sector are not often available to those in the public sector. Again, this serves to highlight inequity of experience beyond the figure on the pay packet.
It is time to use all methods we can to create educational workplaces that reward staff. From how we engage technology, to pay, to employee experiences, it is a holistic approach that will save our schools and ensure teaching talent is rewarded and secured.

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