Indian Government To Now Try One PC Per Teacher
First the Indian government showed interest in the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project by MIT’s Media Lab Asia, then decided to decline the offer. Some said that the Simputer fizzled out for lack of funding, though there pricing and usability issues. Now, according to Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee, the government is planning to implement a one PC per teacher project (should we call it ‘OPPT’?), connecting five lakh teachers from colleges and universities, and schools from 700 cities and towns. And free Internet. Well, free for the user; the project is going to cost taxpayers Rs. 50 crore per annum. This was at the launch of the governments education portal ‘Sakshat’. More here.
It is up to the schools, colleges and universities to accept the governments offer of an interest free loan; given the power situation, some will probably opt out. Also, I’ve been trying access the Sakshat website (here, according to this article) for some time now. Keeps timing out, much like the governments interest in projects, sometimes.
Update: The site is at http://www.sakshat.edu.in/ , http://portal.sakshat.gov.in/wps/portal and http://www.sakshat.ernet.in/
Related:
- Times of India: E-learning Comes Of Age In India With ‘Sakshat’
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you're right, the sakshat.gov.in site keeps timing out! Do you have any idea of how much tax payers have spent on that one ?
Its ok to provide free internet connection and a PC to teachers, but without an application to work on collaboratively, I dont think we'll see much output from teachers, except to use th PC's as glorified typewriters !
Okay, what really surprised me – a lot of newspapers have carried the news, but none has printed the website address. Digital Learning is the only one. I couldn't find Sakshat on googling, or even a link or an announcement at the Ministry of HRD's website – http://www.education.nic.in/
We've linked to the original article at ToI which says that content on Sakshat can be localised, and will also be collaborative. Sakshat is the central repository of this content…but I'm worried about whether it will even be used at all