Dream Spark India

‘Dreamspark’ Free Software Programme of the Microsoft for Indian Student Community is launched by Smt. D. Purandeswari.

‘DreamSpark’ is a new initiative targeted for the students community to empower them with the 21st century employability skill by providing with software design and development tools at no charge. The programme was originally directed at College students, but now it has been expanded to include High School students.

Smt. D. Purandeswari, Minister of State for Human Resource Development (Higher Education), has said that India has one additional reason for special importance to software companies like the Microsoft, which China does not have at present, and that is the largest pool of English speaking soft-ware professionals, with strong mathematical and logical skills in the country. Launching, along with Mr. Bill Gates, the ‘DreamSpark’ Free software programme of the Microsoft for the Indian Student community at IIT Delhi today, Smt. Purandeswari said that for the first time, Microsoft is giving its valuable software developer and design tools directly to students worldwide at no charge.

The DreamSpark program was announced by Mr. Bill Gates on February 18, 2008 during a speech at Stanford University. It is estimated that upto 35 million students will be able to access these software titles free of charge through this programme. Currently DreamSpark is planned to be launched in 11 countries and India is one among them.

The list of Software and design tools that is offered to the Students under the DreamSpark:
- Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition,
- Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition,
- XNA Game Studio 2.0, a 12-month free Academic membership in the XNA Creators Club,
- Expression Studio,
- SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition, and
- Windows Server Standard Edition.

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