TAMIL VIRTUAL ACADEMY (TVA)

(இதன் தமிழ் வடிவத்திற்கு இங்கே சொடுக்கவும்)

• Tamil Virtual Academy was established as Tamil Virtual University (TVU) and registered under section 27 of Tamil Nadu Co-operative Societies Act 1975 and functioning under the administrative control of the Information Technology and Digital Services Department.
• Tamil Virtual University was renamed as Tamil Virtual Academy on 16th July 2010.
• The main aim of the TVA is to provide Tamil education through internet for the Tamil Diaspora, Digitization of Tamil Books and promote Tamil Computing.

Objectives

• Conducting Certificate, Higher Certificate, Diploma, Higher Diploma and Degree courses in Tamil.
• Promoting Tamil Computing.
• Maintaining Tamil Digital Library and Digital Cultural Repository.
• Providing information about Tamil culture and civilization to the Tamil Diaspora and others across the Globe.

Academic Programmes

• Primary, Certificate, Higher Certificate, Diploma, Higher Diploma and Degree (B.A. (Tamilology)) courses are being offered by TVA.
• The details are as follows:

Primary Course

• Primary Course is designed for kindergarten students.

Certificate Course

• Certificate Courses are offered at three levels as below:
• Basic Level (equivalent to classes 1 & 2)
• Intermediate Level (equivalent to classes 3 & 4)
• Advanced Level (equivalent to classes 5 & 6)
• So far, 11,162 students have passed in the above courses.

Higher Certificate Course

• Higher Certificate Courses are offered at three levels as below:
• Grade 1 (equivalent to classes 7 & 8)
• Grade 2 (equivalent to classes 9 & 10)
• Grade 3 (equivalent to classes 11 & 12)
• So far, 1,225 students have passed in the above courses.

B.A. (Tamilology) Degree Programme

• B.A. (Tamilology) Degree programme is modular in its structure comprising of Diploma, Higher Diploma and Degree courses.
• The details of the students passed so far are as follows:
• Diploma Course – 2372
• Higher Diploma Course - 1755
• Degree Course - 1394
• The above academic programmes are provided through 135 contact centres in 27 countries.
• The details have been uploaded in TVA website (www.tamilvu.org).

Other Projects

Theera Kaadhal Thirukural

• To promote Thirukural concepts among the youth, Tamil Virtual Academy is taking steps to undertake various activities under 'Theera Kaadhal Thirukural'. A painting competition titled 'Kuraloviyam' was conducted for school and college students as first activity.
• The prizes for the best paintings were distributed by the Hon'ble Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu on 15.01.2022 (Thiruvalluvar Day) at Valluvar Kottam.
• Thirukkural daily table calendar book was printed using the best 365 paintings and it was released by Hon’ble Chief Minister.
• This calendar book is designed as an infinity Calendar, and it is available in TVA.
• On 21.12.2022, Thirukkural dance drama titled 'Kural Inidu' was performed at Kalaivanar Arangam.

Tamil Parappurai Kazhagam

• To provide financial assistance to the organizations teaching Tamil as a second and third language abroad and train teachers, Tamil Parappurai Kazhagam has been launched. An amount of Rs. 1.00 crore has been sanctioned.
• Online Tamil education is currently being provided in 6 levels.
• Now it is revised into 5 stages (skills based) and the lesson writing works are under progress.
• Launching ceremony of textbooks, supplementary tools for level-1 first term and Tamil Parappurai Kazgham activities was inaugurated by Hon'ble Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu on 24.09.2022.
• The following activities are being carried out under Tamil Parappurai kazhagam:
• Basic Silambam training videos have been created.
• Presentation of Tevaram hymns in contemporary music along with visual content.
• Curriculum for Diploma in Tamil teaching to the teacher volunteers has been developed and the course will be provided in association with Tamil Nadu Teachers Education University.
• Teachers have been empanelled for handling online Tamil classes.
• Online Tamil classes for students are currently being conducted.
• A book on Tamil Grammar called “தமிழைப் பிழையின்றி எழுதுவோம்” has been developed.
• Revision of syllabus for bachelor’s degree in Tamilology is under process.
• A new syllabus has been developed for Post Graduate Degree in Tamilology.

Tamilinaiyam - Digital Library

• TVA has created a Tamil Digital Library (www.tamildigitallibrary.in) which contains rare books, periodicals of Tamil literature, religion, history, medicine from 18th century onwards and contains palm-leaf manuscripts.
• This is one among the largest digital library in the South Asian languages.
• More than 70 thousand books, periodicals and 7,68,097 palm-leaf manuscripts are available.
• The library is being continuously enriched by adding more rare documents.
• This library has been viewed 4,41,22,519 times by the users.

