(7 May 2007 3:15 pm)

NEW DELHI: All educational institutions having Satellite Interactive Terminals (SITs) or Receive Only Terminals (ROTs) can now receive educational programmes from EDUSAT, the first Indian satellite built exclusively for serving the educational sector, and can interact and ask questions through audio-video conferencing or text mode or through telephone.

Curriculum-based education is being imparted via the satellite by the University Grants Commission (UGC) through the Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC). The ground infrastructure had been largely created by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) which had invested Rs 890 million in the programme till December 2006.

All states and Union territories had earlier last month committed to sign memorandums of understanding with the ISRO and the Human Resource Development within the next two months. Only 14 states and union territories are so far using the satellite.

The 1950 kg EDUSAT has several new technologies. It carries five Ku-band transponders providing spot beams, one Ku-band transponder providing a national beam and six Extended C-band transponders with national coverage beam. It will join the INSAT system that already has more than 130 transponders in C-band, Extended C-band and Ku-band providing a variety of telecommunication and television services.

Parliament was told today by Minister of State for HRD D. Purandeswari that the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) is also sponsoring telecasting of programmes through AICTE-EDUSAT network for conducting training programmes and seminars. The Council is also engaged in the development of digital course wares.

The infrastructure of EDUSAT is being utilized by Indira Gandhi National Open University -(IGNOU) for curriculum-based education, teachers’ training, professional educational courses and for conducting teleconferencing sessions for software content generation. National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) also conducts inter-active orientation/training programmes of teachers and teachers’ educators.

The Department of Science and Technology (DST) utilizes EDUSAT network for group discussion, lectures, demonstrations, video-shows, training and capacity building programmes.

Meanwhile, HRD Ministry sources told indiantelevision.com that the “SAKSHAT” Education Portal set up by the ministry will shortly be used on State-level servers. States have agreed to develop learning modules in their respective languages suited to the State-specific context and post these on this portal.

States agreed to encourage their universities/colleges and technical education institutions to become members of INFLIBNET (Information for Library Network) and INDEST (Indian National Digital Library for Engineering Sciences and Technology) consortia, respectively, so that they gain access to e-journals and other online academic resources through the centralized subscription process of these consortia.