Slashdot Mirror
India Launches World's First Education Satellite
samfisher writes "New Scientist is reporting that India has launched EDUSAT, the world's first satellite exclusively dedicated to distance learning. EDUSAT will use the virtual classroom concept to offer education to children in remote villages, quality higher education to students in areas without access to good technical institutes, adult literacy programmes and training modules for teachers. The educational programmes can be viewed on any television set through a simple low-cost receiver costing about $65."
How about the average salary+benefits of being Administration? $94,500
(Look up the salary of every public teacher in the state of Illinois at thechampion.org.) For Chicago, search for "DIST 299" The numbers include pension, which they can roll over. It's the private school teachers that make next to nothing. (Catholic grade school teacher I know: ~$24,000)The reason there's a shortage is because of race/gender affirmative action, and the working conditions inside special education classrooms.
Since the late 1980s in india there was a concept on the govt channel DD called Country Wide classroom which covered topics like chemistry, physics, maths and various quizzes and it was quite fun
Striving to be common...
Using 1999-2000 numbers (to avoid counting the current war, which is obviously boosting it)
US- 3.3% GDP
Japan- 1% (mandated by their Constitution post WWII)
France- 2.7
England- 2.5
Germany 1.6
Canada 1.4
China 2.2
Italy 2.0
India 2.5
Poland 2.1
Netherlands 1.8
Even if you throw out the results from small countries, we spent 25% more as a percentage of GDP. There are a few outliers above us in the developed world, such as Isreal for obvious reasons of being at perpetual war. And there's third world countries with higher, due to being dictatorships. But among developed nations we are the highest by far, and in 2003, we spent more despite the rest of the world decreasing as percent GDP. And this doesn't even mention that our by population numbers are totally skewed high.
Source: http://www.fas.org/man/crs/RL32209.pdf
If we lowered ourself just to the level of Britain and France, hardly small armies, we'd save 50 billion a year.
And if you want crazy boondongles- lets talk about the comanche. How many billions, and in the end we don't even have a prototype?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
There's the school of the air.
not really sure how much of a space program they have though..
Woomera satellite launches in the past, plus talk of new launch sites
Unfortunately that's not the case, but it used to be. The older generation of satelites had a much broader footprint, and if you're living in Asia (like me), you'll remember that there only used to be one beam of STAR TV available for the entire Asian region (meaning that millions of Chinese cried out in pain at their first exposure to Bollywood :-), and a lot of Indians tried to figure out the deeper meanings behind Canto-Pop). But eventually technology progressed, and there are now no less than 5 different beams, which means that the STAR TV we get in India is drastically different from the that available in China, Japan, The Middle East e.t.c.
My Favourite Meme
Are you aware that Indian space program was at the receiving end of sanctions by US from 1970? That also meant that India was denied the technology that you say has been picked up, almost all the time. Even now the ISRO is under sanctions by the US [check your sanctions list] even after being an ally of US for quite some years, We effectively had to reinvent the wheel again, again and again due to these policies.
If India can thank any one for at least some portion of their rocketry to any one , it is the erstwhile USSR and Russians who provided a lot of help in the maturing years of ISRO.
Please do not assume that any technology developed in the world, be it in the sphere of Rocketry or Nuclear programs is immediatly derived from the US, because there are other countries in the world that have the same knowhow and resources to develope the same independently.
~561
NOT FLAMEBAIT: For news stories like this, if you are totally ignorant about the foreign country being discussed, it is OK to not say anything. Seriously.
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