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NEW
DELHI: The government is planning centres where students of
elementary open schools and the Indira Gandhi National Open
University (IGNOU) can see the educational programmes being
aired with the help of the EDUSAT satellite, the first Indian
satellite built exclusively for serving the educational sector.
In
an interview to indiantelevision.com, Ministry of Human
Resource Development's elementary education and literacy secretary
Arun Kumar Rath denied that the satellite was not being fully
utilised and that students were not watching the various educational
programmes.
However,
attempts were on to improve content and make the programmes
more interesting, he added. The schools which had access to
the satellite must also improve their hardware and a special
focus was being put on this in the 11th Plan.
While
answering questions on the sidelines of the recent Social
Editors Conference, he added that more schools were being
provided with computers.
After
a recent meeting of state education ministers, human resource
development minister Arjun Singh had said distance education
through satellite in the country was expected to get a major
boost with all states and union territories agreeing to enter
into agreements for use of EDUSAT, within the next two months.
The
states assured the centre that they would enter into memorandums
of understanding with the Indian Space Research Organisation
and the human resource development ministry in this regard.
Until the time of the meet in April 2007, only 14 states were
utilising 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.
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