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. 

New Tablet PC Class Room

Samsung India unveiled its ‘Smart solutions’ for the education segment - latest display solutions and customized applications on the Galaxy tab that make the classroom room experience more interactive and ‘smarter’. The new display solutions are an intrinsic part of Samsung’s IT B2B business portfolio and the Company is seeking to give a strong fillip to this business by integrating its IT and HHP B2B solution marketing this year. The Company today announced the launch of Interactive e- Boards that are designed to revolutionize the classroom experience for students and teachers alike.

As part of its initiative on providing ‘Smart Solutions’ for the education sector, Samsung plans to target 20000+ educational institutes in the country with both IT and Mobility solutions. The Samsung education initiatives have been placed under 4 categories:

- Smart Classroom with Large Format displays for showcasing digital content in the classroom

- Smart Teacher, who would be provided with GALAXY Tab to maintain course curriculum, plan attendance, access school intranet for content

- Smart Student, wherein students through their GALAXY Tab can access course syllabi, digital content over school intranet

- Smart School solution for students in Professional colleges, namely NotePCs and Thin Clients.

The Samsung Interactive E-board model – 650TS launched today represents Samsung’s commitment to design innovation, features and powerful performance. It has anti-reflection coating to enable clear display even in bright light or sunlight, has built-in PC with embedded windows XPP to remote access and manage content directly on the display and built in speaker. As schools transition towards a purposeful e-learning environment, the Samsung e-board offers new technologies and resources to increase participation and classroom interactivity. 

Designed in a slim and sleek form the Samsung 650 TS consumes less space and improves the aesthetic appeal of the classroom with its touch screen functionality, built-in 15 W stereo speaker and slide PC box option. As opposed to conventional black boards, the Samsung 650 TS provides a wide viewing angle and comes with a dummy pen and web cam to enhance student teacher interactivity. The powerful performance of the Samsung 650TS is further enhanced by the dedicated educational products and software, direct access to content library and note taking features on video and flash animations. Categorized under Samsung Smart solutions for school, these Interactive e boards are equipped with anti-image retention control which prevent ghost image on the screen, have anti-dust system that prevent inflow of dust, better clarity and high brightness professional commercial LCD panel specially designed to deliver brighter images. 

In addition, to the Interactive white board, Samsung Smart Class solutions also include application location, curriculum planning, learning management systems and mapping question banks on the GALAXY Tab. Created to suit the teacher’s need to seamlessly manage the education syllabi in school and for an increased collaborative atmosphere in school, this convergence of the class syllabi on the Tab gives the teacher the freedom to effortlessly manage his or her class, plan education content, use various education aids and maintain a question bank on the Tab itself. Similarly under the Smart Student program, the Tab equips the student to keep abreast with the course content on the Tab and access content through school intranet.

In the first phase roll –out of its plan to tap educational institutes, Samsung plans to focus on 9 cities in India which include – Delhi/NCR, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Kolkata, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Ahmedabad. 

Today, Samsung also showcased its large format professional display solutions which included Outdoor, Indoor, Semi outdoor solutions , LED, LCD, Plasma , 3D products, Video Wall solutions in 46”, 55”. Backed by software solutions from the Company’s Delhi R&D Center, the display solutions can be customized to meet the customer requirements .While the Samsung Video Walls represent state –of-the art models, the Touch screen solutions in 23” – 82” are powered by the Infra red ray interception detection technology and provide all in one display with integrated PC & speakers.

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PETER DRUCKER, America's leading corporate management guru writes about next education system

Drucker says that online continuing education is creating a new and distinct educational realm, and it will be the future of education. American educational institutions now have their eye on a global education market that is potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

In this special feature, we present a summary of Drucker's thoughts on the future of online adult education.

Education is already grabbing a major chunk of the gross national product. The US now spends around $1 trillion on education and training. This number will increase rapidly, but the growth won't be in traditional schools, which currently take about 10% of the GNP (kindergarten through high school, 6%; colleges and universities, 4%). The growth will be in continuing adult education.

Online delivery is the trigger for this growth, but the demand for lifetime education stems from profound changes in society. In simplest terms, people who are already highly educated and high achievers increasingly sense that they are not keeping up.

Men and women in their mid-forties are going back to school because they want and need new ways of looking at things outside of their competencies. They want to learn to see things whole. Many of them are there to reflect on their experiences, to see them in a broader perspective. They need this perspective to cope with today's bewildering technological and economic changes.

Engineers tell me that they need a thorough refresher course in their specialties at least every other year and a "reimmersion" - their word -in the basics at least every four years.

So do millions of other knowledge workers. The market for continuing education is already much bigger than most people realize. A good guess is that it already accounts for 6% of GNP in the US and is rapidly getting there in other developed countries. It is going to get a lot higher.
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This is one of his last article published by Forbes magazine .

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