Inclusive Digital Library

• An amount of Rs. 1.00 crore has been sanctioned to improvise the digital library into Inclusive Digital Library for the use of visually impaired.
• Now 14 lakh pages are being converted from image to text format by using OCR technology.

Digitization of rare audio-video, photographs, and other historical documents

• An amount of Rs. 1.00 crore has been sanctioned to digitize rare audio-video, photographs, and other historical documents.
• So far 5,535 audio-visual, photographs and other documents have been digitized.
• Since the revamping of the digital library website is under progress, this content will be uploaded once the work is completed.

Tamilar Tagavalaatruppadai

• TVA has created Tamilar Tagavalaatruppadai as a comprehensive and collaborative repository of Tamil language, literature, and arts.
• Under this scheme, Tamilar Tagavalaatruppadai website (www.tagavalaatruppadai.in) has been developed with 31,158 photographs of Tamils ’history and culture.
• This repository is being continuously updated by adding more artefacts and monuments.
• So far, this website has been visited 27,71,565 times by the users.

Creation of Virtual Reality Museum

• An amount of Rs.7.5 crore has been sanctioned to create a Virtual Museum for Tamils’ history and culture, of which Rs.1.5 crore has been allocated for the first year.
• An Expression of Interest (EoI) has been called for to create the virtual reality content namely Rajendra Chola's Naval Voyages and Maritime Trade in Southeast Asia, Silapathikaram - Puharkandam - Festival for Indra.

Celebrating 150th Birth Anniversary of “Kappalottiya Tamizhan” V.O. Chidambaranar – [digitize and publish his books and manuscripts in the internet]

• In Commemoration of 150th birth anniversary of ‘Kappalottiya Tamizhan’ V.O. Chidambaranar, digitization of his books, manuscripts and web enabling have been undertaken. So far, 127 books, manuscripts, photographs, documents, and multimedia documents have been digitized and uploaded in a separate web page created exclusively for V.O.C. It was inaugurated by the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu on 18.11.2022. (https://www.tamildigitallibrary.in/voc)Documenting Ph.D Thesis Abstract, Synopsis and Glossaries of all Universities.
• The abstracts, synopsis and glossaries of 354 Ph.D thesis have been received from all the Universities functioning under Higher Education Department and other Departments as well.
• These contents are published in the digital library website and acknowledgment certificates are being issued.

Research and Development - Tamil Computing wing

Computational Linguistics

• This Computational section is working for developing Annotated Tamil Corpus, Parallel Corpus (Tamil – English), Graph Database, Indexes and Concordances for Tamil literatures, Developing Computational Grammar, Tamil Computing tools like: Part of Speech (PoS) tagger, Chunker and fonts development like: Tamil vattezhutthu, Unicode activities etc.

Use case and tools development

• The use cases for TVA lessons have been completed and digital library use cases are being written.

Kani Tamil Peravai

• Kani Tamil Peravai (KTP) is a programme envisaged by TVA to create awareness among students about Tamil Computing.
• To promote and motivate the college students, the field experts are encouraging them to write Tamil contents, app development, writing articles in Tamil etc.
• So far, 212 KTP centres have been started in Universities / Colleges across Tamil Nadu.

Developing Tamil Computing tools

• As per the announcement made in the year 2022 – 23, the work orders for developing of computing tools have been issued.
• They are:
• 1. Chatbot and Question & Answering System for Tamil
• 2. A Syntactic Parser for Tamil: A Data driven Approach
• 3. PoS and Semantic role of labelling
• 4. Developing a sentiment Analyzer Tool for Code Mixed Tamil Online Text
• 5. Real –time multi-dialect automatic speech recognition system for Tamil
• 6.Multimodal Fused Tamil Handwritten and Palm-leaf character recognition tool based on neural network
• 7. Hyphenation Support for Tamil typesetting

Hackathon on Tamil Computing

• Hackathon on Tamil Computing Tamil Virtual Academy in collaboration with Vellore Institute of Technology conducted a hackathon on Tamil Computing on 19.12.2022 to encourage the students.
• The prize-winning projects are given below:
• 1. Identifying context based precedent rulings for a given case in Tamil.
• 2. Identifying name boards on the bus stop (Udhavi)
• 3. Sign language subtitle generator in Tamil.

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