Indian district plans to adopt 50,000 I-slate tablets
Jade Boyd – March 19, 2012 – Posted in: News ReleasesUS, Singapore developers optimize tech-brain interface in low-cost educational deviceHOUSTON — (March 19, 2012) — The U.S.- and Singapore-based creators of the I-slate educational tablet and local government officials in India’s Mahabubnagar District plan to adopt 50,000 of the low-cost electronic educational slates into middle and high school classrooms throughout the district over the next three years. The plans were announced today in Hyderabad, India, by district officials, the Indian non-profit Villages for Development and Learning Foundation (ViDAL), Rice University and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. […]
The district of Mahabubnagar in the Indian state Andhra Pradesh has about 500,000 students in government schools. Consortium leaders and Mahabubnagar officials said they hope to supply I-slates to at least 10 percent of the students over the next three years.
“The I-slate project is about empowering local communities with education and knowledge,” said Rajeswari Pingali, ViDAL founding chairwoman. “Based on two years of lab-to-school testing rounds, today we have a fully functional I-slate which will be adapted by the district education department for expanding the footprint of technology and bringing learning opportunities backed by the latest in modern communication technology for the benefit of rural communities.”
About 30 fourth-generation I-slates were delivered this month to a class of 10- to 13-year-olds at the Mohamed Hussainpalli Village School, which is located in Mahabubnagar District, about 70 miles from Hyderabad. The new I-slates are the first to feature a new “sense-optimized” user interface designed to improve educational outcomes in rural India. […]
“Sense optimization is a systematic way of improving the user experience by taking advantage of our knowledge of how the human brain processes the information so we can invest the minimum amount of resources for the effectiveness level we’re trying to reach,” said I-slate creator Krishna Palem, a professor at both Rice and NTU. “The I-slate is not a tablet computer. It is a device designed for a single purpose — education in a low-resource environment.”
About Villages for Development and Learning (ViDAL)ViDAL is a nonprofit organization based in Hyderabad, India, and works with local communities to empower them through education, knowledge and learning. The flagship I-slate project is the first of its type, bringing the benefits of modern ICT to students living in remote, drought-prone villages.
Source: Indian district plans to adopt 50,000 I-slate tablets
Address : http://news.rice.edu/2012/03/19/indian-district-plans-to-adopt-50000-i-slate-tablets/
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