Of late, quite a few state Governments and reputed educational institutions have begun making use of EDUSAT, the first Indian satellite designed and developed exclusively for serving the educational sector.
The development opens up a new opportunity for animated content creators. A majority of the online learning programs involve a lot of simulation and graphics to make the learning process more effective and potent.
Besides this, there is also a lot of opportunity for content creators to publish educational based content themselves and upload it on the edusat network.
Pune based Rahul Commerce, leading distributor and re-seller of software and tools to the Indian animation industry has bagged a huge contract from Edusat for providing the entire Audio Video capture card technology from Viewcast/Osprey along with video streaming software.
Speaking to Animation ‘xpress, Rahul Commerce Chief Dhiren Shah remarked,”Rahul Commerce is proud to get this contract from Edusat. The project is one of the most remarkable ones and probably the largest in the world in terms of reach. The Government plans to have more than 200,000 points enabled with high speed broadband as part of the Edusat project, connecting Universities, Educational Establishments as well as rural centres to take education to the masses as well as make it possible to beam broadcast quality educational shows to remote areas”
“We anticipate that a lot of animation studios in India, will make use of this opportunity and begin creating educational content” he added.
Was there a business model in place for content creators? Dhiren Shah replied that,”Once there is broadband and mass reach, the business model will automatically evolve”
Amongst recent intiatives revolving around edusat include Visveswaraya Technological University (VTU), Mysore which recently completed its 1000th lecture via Edusat, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham Coimbatore educational initiative with ISRO and VCR, Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University outreach to its students in remote corners of the state, Government of Haryana and Intel India MoU under which Intel India will impart training and support programmes to teachers to equip them to fare well in the computerised environment in schools.The company would also develop and record the broadcast content for the training programme to be broadcast through the EDUSAT network.
Edusat is mainly intended to meet the demand for an interactive satellite based distance education system for the country. It strongly reflects Indian Government’s commitment to use space technology for national development, especially for the development of the population in remote and rural locations.