Naavi was the pioneer in Cyber Law Education in India. Cyber Law College itself was a concept ahead of its times and when it started its activities in July 2000 and launched first course in Cyber Laws in October 2000, the concept of “Virtual” was alien to most. It was however necessary in the context of economy.
The first version of the program was as a “Distance Learning Course”. Then several years later the concept of video classes developed after 2005. During that time classes were conducted online on the platform of gatherplace.com and later gotomeeting and Webex with a batch of students at the other end seeing a common projected screen. Then came the individual across the screen training in Digital Signatures and HIPAA where the student/s or trainees connected either individually or collectively on their own computers. One of the successful use of this virtual meeting was for HIPAA training for a group of medical transcriptionists in Phillipines.
With the success of these experiments, Naavi also launched the Arbitration.com (now odrglobal.in) as a video conference based online dispute resolution mechanism.
However, none of these were fully accepted by the market and they remained as experiments. While the teaching and training continued, it often involved travelling and wasteful expenditure. However, 20 years later, the Corona Virus has changed the perspective of “Virtual Meetings”. Now it is not only acceptable but also the preferred norm.
Now towards the end of the lock down period, we are observing that there are innumerable number of online meetings and webinars both by individuals and organizations. Naavi’s dream of carrying the College in his laptop bag has now been realized and even got further miniaturized into the mobile.
Cyber Law College moved from other video conference tools to Zoom and now more options are becoming available. We may even see some Indian version “fokuz.online” coming up with an indigenous version of a class room. Many other platforms including Tata VSNL have woken up from their slumber and trying to enter the market without much success.
The Apnacourse.com, and the like which enabled recorded versions of the training programs to be hosted were useful but with the entry of Zoom like tools, may find it difficult to grow.
However Online Examination tools with proctoring and without proctoring are still in the nascent stages and will get integrated with the Zoom like platforms to provide a complete transformation of the education system in India.
The training material of Cyber Law College also went through the transition from the following bulky but attractive books to the current form of PDF files or Kindle books.
 |
 |
The books shown above which were training materials used for two of the courses reflect the relics of those days.
Subsequently CD Books were also used by Naavi both in 1999 when the printed book “Cyber Laws for Every Netizen in India” had to be supplemented with the copy of the Bill as presented in the Parliament. Subsequently, several CD Books were released on Cyber Crimes.
 |
 |
Presently E Books, Kindle format have become the norm though the physical books still have retained the charm except for the difficulty in distribution.
During this fascinating journey of 20 years, Naavi also promoted the concept of “Cyber Vidya” with the vision of upgrading the teaching in Government schools with virtual teaching. The project which was discussed with the Karnataka Government at one point of time would have been a great development had it been taken up. But as usual it was ahead of its time. But its time has now come and I see some thoughts about this are floating in the market . Perhaps this dream of “Cyber Vidya” will also be realized one day.
This journey down the memory lane was triggered because Naavi/Cyber Law College is starting online courses on Cyber Law and IT Act in the next week after a gap of several years.
One of the courses will be for CISOs and CTOs and the other for Cyber Law students.
I will share more details of what is envisaged in these courses so that interested persons can take advantage of the same.
Naavi
