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."

Comments

Country Wide Classroom

[proudlyindian]

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

Re:Good Pricing in India

[AuMatar]

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?

Re:But how much for the electricity

[teetam]

The state that I come from in India has 100% electricity coverage since the last 50 years! Every house in the even the most remote village has electricity and almost everyone nowadays has TV.

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.