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The Net worth of Tamil
Dr V Sankaranarayanan
 There are about eight crore Tamilians all over the world, out of which 20 per cent are outside India. The Tamil Virtual University (TVU) was formed to provide Internet-based resources and opportunities for them as well as others interested in learning this classical language, says its director, Dr V
Sankaranarayanan.
In an interview to Chennaionline about TVU and its activities, he said the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu announced at an international seminar on IT in February 1999 that the TVU would be set up and it was. The functions of the TVU are guided by a board of directors and administration is by a full-time director.
Excerpts from the interview....
In which country are there more Tamils and what are the services TVU renders for them?
 Tamilians live in Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, Fiji Island, Sri Lanka, United States of America and in many other countries. For the past 10 to 20 years, Tamilians have started going to USA seeking good job oppurtunities. Both husband and wife may be from Tamil Nadu and they would be good in Tamil, but their children would not know Tamil. They would not be able to study Tamil. The couple would like their children to learn Tamil. They may have a computer and an Internet connection at home. Their children know how to operate the computer. So the couples teach them Tamil from our website and we have an excellent collection of lessons, which accompany real-time animation and video.
What are the types of users of your university?
Visitor:
A registered member of the universiy is a visitor, who can just have a glance at our programmes and can go through the sample contents of the website. For this, we don't charge any fees and registration is free.
Auditor:
Anyone can enroll on payment for auditing any lesson of the academic programmes for knowledge's sake.
Student:
Anyone can enrol on payment of a fee as a student of any academic programme. An enrolled student gets free access to the library.
Library Member:
People can enrol for the library membership by paying annual or life membership fee. Library members will have no access to the lessons of the academic programmes.
What are the functions of the
TVU?
 The functions include Internet-based educational programmes, digital library and development of Tamil computing. The educational programme consists of courses on Tamil from alphabets to advanced research through Internet. It also includes courses on Tamil for tourists and other programmes on Tamil culture and art.
What are the various levels of learning at the university?
The certificate course is a programme for beginners to learn Tamil from the alphabets. In this course, the language skill in Tamil taught up to class-6 in schools is offered under three levels, namely, basic, intermediate and advanced levels. A primary programme with rhymes and moral stories is given.
The lessons are developed with audio, video, real-time animation, pictures, text, etc., in a manner that would create interest and provide motivation for learning in a self-instructional learning mode. A number of tests for self-evaluation have also been provided for students to test themselves, as this is like a open university system.
At the basic level, all the alphabets of Tamil are introduced. The lessons are written in such a manner that one can learn to read and write the Tamil alphabets with the help of multimedia contents. Exercises are given for self-evaluation. There are 14 lessons. These lessons start with simple letters and end with the complicated ones, grouping letters of similar shape in a lesson. The 13th lesson introduces the natural order of the Tamil alphabets. At the end, 16 rhymes to remember the alphabets are given. It also includes a primary programme with animated moral stories and animated primary rhymes.
How do you formulate the lessons?
 There is a separate commitee for formulating lessons. They would recommend the lessons to the government. All these lessons are of self-instructional mode (SIM), not only that, all the lessons aare accompanied by animation, which will make the process of learning easy. The commitee is headed by an expert in the education field.
What are the services that you provide for people in Sri Lanka and Malaysia?
In Sri Lanka and Malaysia, children have the oppurtunity to learn Tamil. Here our focus is on teachers. The teachers teaching Tamil would have not studied graduation in Tamil, they would not have the required qualification as the history teacher or any other teacher. The Tamil teachers are not considered to be equivalent to other teachers. We have formulated syllabus for them in such a way that they would also be equal to other teachers.
The Commonwealth of Learning in Malaysia has given us an project to train 40 teachers in Tamil. They send the teachers, we train them. Sometimes we go there to teach them. The Commonwealth of Learning also provides us some financial help in developing our lessons.
 Not only that, 600 people from Sri Lanka have registered with us for graduation course, and until now, 36 Sri Lankan Tamilians have passed the first semester.
The TVU is an extension of the Tamil University in Thanjavur. The certificates for the courses would be provided by them. We only formulate the lessons and upload them on the website. The Thanjavur Tamil University has recognised our
sylabbus.
What is the fee structure?
We charge $ 10 for a paper in certificate course for people residing in developed countries like the US, UK, etc., and $ 5 for people residing in developing countries like India, Sri Lanka, etc.
How is the TVU funded?
The Government of Tamil Nadu funds us. At the initial stages the funding was Rs 1.5 crore and then it was Rs 75 lakh. The amount would get reduced as time progresses as we need to reach self-sustainability.
Similarly, the government has given us the fund for developing software in Tamil. Anybody interested in developing software or any packages in Tamil can approach us. We will help them. The TVU has a separate project advisory committe for recommending the best project. This yeat the Government of Tamil Nadu has provided Rs 60 lakh for the research work.
 The government has also given us another project. Earlier there was no standardisation of keyboard, fonts and printers for Tamil language. In the Tamil Internet conference held in 1999, it was decided to standadise all these. Now we have standardised the keyboard and fonts.
Anybody who creates a new software in Tamil or a new tool in Tamil or develops a keyboard, printer or any other item in Tamil can aproach us for certification that it complies with the Government of Tamil Nadu, Tamil computer norms. We have a certification committee for this purpose. We only charge a nominal fee for this certification. Till now eight products have been certified by us.
Please tell us about your organisational set-up.
Former Anna University vice-chancellor V C Kulandaisamy is our chairman, the Secretary for the Department of Information Technology, Secretary for the Department of Finance, the Vice-Chancellor of University of Madras and the Vice-Chancellor of Thanjavur Tamil University are all members.
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