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A new gadget promises to make learning easier for schoolchildren Digital content is clearly the future, sales & marketing (who was not part of says Rajeevan Karal, senior vice- the original group, but from IIT, president, publishing, Cambridge Calcutta), admits that multi-media University Press (CUP) India Pvt Ltd. itself is not new. But Edutor offers a "It may be only a tiny fragment of host of pluses, he points out, "The students who use digital content at touchscreen heightens interactivity and present. However, the tipping point is engagement; students can hold it in not far, as technology is getting better their hands, so their concentration is and more affordable," he predicts. focussed; any lesson can be stopped That's what Edutor Technologies has and played back, letting each child done, its chief executive officer Ram learn at his or her own Gollamudi says, "We are making it accessible and affordable for students, not just their parents. Unlike a home computer, which costs Rs.1520,000, the Edutor Advantage e40 can be bought for the child alone - it costs only Rs.5,845." CUP, from which the Hyderabad-based techie and his three former iiT-mates have licensed their spoken English dictionary, is "hap py to partner Edutor or any such organisation with the c a p ab i l i t y to deliver its digi tal content to the end-users using the best and the most affordable technology," Karal says. "One of the key factors involved in the suc cess in learning is the qual ity of the teaching-learning materials used by teachers and learners." Gollamudi. Gollamudi, who spent a decade-plus as an- entrepreneur in the US after handheld homework graduating from 1IT, Madras, in 1997, came back to India and met his college pace; and there is a test at the end of friend Prasanna Boni, who had got each chapter for self-assessment. This together with five others to start a is the first loaded gadget of its kind company that was acquired by Sify and it's not a toy, as it doesn't have Technologies in 2007. In April 2010, Internet connectivity or Bluetooth." they got together with another old "We want to continuously build friend, Sra-van Narasipuram, and practical products that children would developed the product. "Students can love to use," says Narasipuram, the learn by themselves thanks to the tech geek of the foursome, who is VP, multimedia digital content," he engineering. "All of us in the engineering team regularly attend sales explains. workshops to interact with our users Ramesh Karra, vice-president, kids; and we absolutely love to watch the excitement on their faces

when they first see our product." Preloaded with class-specific, curriculum-aligned content with an option to upgrade as the student moves to higher classes, the device also has extra-curricular activities like the basics of cricket, yoga and karate, as well as CUP's spoken English and Wikipedia topics. The curriculum currently on offer is that of CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education). Based as the company is in Andhra Pradesh, it also has the state SSC Board curriculum. Quite remarkable Introduced in a number of CBSE schools in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad in a six-month pre-launch pilot survey, the e40 was appreciated as 'quite remarkable' with students showing 'marked improvement', Gollamudi says. The company's own survey turned up descriptions like 'fantastic' from parents and the comment from a teacher that children who 'normally don't read text books' found the Edutor 'really good and useful'. And as he points out, "Books haven't evolved in 2,000 years!" "We see that the initial traction from schools, students and parents has been good," says Srikanth B. Iyer, COO, Pearson Education Services. "The acceptance is gaining ground now." Edurite, a part of the Pearson group, has licensed its curriculum content to Edutor, which Iyer believes "makes learning more personal and also helps in revising concepts and in assessments". More than 500 children are using the e40 that their parents bought for them, Karra says. That's only scratching the surface: Edutor is looking at selling 30,000 in the first 18 months till mid-2011. The immediate target is the "top end of private schools", but the team is working to get into public schools, too. "We want to have three to four million using our device in five years," Gollamudi adds.
S E K H A R SESHAN