Friday, July 23rd 2010
Government of India Unveils Sakshat $10 Tablet PC for Students
The Government of India today unveiled the much talked about 10 Dollar Tablet PC for students. Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal unveiled the tablet which is initially priced at 1,500 Indian Rupees (US $30), but is expected distributed for 500 Rupees ($10) once manufacturing is streamlined. The device is named Sakshat (meaning "personification" in Sanskrit), and boasts of performance-grade hardware for a device of its class. It has a 10.5-inch multi-touch colour screen, ARM processor, 2 GB of memory, cloud storage, WiFi b/g and 10/100 Ethernet for connectivity with school networks, a highly-customised OS based on the Linux kernel, supporting Adobe Flash for online videos and interactive educational content, and a digital camera.
School curriculum will be distributed to students in an interactive format, as well as drive "e-classrooms" for live-streaming classes from eminent teachers to students from across the country. The device supports OpenOffice.org and open document formats, as well as Adobe PDF, and various multimedia formats. Sakshat was developed by students of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) from various IIT institutes across the country. As part of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology, Sakshat will be backed by a network connecting 18,000 educational institutions and 400 universities.
Sources:
IBNLive, PCWorld India
School curriculum will be distributed to students in an interactive format, as well as drive "e-classrooms" for live-streaming classes from eminent teachers to students from across the country. The device supports OpenOffice.org and open document formats, as well as Adobe PDF, and various multimedia formats. Sakshat was developed by students of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) from various IIT institutes across the country. As part of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology, Sakshat will be backed by a network connecting 18,000 educational institutions and 400 universities.
125 Comments on Government of India Unveils Sakshat $10 Tablet PC for Students
This device will let some kid in a remote town take classes from some really bright teacher sitting in the city. It's backed by free internet and school-intranet, free access to tons of e-books, etc. Money does make a difference.
And no, this isn't charity. It's how vast populations of poor are uplifted. There's absolutely no better way to go about.
If our politicians wanted that, there are cheaper ways to do it. In return if it generates even 10 million decent students who will go on to pursue higher education, that will give huge dividends to the economy.
from the NCES, a government department...
nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
and then couple that will percentage of GDP spent on education...
www.visualeconomics.com/how-countries-spend-their-money/
you can easily calculate that the USA spends more money on education per child than any country on earth.
Doesn't mean all the money is spent WELL, but it wouldn't surprise me if USA were in the top 5... I think Canada would be higher though, since with the small population of children, we invest a hell lot in education... University here is as low as < 3000$ for an IV league (ie: McGill), and it isn't because McGill is cheap to sustain, it's because of the money that the gov. invests
But still, USA has the most international students for a reason
I'll give India that -- maybe the majority of its peoples are currently in Poverty, but show the average schoolchild in India a blank map of the world, and I bet they can find their country.
It's investments like this that will lead to India reaching parity and overtaking the US in the 21st century.
I won't argue any further. You can ridicule this initiative, dismiss it as some random government's "photo-opportunity", claim that "since we spend more on education, and since this is a 'glorified iPhone' we're still better", until one day you realise what's been cooking up in India-China all these decades.
"We can't afford our kids to be mediocre at a time when they're competing against kids in China and kids in India," - Barack Obama. source.
That's what spending "the most amount of money" got American school kids. Mediocrity compared to Chinese and Indian ones.
personally i can not fathom how a glorified ipod touch is going to help the rural citizen of india get a better education. it seems to me to be a very short to solution to a long term problem.
i am fully aware of how indian and chinese govts are pushing initiatives to compete with kids in the US just as i am fully aware of the US govt pushing lame initiatives to cripple education.
For you something like a tablet PC or iPad is probably just a fancy leisure gadget. But when all its functions are put to productive use, a tablet PC is a very powerful tool.
I think food, clean running water, and a safe structurally sound place to stay would come first though right? To pay off debts people still sell there wives and children. That cannot be solved with a tablet PC. :(
To those it may concern:
Also you cannot say India has a better education system than the USA or even remotely close and not be just ignorant or trolling.
Work through the numbers from the CIA:
India spends 3.2% of its $3.56 trillion GDP educating up to 1,173,108,018 people.
USA spends 5.3% of its $14.26 trillion GDP educating up to 310,232,863 people.
I believe the best way to help India is to control its population growth as effectively as China. Then they can begin to prosper and have that kind of growth that China is having. Of course they need to fight their problems with corruption too but that has to be solved by other means. I have many friends from western India in the business community here. They fled religious persecution in India. Christians aren't exactly safe there.
India is adding 20,000 MW of power generation in the next 5 years, and spending billions on irrigation.Yes, government initiatives to give the cheapest food (Rs 1 per kg of rice), free housing are already in progress, Sakshat is running parallel to those development initiatives.That's a typical first-world statement. "How can you do x when there are people starving?" Well we're feeding them and educating them in tandem.
They would actually have a little education, can afford 30$ for their child AND make them not work, have electricity and food...
remember, at under 1$ a day, 30~35$ is over a month's salary... Plus the time that your child is not working, + electricity costs... It would not be feasible for them
The amount of money per child, or the salary per teacher, or the cost of books, or the cost of security, or rent and redecoration of classrooms, or the medical bills, or the expensive training courses for teachers, or the the cost of building new schools and paying off fat developers, or the cost of supervisory boards, and the salaries of school inspectors, and the cost of equipment, use of power, cost of having a gardener keeping those beautiful lawns trimmed, has NOTHING to do with the QUALITY OF THE EDUCATION SYSTEM.
Someone might argue that if the USA spends more than anyone else on education, it is only because it is the least efficient. Perhaps through making the school system more efficient, taxpayers money can be saved or used for other community needs such as health and wellfare?
By the way, why not take those CIA numbers and look at some ratios, like divide by the cost of the average hot meal, or bottle of water, or average salary of an office worker. It will give a better impression of relative cost to the average person.
Corruption isn't that bad in India as it was 20 years ago... actually, it isn't bad, therefore not much of an issue. If there was much of a Corruption issue, the gov. couldn't have put so many programs in place.
Christians, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu and Muslims are all 'safe' in India lol... Only in rural communities can it get bad, but a businessman would definitively be at home in India. Just like 'Caucasians' are not 'safe' in poor Ghettos of the South... You don't have to go to the other end of the world, just move out of the freaking ghetto