ICTworks by Inveneo

Last year, the Canadian/Indian company Datawind, announced the $35 Aakash Android tablet computer as an ICT solution for education. While I still believe that the Aakash will fail education like OLPC did, do not take that as a mark of complete failure. The Aakash Ubislate 7 should be viewed as consumer electronics, and as such, it will be a roaring success.

Free Internet access

Just look at Datawind's core technology, which is all about squeezing waste from Internet data transfers to make even 2G bandwidth feel fast and snappy on a weak chipset.

Its Internet compression technology (18 patents issued & approved) reduces network load, and speeds delivery of content by factors of 10X to 30X. Like the Amazon Silk browser, Datawind offloads much of the browser computation to servers, so just the pertinent web content downloads to the device, not all the webpage bloat that now consumes most browsing bandwidth

During a talk at the World Bank, the Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli revealed that his goal was to use this technology to make the bandwidth usage so cheap that it became ad-supported. In effect, free to the end user. This is the modern killer app - free Internet.

Today, Internet access costs us all significantly more than hardware or software, more than electricity even. Even Intel says that bandwidth costs are the single largest barrier to ICT adoption. And Datawind has cracked that nut.

Just look at the numbers

Now a $47 tablet is exciting. I know a number of geeks who got all lustful for it, who don't even live in India. And in India... Well, let us read what the Wall Street Journal has to say:

On December 14... the Aakash [went one sale] on sale for the absurd price of 2500 rupees, or around $47, hoping to move 100,000 units over the course of 2012. That figure was seen as staggeringly optimistic, since it represented 40 percent of India’s total market for tablet computers. But as soon as the announcement went all, their call center was jammed with calls, and their website started crashing due to excess traffic, to the point where their Internet provider warned them they might be experiencing a malicious hack attack. Their initial inventory of 30,000 units sold out in three days. Within two weeks, they’d built up a backlog of 1.4 million preorders. According to CEO Suneet Tuli, that reservation pool is now over 2 million - and still going strong.

Just wait till the word gets out that $47 is close to the total cost of ownership in India! If the Ubislate 7 uses the Datawind servers when it connects to the Internet from Africa or America, expect this revolution in Internet access to spread faster than Facebook and Twitter combined!

Much has been written about India’s unveiling of the $35 tablet Aakash. There is debate about Aakash’s potential to change the educational paradigm, about its quality and specifications being up to commercial standards, about its "Made in India" tag and about its claim as the world’s cheapest tablet.

To continue this debate in a slightly different direction, I am Mustafa Naseem and I argue that Aakash has the potential to change the current scenario of limited access to computing for the majority of the world’s population outside of these discussions.

The need for context appropriate computing technologies:

When Martin Cooper placed the world’s first call from a portable cellular phone in 1973, he likely never imagined cell phones to become universally pervasive in less than 40 years. Why did the cell phone become so popular in the developing world? Take a look at Nokia 1100, the world’s best selling phone handset: it was low cost, easy to use, had a long battery life and only required a SIM card to connect its owner to the rest of the world.

To its credit, it also had a number of other features including a dust-proof rubber keypad, a flashlight accessible by a single touch and a near child-proof robust design. If we consider the primary four features listed above, the Nokia 1100 sets the standard for technology for the developing world −cost, connectivity, usability and a decent battery.

Aakash as appropriate technology:

The Aakash more or less meets these criteria. With its $60 retail price tag ($50 for the Government of India), it has come remarkably close to the $30 price point that led to widespread adoption of cell phones like the Nokia 1100. It use of a touch screen and the Android Operating System make it relatively easy to use after the initial learning curve that we all go through with new technologies.

The Akaash is equipped with a 2100 mAh battery, 2 watts of power consumption and has a solar charging option for users who are simply off the grid. The tablets are equipped with a GPRS module that supplements WiFi compatibility, which will help users connect through the maze of cellular networks. Apart from these features, the Aakash comes with 2 USB ports, a 3.5 mm audio input/output jack, and support for all popular text, audio and video formats.

Aakash has its shortfalls: a resistive touch screen, no access to the Android Market for apps, and a poor battery life to name a few. But at the given price point, I believe it is a decent piece of appropriate technology.

Market forces need to meet this demand:

In his speech at the 2011 Social Good Summit, Nicholas Negroponte said that he’d stop making low cost laptops if marketforces filled this gap. In the case of cell phones, manufacturers and providers supported the wide-scale adoption of cheap but useful phones to fill this gap.

Aakash gets us one step closer to the truly affordable and useful laptop than “specialty” educational machines (like the Simputer and XO) or full-powered Netbooks whose price hovers around $199 in most retail stores. India’s gigantic companies like Reliance are following this trend, and are manufacturing tablets like the Reliance 3G tablet in the $250-300 range. However, with Aakash’s release, things are bound to change – it’s a potentially powerful pricing function.

