handheld | solar power | Education
Solar-powered “ePods” to help education
ePods, a handheld device manufactured by a California-based company Tidaldata has contributed its bit to revolutionize the way Indian students, especially the disadvantaged, learn by introducing its devices to them, CIOL reports.
Pothapragada (a co-founder of Tidaldata) says a consortium of NGOs, Tidaldata, MyFi (another handheld manufacturer) and philanthropic organizations are working together with education software providers to make available school curricula in local Indian languages. School lessons up to Class 8 in all subjects are available in five languages – English, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Marathi.[Source: CIOL]
The project was launched last June in a place called Sakalvara in Karnataka where about 30 ePods were handed over to the principal of a government school, by the local Rotary club. The handheld device is tweaked to work on solar cells to obviate the need of power-points and recharging devices.
The light weight device has a simple interface and can store up to 700 hours of video content. As availability of electricity to power such a device is a problem, the design has been tweaked to work on solar power. Every school in India where these devices will be distributed will also have solar panels to provide power outlets, as part of the project. [Source: CIOL]
The move to introduce electronic devices into school education sure is a welcome move to make what is otherwise a mundane and often ineffective system of learning more interesting, entertaining and more effective. However, as is the case with any social business, making the devices affordable and simultaneously profitable is likely be the factor that determines the success of this initiative. (CIOL reports that currently these devices are worth Rs. 4000/- in India and sells for about $450 in California)
Further, currently the penetration of education software using a traditional computer in schools is very limited for various reasons including the availability of power and internet facility. Given that this device is cheaper than computers and that it doesn’t need either electric power or internet facility (assuming that the educational software providers do their part well) this device might just do what computers have failed to do so far!
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