Thursday, June 30, 2011

Technology of the Indian Institute


Background

The Indian Institutes of Technology are one of the best technical schools in India. They give birth to new technology and hence they are a paradice to intelligent students all over the world [citation needed]. They do allow other kinds of students too through a different system. The rest of IIT is mostly filled with technical students. IITs use a lot of technology and hence the rest of this post will talk with several examples on how IITM uses technology to make the lives of the IITians easier.


Form filling:

Lots of work in IITM happens through forms, forms are filled up to give preference for a Humanities course or to join the GYM or to submit personal details for records or to even pay the fees. IITM has revolutionised the way students approach forms with the introduction of computers.


In the olden days, students used to maually write out the fields of a form on paper and submit them. Instead of manually writing down a form, one can now instead print a form and fill it up a form and submit. This saves a lot of time involved in writing down the form details. IITM has introduced the patented concept of 'printed forms' that cuts down the student effort by around 50% as the students only have to write down the answers and not the questions as well.


Form Submission
The difficulty of going to places visiting people to get the forms submitted is well known. IITs have found an innovative walk-through for this. Students now don't have to walk all the way to the place of submission(Gymkhana office/bank/department), the students can instead, take a bus. Buses have been introduced in IITM for transportation of the students from one part to another. The buses are GPS tracked to ensure better quality of service.


With multiple floors in each department, having to get signatures from multiple people is a himalayan task. To scale the Himalayas, elevators have been set up. (disambiguation: not to confuse this with the Himalaya mess where there are no elevators)


There are occasions where one has to intimate the official in the administration block about the details like name, roll number, department height, weight, department, marital status, age, batch, department, sexuality and so on for administrative purposes. It is difficult to meet them in person as they may not be out of office or on a sabatical leave at the time you want to visit them. IITs have cleverly tackled this nightmare cleverly with the introducing emails.


One can now just send an email to an official in the academic section and find out when they are free so that he can go there at that time and give them his details.


Decentralised Storage


Individual data about the students can be easily lost in case of an accident. In case, the records are stored centrally, this could be a blunder for the student. IITM adminitration has introduced decentralised storage of data. The same details about a person are stored in multiple places and the students separately submit their details to each place as and when they are requested. Wherever one registers, (Gymkhana, HS course, Bank) and for each event he registers (Gym / Swimming), he gives his information separately.



Continuous Updates
The IITM officials poll constantly and seek student information like blood group, date of birth and parents' names every year. Any changes in the same are quickly noted and updated. Again technology in the form of OMR readers are used to note all the updates.


Right to information

The CCW office considers it a fundamental right of every IITian to know his details. A student can query his monthly expenditures and other details easily. Yet again modern technology has been used in the CCW office. To make sure only students enter the CCW office and non-students stay away, CCTV cameras monitor every person entering the CCW office. This way people who are not students cannot enter the building and find out their non-existant information. A student after a 15 minute interrogation with Mani, places his request in the CCW office and within a week the student can find out his monthly expenditure.

Thus technology has revolutionised the lives of IITians making it happier. We the students of IITM give and share, have and receive from IITM. If you liked the post and managed to get the point, please share it on your favourite social networking site.