Now smile at every stage of your dream home-building journey. A one-stop solution that takes away the hassles from home construction projects was launched on February 17, 2021, by  the Sona  Group of Institutions and  Vee Technologies – the organizations that pioneered technical education and technology solutions respectively.  

Here are six ways  Sona Home makes home construction a lot easier.  

• From start to finish of the home project, Sona Home can provide valuable information to make decisions easier. It can generate a home design/plan on uploading the proposed house location and dimensions.  
• Anyone involved in house construction – be it the future homeowner, the building materials supplier, the contractor, and other players in the business, can register as user/supplier/service provider.  
•  The buyer can locate the nearest dealer for buying materials according to their choice.  
• Queries that may arise at every stage of construction can be up-loaded on Sona Home for answers.  
• One can compare price and quality among several suppliers.  
• Easy to use by anyone.  

Sona Group Chairman  Mr. C. Valliappa  and  the  Vice Chairman cum Managing Director, Vee Technologies, Mr. Chocko Valliappa, launched the app.  

The inaugural function was attended by Dr. V  Karthikeyan, Principal, Thiagarajar Polytechnic, Principal, Sona College of Technology, Dr.S R R Senthilkumar, R. Malathy, Head of the Department, Civil Engineering, faculty from the Department of Civil Engineering, and officials of  Vee Technologies.  

for more information, visit https://www.sonahome.in

The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) has rated the faculty at Sona College of Technology to be the best among 4500 of its local chapters in the country.

Yes, Sona College of Technology’s faculty has made the institution proud by standing first in the best faculty performance rating of NPTEL Local Chapters.

The NPTEL had introduced the category Best Faculty Performance “to recognize faculty in the NPTEL exams.

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The NPTEL said, “During the period of January/December 2020, Sona NPTEL Local Chapter has secured the first place in the faculty performance rating among more than 4500 NPTEL local chapters in India. There were 100 top performers in the category. As many as 127 Sona College faculties took up online courses on NPTEL platform and appeared for exams.

Sona College scored 471 rating points (A rating) and was selected as the first best performer.

An engineering college in Sivakasi and one in Rajasthan were selected as second and third best with 374.7(AA) and 367.5 (AA) ratings respectively.

NPTEL was initiated by seven Indian Institutes of Technology (Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras, Guwahati, and Roorkee) along with the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 2003.

From March 2014, NPTEL has been offering online certification for its courses which enables one to earn a certificate from the IITs. It is one of the online platforms with the largest number of courses in engineering, basic sciences, selected humanities, and social science subjects.

To extend the reach of the initiative and make more students across colleges participate in this initiative, NPTEL chapters were opened in colleges. There are more than 4,500 chapters in the country. It is among this large group that Sona College of Technology has won the first place in the faculty performance rating category.

Sona College of Technology’s Management, principal, and heads of departments congratulated the faculty on the achievement.

Sona College of Technology, which is known for its potential to churn out winners, has managed to accomplish yet another feat of which it can be immensely proud!

Yes, a Computer Science and Engineering department team from the college has emerged as one of the winners of the intensely contested All India Mapathon contest.

The team that won the contest has mapped the health infrastructure in Salem District. Their map will help the government make key decisions on health care and facilitate the delivery of health care to those in even the most remote parts of the district.

The national-level collaborative Indian mapping event, which was organized jointly by the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IITB), the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), was aimed at understanding the potential of Indian remote sensing data. It’s primary objective was to make maps for Indian regions using open source software (QGIS).

The participant teams had to work on a crowd-sourcing method and come up with thematic maps using remote sensing data. The teams were given ten topics to choose from including   mapping of natural resources, flood maps, land use cover change maps, health infrastructure with age group, and population for vaccination planning.

The Sona College faculty team selected health infrastructure mapping, limiting the scope to Salem district.

The team created the map for identifying the Primary Health Centers (PHCs) in and around Salem district. This map gives the distance between the centres.

