EDURITE, a premier company in the field of ICT based Learning and Education content incorporates process of Cognitive Learning to provide the best possible teaching aids and learning solutions to schools and students alike.  EDURITE has been enabling technology led education in classrooms for seven years. These solutions help teachers explain concepts better, increase level of understanding of students and help children improve their performance. It employs principles of cognitive learning by using multi-media based animations, graphics and videos to explain concepts in a very interactive and intuitive manner. EDURITE caters to 600 private schools, 2000 government schools and over 1000000 home users. We are giving the 21st century state-of-the-art classroom in A, B and C class towns in India with Smart boards, multimedia content and teacher teaching aids. EDURITE is the only Indian content creator to license content to the US, proving the credibility in the global market. It’s also the first to introduce CD ROMS with text books. Understanding the less penetration of Internet and computer in India, EDURITE also launched the first DVD based curriculum content. Microsoft, HP, LG and Frank Brothers Publishers have partnered with EDURITE as part of their education initiatives, recognising the superiority of EDURITE content.

DigitAlly, a multimedia resource library from Edurite

EDURITE’s flagship product, aptly named DigitALly, (which means Digital Ally) is a massive multimedia resource library for delivery of subjects in a collaborative way in the classrooms. This tool can be used by the teachers in the kindergarten to class 12 to enhance the teaching with animations, videos and diagrammes. Digitally was first launched in 2005. Features include enhanced searching capabilities, create lesson plans or even select a lesson plan to suit to the syllabi. It is a digital repository of digital media objects, where we have all the learning media objects. The in-built search engine can easily extract the desired learning objects to be integrated into the lesson plans from the vast repository of over 5000 illustrative animations, 20 hours of video and more than 8000 self explanatory diagrams. Teachers can also add to this repository any animation, video, graphic that they deem as appropriate for teaching for their students. DigitALly covers CBSE, ICSE, IGCSE and state board syllabi from classes 1 to 12.

Presence in private schools
EDURITE has proved its necessity in various schools like Indus International School, Primus International School, Bangalore, MES Group of Schools, Poddar International School and many more. EDURITE animations helps in making the concept crystal clear & also it can draw the attention of the children.

Presence in rural schools
EDURITE’s Digital Equaliser Centres (DEC, technology enabled learning centres) has fulfilled this idea to a great extent. Content is created by inviting the best teachers to the studios, shooting them, hiring animators to add text and creating a complete package. Schools can load it on servers so students can learn from their best teachers. EDURITE has been involved as part of the Mahiti Sindhu Project (Computer Education Programme for the Government High School Children of Karnataka) and education programs for America India Foundation (AIF), chaired by Former US President Bill Clinton. AIF aims to bridge the digital divide between urban and rural India. Edurite has helped establish over 76 Digital Equaliser Centres across India.

Mobile PC for easier content delivery
EDURITE has an ingenious method for implementing the e-Learning content for schools – Mobile PC. This indigenous self-sufficient Mobile PC developed by EDURITE delivers computer aided learning content and IT content for rural schools. The Mobile PC, encapsulated in a box consists of a Projector, Table, Keyboard, Mouse and a UPS. The monitor has been substituted with a projector so that the image can be projected on the wall for the benefit of the entire classroom.

Edurite increases success level in education
Edurite Technologies has established five learning centres at Besagerahalli, Mysore and Bangalore. The results from the first two centres established have been astounding. In Besagerahalli, the 10th grade pass percentage went up by 55% in 2004 and the 12th grade pass percentage went up by 30%. The impact of these centres on the rural public has been substantial. In the Mysore centre, more than 500 villagers have been trained to use the computer in the last six months.

EDURITE’s vision is to be the largest player in Education business in India targeting all the 1.2 million schools in India.

Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) provides an opportunity for private sector participation in financing, designing, construction, operation and maintenance of public sector Programmes and projects. Educomp Solutions Limited works very closely with various Governments, Ministry of IT, Ministry of HRD, and Govt. of India in the execution of educational programmes, teacher training and content development projects under the PPP model.

ASSAM: Winds of Change- Charting a new course for Education in Assam
North East India is a region with strong natural and human resources. However, it has remained backward in the field of communications and even after sixty years of Independence, the region has a poor economy and connectivity remains a problem. While various development schemes and tools have been devised over the years, the emergence of Information and  Communication Technology (ICT) as a tool of development across different parts of the world opens up new possibilities.

