Rs 500 laptop display on Feb 3

NEW
DELHI: A $10 laptop (Rs 500) prototype, with 2 GB RAM capacity, would
be on display in Tirupati on February 3 when the National Mission on
Education through Information and Communication Techology is launched.

The $10 laptop project, first reported in TOI
three years ago, has come as an answer to the $100 laptop of MIT’s
Nicholas Negroponte that he was trying to hardsell to India. The $10
laptop has come out of the drawing board stage due to work put in by
students of Vellore Institute of Technology, scientists in Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, IIT-Madras and involvement of PSUs like Semiconductor Complex. "At this stage, the price is working out to be $20 but with mass production it is bound to come down," R P Agarwal, secretary, higher education said.

Apart from questioning the technology of $100 laptops, the main reason for HRD ministry’s resistance to Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project was the high and the hidden cost that worked out to be $200.

The
mission launch would also see demonstration of e-classroom, virtual
laboratory and a better ‘Sakshat’ portal that was launched more than
two years ago. Sources also said that the ministry has entered into an
agreement with four publishers ? Macmillan, Tata McGraw Hill,
Prentice-Hall and Vikas Publishing ? to upload their textbooks on
‘Sakshat’. Five per cent of these books can be accessed free.

The
mission, with an 11th plan outlay of Rs 4,612 crore, is aimed at making
a serious intervention in enhancing the Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher
education. The mission has two major components. One, content
generation through its portal ‘Sakshat‘, and two, building connectivity along with providing access devices for institutions and learners.

In
this context, government would give Rs 2.5 lakh per institution for 10
Kbps connection and subsidise 25% of costs for private and state
government colleges.

The mission would seek to extend computer
infrastructure and connectivity to over 18,000 colleges in the country,
including each department of nearly 400 universities and institutions
of national importance. The mission would focus on appropriate
e-learning procedures, providing facility of performing experiments
through virtual laboratories, online testing and certification, online
availability of teachers to guide and mentor learners, and utilization
of EduSat and DTH.