As a result, the government, using this map, can know the area of coverage of the PHCs and the number of beneficiaries it can serve or reach out to. It can also find out areas in the district that don’t have access to medical care and establish new PHCs there.

The map could prove to be immensely useful to the state government which has plans to establish a number of mini-clinics (AMMA clinics in Tamil Nadu).

The map could help the government locate gaps in coverage of the PHC network and select locations where the mini-clinics are most needed.

COVID vaccination drives can also be effectively implemented, thanks to the information provided by the map. Block-wise population, which will be useful to schedule the vaccination campaign, has also been added.

While the registration for the contest closed on December 22, 2020, the result was declared on February 10, 2021. As many as 5,225 teams registered for the event and 9343 participants took part in the contest. There were 175 winners and 500 notable winners. Sona College faculty team was among the select group of winners.

Sona College of Technology Management and Principal congratulated the members of the winning team comprising Dr.B.Sathiyabhama, Dr.Nirmalesh Kumar, Dr.J.Dhayanithi and Ms.T.K.Revathi.

The sprawling garden campus of Sona College of Technology sprang back to life today as students returned to the college, following the Tamil Nadu government’s decision to re-open all educational institutions in the state from February 8, 2021.

It may be recalled that the government had ordered all schools and colleges to be closed in mid-March last year, in a bid to contain the COVID–19 pandemic.

The corridors and classrooms wore a festive look today as it was filled with the chatter of students.  The faces of teachers looked bright as they reconnected with students physically and resumed doing what they love doing the most — being with students and teaching them.

Professor Dr. M. Renuga, Head of the Department, Humanities and Languages, said teachers and students were excited to meet each other after 10 long months. She said the lockdown was a very rare event and that such an event was not likely to happen in a century.

“We espected the situation to prolong. What makes us happy is that normalcy has returned sooner than we expected,” she said. Almost all classes have recorded full attendance and the routine teaching-learning activity has resumed in full swing on day one said the teachers.

J.Sethumadhavan, a third-year student of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) said he had been in touch with friends and teachers online during the lockdown but to reconnect in person after 10 months was quite a unique experience.

P Vignesh, a third year student of Mechatronics said, “Online learning was a new experience after 14 years of classroom learning.” 

Students vividly recollected how they coped with the unprecedented online mode of learning and how they coped with the virtual campus life without physical contact with pals and teachers.

Thanks to Sona College management’s foresight, digital learning infrastructure had been put in place five years back, making the transition from physical to online learning a smooth affair. The college used several digital platforms to engage the students during the lockdown. Learning management systems (LMS)  Blackboard and Moodle were used  for learning, assessments, and for posting self-learning materials.

Diverse platforms such as  Canvas, Parlay, Flubaroo, Gadget making (for Stylers)  Gnomio, Gliffy, Live board, Hot potatoes, Microsoft team notebook, A-Z recorder, ShareX, Quizziz, Kahoot, Floop, Skype, Bandicam, Screen castify, Active presenter, Camstudio and Camtasia 2018  were used by the teachers to enhance the teaching-learning process and thereby actively engage the students. 

Various online quiz and poster competitions related to their curriculum were organized to encourage the students to be active even during the lockdown. Practical sessions were held using virtual lab which helped the students to understand the experiments better. Continuous assessments were done using the online proctored platform called  HIREMEE.  Two semester-end examinations were also conducted through the same platform. For the first time, students took up the exams online without attending physical classes.

Sona’s achievement trajectory never lowered even during these difficult times. The students were encouraged to participate in many national level competitions and win laurels. The college won the  AICTE-USVA Award 2020 as a testimony of its resilience.

Following the government’s unlocking guidelines strictly, the students were allowed to enter the college only with face masks. Body temperature was checked and sanitisers were applied to the hands of students at the security posts before letting them into the classroom zone.

This was the new normal on the first day and students seemed to get back to the academic groove with ease after months of digital learning.