AMTRON on behalf of Govt. of Assam has moved ahead to tap these opportunities for High and Higher Secondary Schools across the state in phase manner by harnessing the potential of Information Technology to aid educational transaction to improve its quality education.

The Rajiv Gandhi Computer Literacy Programme-an innovative effort of Government of Assam in introducing computer literacy and computer aided learning in schools, was launched in the year 2003. RGCLP is a good beginning for disseminating education among rural children effectively and economically. The gap between people and information technology and education which exists due to lack of infrastructure facilities is now being bridged. A school in the most rural and remote area have been turn into an information-hub under this project.

Educomp Solutions Ltd. has been entrusted by the Government of Assam to implement the programme on Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) basis in 100 numbers of High Schools under Phase-IV across 10 districts in the state.

As a part of the programme a state-of-art ultra modern computer lab is being constructed in the 100 schools wherein IT Infrastructure have been installed in one of the classrooms of the school and two Computer Faculties have also been deployed in each school. An interactive training has also been provided to all the Computer Faculties for transacting the classes covering both theory and hands-on sessions. Printed guidelines, manuals and lesson-plans have also been provided to the trainees for ready references. More than 60,000 students of Class V-X are being covered through the project. It not only contains school curriculum but each student are taken through an eventful journey of self discovery, positive relationships, and creative expression through an innovative methodology including observation, retention and implementation.

Educomp Solutions Ltd. has taken up the challenges in translating the dreams into reality by converting remote classrooms into an IT hub by traversing the hurdles which includes areas inhabited by ethnic tribes, militant and difficult groups. Our LABs are first in areas like remote forest in Kokrajhar [Assam-Bengal border] and in Char-reverine areas of Dhubri where in only communication is though country boats. It's a challenge for us and we are committed in this eventful journey

ORISSA: Impact of BICEP [Biju Pattaniak Computer Aided Education Project]
Educomp Solutions Ltd. has been selected by Orissa Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA) as an implementing agency to set up the Computer Lab & to provide the Multimedia Based Content CDs in Science, Mathematics, Computer Literacy and English in Oriya and provide Training to 600 teachers covering 300 Schools across the state.
 
(written based on contributions from Ibrahim Nafis, Lalatendu Mohanty, monika Talwar and Subrat Biswas) .

Let us examine the contribution of various stakeholders in this process!

Government
The government needs to stimulate a learning culture, and e-Learning must become a policy issue. Government must recognise the e-Learning Industry as a separate forum and not treat it as part of the IT enabled services or a sub sector of the IT industry. A case in point is the Australian Government support for promoting e-Learning. The Government there has been successful in increasing the industry use of e-Learning in workplaces.

The Academia
Schools and Universities taking the e-Learning route are still a very small fraction of the overall number. In addition, the transition from distance learning to e-Learning is moving at a snail's pace. Universities are long over due in making significant improvement in the quality and employability of their courses offered. Through e-Learning, they have a chance to improve both the quality and quantity (wide audience).

The Industry

Unlike the west, in India, even the large corporates and business houses have been slow to adapt to e-Learning. Corporate sector must realise that e-Learning is one of the best ways to train and retrain employees and workforce, and any delay in implementing e-Learning is postponing the obvious; and the cost is enormous in terms of longer gestation period, logistic nightmares of having to arrange training at multiple locations, high obsolescence of content and information and lack of standardisation of training infrastructure. Corporates must start integrating e-Learning into their strategic plan, and by combining e-Learning with a knowledge management system, they can improve learn ability, and performance.

e-Learning Companies and Technology Providers
E-Learning companies have been heavily dependent on custom e-Learning courseware development which is still not very cost effective as per Indian standards and affordability, since the industry is still exploring automation opportunities and process oriented methodologies.

With the tremendous explosion in web usage as a knowledge sharing and delivering platform, e-Learning will become more a norm than an exception. It is incumbent upon all of us to drive this process. Together we need to create an e-Learning infrastructure that is sustainable and continues to transform learning, education and training! .

Data Driven Decisions: ‘Education intelligence’
Typically school districts have been the repository for detailed data about students and schools and the obligation has been to report aggregate data to their state education agency (SEA). The SEA then reports statistical summaries the federal level. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has dramatically increased the amount of data needed to comply with federal mandates and the need for more sophisticated data systems is upon us all. At the heart of the new systems is the need for States to have access to record-level student demographic and assessment data to help drive decision making.

