This mail did not get to the list. Hence copying below.
Harish Kotian
quoting:
The Indian express:
Anubhuti Vishnoi
It may not be an iPad killer but Aakash 2 brings with it unique features that
could make it a game-changer in the education sector. Procured and assembled by
Datawind on behalf of the HRD ministry, the small touchscreen tablet "becomes"
Aakash only after IIT Bombay teams prep it for the job. That may amount to
pre-loading applications on to a blank slate, but bringing to students
precisely what they may need is a value addition that can make Aakash 2
educationally relevant.
The features that make Aakash 2 unique
Proximity: The Proxy Multimedia Integration Tool for you (ProxyMITY) developed
by IIT Bombay enables creation of interactive lessons by importing lecture
video and presentation slides. Proximity brings personalised learning to
students who can access quality lectures by reputable teachers. A searchabale
database storage and retrieval system for students enables fast and even
offline access to published lessons and lectures.
Blender Animation: An open source software for creating 3D animations,
rendering, video editing etc. Developed at IIT Bombay; several educational
animations have been ported on the tablet.
Scilab: The open-source equivalent of the commercial product Matlab, used
extensively by scientists and engineers in statistical analysis, engineering
design and control systems application, Scilab can be of great help to science
and engineering students and will save the costs that would have been incurred
in buying the rather expensive Matlab. IIT B's Scilab port on Aakash allows
users to write and execute their programmes directly on the tablet. This is the
first Android tablet that has been able to port Scilab, says the Aakash 2 team.
Aakash Pustak: The e-book reader is in the process of uploading over 5,000
textbooks, with NCERT textbooks across classes constituting the bulk. Aakash
Putsak is unicode, allowing books in regional languages too to be accessed.
GNU-Khata: A tool for those studying accounts, GNU-Khata can help create
ledgers, balance sheets, account books and so on. While targeted at students,
it can be of use also to small businessmen and retailers in rural India in
streamlining their accounts.
Clicker: A student response system for classrooms, created again by IITB.
Clicker enables teachers to get quick feedback from students on instant
quizzes. A quiz question gets downloaded on a student's Aakash tablet. At the
end of the test time, all answers are automatically collected and get recorded
in the back-end system. Clicker also enables the teacher to generate a progress
report on the comprehension levels of each student based on his answers in a
range of quizzes. Clicker comes to the aid of the shy student who may have a
query for his teacher but will not say so publicly. The "raise hand" feature on
Clicker allows a student to raise his hand virtually and post the query.
Spoken tutorials: Educational videos in over 18 Indian languages including
Bodo, Khasi, Nepali. A low-bandwidth tool, this hosts tutorials on life skills
too: from directions on how to book a rail ticket the IRCTC website or how to
book an air ticket airline, to how to knot a tie.
Robot control: Educational robots designed at IITB are used to teach principles
of embedded software, algorithms incorporating artificial intelligence and data
collection from various sensors. An application developed on Aakash allows the
tablet to control the movement of the robot and see the video stream from a
mounted camera, sent to it using WiFi.
The tech
IIT Bombay describes Aakash as an access device in which a Linux environment
has been developed atop an Android operating system. Tailored compilers for C,
C++, Python and Scilab are ported so that users can write and run programmes on
the tablet, emphasising its use as a full-fledged computer. Powered by a 1GHz
processor and backed with a 512 MB RAM, Aakash 2 sports a 7" capacitive screen,
a USB port and micro SD card slot and promises a battery life of 3 hours for
normal operations.
Demand
Jharkhand has placed a request for 4.5 lakh devices, out of an overall
estimated nationwide demand of nearly 5 million. While 10,000 tablets are with
teachers across 260 locations in the country, the next lot will go to
educational institutes that will issue the tablets to students much like
library books. The HRD ministry plans to invite tenders for five million
upgraded Aakash tablets next month.
With thanks and regards
(Rajesh Asudani)
Assistant General Manager
Reserve Bank of India
Nagpur
Cell: 9420397185
o: +91 712 2806846
R: 2591349
(In youth you want things, and then in middle-age you want to want them.)
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