A cloud-based tablet solution for students

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, INDIA: Sam Pitroda, advisor to prime minister Manmohan Singh, on Wednesday launched the country's first cloud-based tablet solution for school students called 'e-tutor tablet'.

This can be used by students from Class 1 to 12.

Priced at Rs 7,500, inclusive of content, the product would be available in the market from April onwards.

The e-tutor tablet is a joint effort of Technopark-based e-tutor and Oztern Technology.

Ranjith Balan, founder and managing director of e-tutor, said that this will be the first complete solution for education to be made available on Tablet PCs.

"The teacher can easily explain concepts using the digital whiteboard that is set up in the Tablet PC. Using e-tutor learning tablet, the students can access what was taught in the classroom and can also access the collaborative learning platform for discussions on relevant topics taught in the classroom," said Balan.

The product is also aimed at making the Internet a safer place for children. E-tutor tablet safeguards the connectivity from the personalized Tablets PCs provided as a part of the solution, and restrict it to connect to the Internet only through the synchronization module in the product.

Detailing on the technology, Saiju V. Stella, CEO of Oztern Technology, said cloud computing technology can bring about a major leap in the way technology is being used in the educational sector.

"Most of the technology products available in the market today for education act as teaching aids rather than learning aids. Cloud computing also fulfills another major social commitment by reducing the carbon emissions, from dedicated servers and data centres that consume huge amounts of energy, thus making computing more energy efficient and green," said Stella.

Lessons will be made available to the learner through personalised Tablet PCs, and regular content updates will be made available through a unique cloud - tablet synch mechanism, thus making sure that the device connects only to the relevant locations to access content.

Rajinish Menon, director, Business Strategy and Operations, Microsoft, who was present at the occasion, expressed his happiness to see partners like Oztern coming up with innovative solutions in the education sector using Microsoft Windows Azure which is Microsoft's cloud computing infrastructure.

Cloud computing is a technology that uses the Internet and central remote servers to maintain data and applications. Cloud computing allows consumers and businesses to use applications without installation and access their personal files at any computer with Internet access. This technology allows for much more efficient computing by centralising storage, memory, processing and bandwidth.