In order to realize these benefits, state education agencies need to engage efficient and effective systems for local education agencies to report state-required data as well as an automated, streamlined process for reporting federally required data. The system that satisfies this need is a data warehouse that is built on standards of interoperability. The data warehouse process assembles a separate database holding copies of data from a wide array of different sources. The data are extracted, cleansed, standardised and deposited into the data warehouse. This system makes data available to the decision making process for analysis and reporting. It is important that questions can be posed to the decision making process in real time and the data warehouse deliver immediate results. Education Intelligence is something educators and administrators apply every day. A data warehouse is a powerful tool for extending that intelligence.

What kind of data belongs in a school district data warehouse?

Data pertaining to student demographics, grades, student schedules, attendance and discipline; standardised test data including item analysis capability; state test results; teacher information and student extracurricular activities and programs are ideal candidates for a meaningful data warehouse. Student information that would lead to quick identification of all students in all grades that would benefit from Academic Intervention Services and to follow their progress while receiving services is a core benefit.

Getting the Data: The Schools Interoperability Standard (SIF) Backbone

Policymakers and educators need data warehouse systems capable of providing timely, valid and relevant data. Access to these data gives teachers the information they need to tailor instruction to help each student improve. It also gives administrators the resources and information to effectively and efficiently manage programmes, and evaluate which policy initiatives show the best evidence of increasing student achievement.

SIF is recognised an important methodology in addressing the challenges posed by disparate IT systems and is a critical step toward improving access to necessary information. SIF is an industry-supported open standard that allows schools, districts, and states to use compliant applications for managing a wide variety of data.

Data Warehouse Methodology
Data Warehousing is open to an almost limitless range of definitions. Simply put, Data Warehouses store an aggregation of an education data. Each education system is unique and the organisation will influence the data warehouse, however there is a common thread of design and methodology that is dictated by common mandates, identification of pockets of need, and NCLB reporting.

The two major design methodologies of data warehousing are based on the work of Ralph Kimball and Bill Inmon. Both Kimball
and Inmon view data warehousing as separate from OLTP (online transaction processing) and legacy applications.

Kimball views data warehousing as a constituency of data marts. Data marts are focused on delivering business objectives for parts of the organisation. And the data warehouse is a conformed dimension of the data marts. Therefore, a unified view of the education system can be obtained from dimension modeling on a local level.

Any data warehouse solution must fully support SIF interoperability to be a viable and capable of presenting data on demand

Inmon suggests creating a data warehouse on a subject-by-subject area basis. Therefore the development of the data warehouse can start with data from data stores and other areas can be added to the data warehouse as their needs arise. Data flows from the data warehouse to separate data marts.

In general, for most purposes, it can be difficult to obtain a unified view of the overall system at both the local and administrative level using the Inmon model and CORE-ECS subscribes to a data warehouse model based on a collection of data marts integral to the warehouse.

Data Warehouse Vision: A partnership of opportunity.

The complex task of pulling together information from divergent sources to create a data warehouse has previously been a deterrent to many education agencies. CORE-ECS has joined forces with Computer Power Solutions of Illinois (CPSI) to bring education agencies end-to-end data integration and warehousing tools based on SIF and data driven education intelligence. CORE-ECS has developed eD3 (ee-dee cube), a comprehensive data warehousing
solution designed especially for state agencies and school districts. eD3 gives education agencies the informational power to accurately answer questions that were once a vague interpretation of data or intuition. eD3 is a comprehensive SIF-compliant data warehouse solution that centralizes education data to support the decision-making process. The superior SIF capability of CPSI coupled with the unparalleled CORE-ECS data querying and reporting tools make eD3 a proven, architecture for data driven decision making to support.

Portal Services

The eD3 Portal is a configurable interface that is the central entry point to all eD3 features and functions.  It serves as the launch point for ETL tools, report creation (CORE-ECSReports) and data analysis (CORE-ECSDTool). It can contain the CORE-ECSDashboard, which is a customizable web page that showcases
real-time data, such as attendance and performance, in various graph formats. The main interface can be designed to look similar to a district’s or state’s own website.

eD3 Delivers on Better Data
The eD3 is a proven SIF-based data warehouse solution combined with a robust, data mining, and reporting capability. Multiple users can access databases without making permanent changes to the data.  Access to particular fields can be given to or restricted from groups of users. Together, these attributes provide outstanding support for an efficient and flexible district-wide or state-wide architecture.

The architecture provides many features that enable customers to respond to change rapidly. Its n-tier structure allows for development and modification of individual components, including the introduction of new technologies (or the replacement of outmoded ones) in each tier, with minimal impact on components provided by other tiers.