Most advanced version

This was the most advanced version yet, of the programme that is being implemented by half a dozen institutions across India: Kerala has leveraged the telemetry potential of Edusat and linked 45 learning centres, spread across all 14 districts for two way audio and video interaction.

In October, the Lakshadweep Islands, which share Kerala's state education system, will join in. Inaugurated by President APJ Abdul Kalam on July 28, Kerala's satellite backed educational initiative, VICTERS -- Virtual Classroom Technology on Edusat for Rural Schools -- leverages the technology, bottom-up, starting with school level education rather than the college and technical end.

September 20 marks the first anniversary of the launch of Edusat by the Indian Space Research Organisation; the 1950 kg satellite today provides 5 transponders in the KU Band, each of them beamed to cover one region: North, North East, East, South and West while providing a 45 MBPS broadband link.

Another KU Band transponder has the whole of India as its footprint. There are another 6 transponders in the extended C Band. This constitutes a huge resource in bandwidth dedicated to education -- something no nation has committed on this scale.

In the lead up to Edusat's launch ISRO tried out pilots in a few places -- like the Chamarajnagar district in Karnataka where it linked nearly 900 schools, using channels from the Insat 3-B satellite.Once Edusat was fully functional in November, there was a costly delay of a few more months before the Visvesvaraya Technological University in Karnataka became its first user, linking 120 affiliated engineering colleges to reach 1.3 lakh students in the state with a one way video and 2-way audio channel.

The nation-wide beams are being harnessed by agencies like Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), to reach hundreds of Receive Only Terminals (ROTs) and Satellite Interactive Terminals (SITs) located in schools and colleges, many in remote areas.

More states are slowly creating their own infrastructure to leverage the enormous reach offered by Edusat. The University Grants Commission-funded Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC) and the Edusat Multi Media Research Centres (EMMRC) of the Union HRD Ministry are the nodal agencies to help leverage Edusat's potential.

On August 15 they helped launch a countrywide classroom programme across 58 centres. But Biju Prabhakar who steers Kerala's Edusat initiatives points to a major challenge that remains: Content is the crucial thing he says -- which is why the state has launched an ambitious `Eduserve' project to create a large centralised repository of educational multimedia material. "Individual states should not be wasting valuable time and money to create their own content when so much can be shared," he feels.

Preventing wastage

Prabhakar is not alone in his apprehension that once 24x7 satellite time is available, lack of appropriate material may see a lot of valuable link time wasted.

What committed educationists like him would like to see, is better information exchange across the entire Edusat programme.

Singapore's electronic backpack

THE NATIONAL Institute of Education, within Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, is the crucible where the island-state's most daring and innovative educational project is being crafted.

It is called Backpack.Net and it leverages wide availability of WiFi networks to enhance and dramatically transform classroom experience in schools.

With help from Microsoft, Singapore's Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) has created a system where classrooms are wireless enabled and every student has a tablet PC.

This correspondent shared a desk recently with 14 year old Alwin Sin of the Catholic High School as his teacher took the class through a Chinese language lesson. Alwin practices the characters using a stylus and the teacher sees the work of every student on her own tablet PC.

When she sets a quiz, the computer analyses the answers of every child and prompts her to assist the slower children.

At day's end, she will send an emailed assignment to the class -- and their output will reach her -- at home or school.

To back up the project, they have created an awesome database of instructional material, a full range of digital textbooks, virtual classroom software and a portal for every school.