Solar-powered ePOD to revolutionize education

BANGALORE, INDIA: Nagaraj, 12, a student of class 8 in the Government School in Sakalvara, a sleepy village nestling in the backyards of India’s silicon city, Bangalore, is a happy child these days. At evenings he has a simple hand-held device, a slightly larger version of the iconic iPhone, with all his schools lessons available in video formats.

In the dim-lit interiors of his house, the glow from the small LCD screen lights up the room’s corners, as he scrolls it for the day’s lessons. He is one of the 30 children in the village, who are the envy of the 200 residents whose nondescript village on the outskirts of Bangalore, as they have acquired a new learning device.

Sakalvara is the site where an ambitious project was launched last month by the local Rotary Club by handing over 30 ePODs, each costing about Rs. 4,000 ($82), to the school’s principal, reports the maiden issue of Technology Review, the 109-year old journal from MIT brought to India by CyberMedia. Technology Review group editor Narayanan Suresh says the journal would report technology innovations set to change the shape of things.

ePod is set to bring about a renaissance in the way education is administered and managed, especially in rural and government schools with inadequate infrastructure.

The project aims to combine the fruits of the latest computing technology with the specific requirements of millions of young boys and girls, to give them a jump start in the learning process.

The hand-held device, ePOD, manufactured by Tidaldata, a storage devices company, based in California, had become a rage with the students in the U.S. in 2008.

Now Indian students in rural schools are also in a position to reap the advantages of this exciting device. Tidaldata is working with other civil society groups and NGOs to reach out to thousands of school children in the country.

“We are confident the ePOD will supplement the efforts of teachers and enhance the learning skills of student who can now study at their own pace,” says Srinivas Pothapragada, one of the co-founders of Tidaldata.

Pothapragada plans to ensure distribution of at least 200,000 such devices within a year. The device retails for Rs. 22,000 ($450) in California. It uses the same chip set of Apple’s iconic iPhone but with a larger screen.

The device, manufactured by another Indian promoted company, MyFi Networks, based in San Diego, California, has been extensively redesigned for the Indian conditions.

Pothapragada says a consortium of NGOs, Tidaldata, MyFi 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.

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.

Pothapragada got the idea about ePOD a year ago when his young son was playing with an iPhone. “That is when I decided to design a similar device, with ease of use for the Indian conditions,” Pothapragada recalls.

The impact of this technological innovation will be felt few years from now when millions of Nagarajs get to take home their ePODs.

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