Government is seeding the change

By encouraging Data Wind to manufacture the Aakash for the educational market, the Government of India has encouraged competition at the lower end of the market, thereby unknowingly regulating the market for low cost computing devices. In an interview with NDTV, the CEO of Data Wind talked about an Aakash 2.0, which could have a capacitive touch screen, a 3G modem, a faster processor and an increased battery life at a similar price point.

We will now have to see if big giants like Reliance respond and how the quest continues for the truly commercially competitive, low cost computing device.

I am Pritam Kabe and I just spent the past 3 months in India looking at the education system and how ICT could play a role in improving student outcomes.

After countless discussions with local scholars, school visits, teacher interviews, and conversations with students and parents (both in rural and urban India), I’ve come to the conclusion that lack of technology is not the reason for the abysmal quality of basic education in India. There is already great wastage in ICT4E in India and $35 tablets will not improve the situation.

In my opinion, here are the top 3 things India needs to do for improving quality of education, and none of them involve technology directly (although technology can be a powerful tool in addressing these issues if used the right way):

1) Make the Teaching Profession Valuable:

Currently, majority of the educated youth in India choose teaching as a profession only after other options are exhausted. As a result, the wrong people are entering the teaching profession – people who are not motivated, and are really not interested in teaching. Ofcourse, India being a democracy, one cannot stop people from choosing any career they want.

But what one can do is improve the process of teacher eligibility/selection, and improve the value of a school teacher. Similar to some of the Scandinavian countries like Finland, the teaching profession needs to be made respectful in India….on par with the Engineering, Medical, Law professions. Easier said than done ofcourse, but India desperately needs to bring some fresh blood and enthusiasm in the teaching profession.

2) Address the Teacher Accountability Issue:

After the 6th Pay commission gave teacher pay and benefits a great boost, the implementation of the Right to Education Act has put heavy emphasis on the inputs to the education system – infrastructure, student enrolment rates etc. Yet, 65% of the teaching resources are wasted in India due to the combination of teacher absenteeism and teacher inactivity in school classrooms. And the main reason being the lack of accountability.

The teacher unions have become disproportionately powerful, with heavy political connections, due to which there is total lack of monitoring – the school inspections are a joke. Also, there is a huge demand and heavy shortage of teachers in India (unofficial number is 3 million), which is not helping in improving accountability. Policy makers and the people in power in India know about this issue, but are very hesitant to deal with it. But i think it’s about time, India stops shying away from it and starts addressing the teacher accountability issue.

3) Improve Quality of Demand:

One cannot blame the Indian government for all the educational problems. Equal responsibility has to be shared by the people. Talking to the locals/parents in India, i got a feeling that the people have lost faith in the public education system due to its poor quality. They have given up hope. And the fact that the educated, well-to-do population send their kids to private schools, makes it difficult to motivate them to care about India’s public education system. But that needs to change.

India needs a better quality of demand. And this starts with the educated population, motivated, helping out, and demanding a better quality of public education. The illiterate population and the locals/parents from the under-privileged communities, need to be educated about their rights, the need to be given a voice/hope, that good quality public education is their right and the government needs to deliver it. It is also critical that the disproportionate power of the teacher unions is counter-balanced by some sort of parent unions, or student unions.

Final Thoughts:

With the inputs to the education system taken care, it’s about time India starts focusing on student outcomes, and on improving the quality of education. And although technology has an important role to play, it is not the silver bullet, and should not be the focus when creating any educational strategy in India.

The focus should be the 3 things mentioned above – raising the value of the teaching profession, addressing the teacher accountability issue, and improving the quality of demand in India; and technology should be used as a tool to supplement other tools that address the social, cultural and economic realities on the ground.

This week, India's Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) announced the Aakash, a "$35" Android tablet computer they are boastfully claiming is the world's cheapest tablet for education. This claim is an ICT4Edu red herring - a deliberate attempt to divert attention from what really matters in ICT interventions in education.

The $35 price point claim

First, a cheap Android tablet is no great feat. Last year, Indian companies were showing off $35 tablet prototypes and the joke in the computer hardware industry is that with an order for 100,000 units anyone walking off a plane in China can get a cheap Android tablet.

Yet, this Indian tablet isn't actually $35. The Washington Post reports its actually about $45 each, and Engadget says its actually a $60 Ubislate 7 from Datawind. Regardless of cost, government subsidies are required to get to a $35 price point for students and teachers.

But how long will the government be able to subsidize this tablet? According to The Economic Times coverage of the Aakash, HCL Infosystems first won the tender to make the tablets, but then walked away from the deal after the company realized that it could not meet the price expectations of the government - and HCL Infosystems is India's premier hardware and ICT systems integration company.

Stop with the hardware focus

If OLPC taught us anything it was that the price of hardware is but a small percentage (5-15%) of the overall cost of a real ICT in education intervention. In their TCO study, Vital Wave Consulting found that:

Support and training are recurrent costs that constitute two of the three largest costs in the total cost of ownership model. They are greater than hardware costs and much higher than software fees.

So just on the technology side, we should not focus on the hardware or its price point, but the support that should come with any technology intervention and the training and change management that will make it a success.

Concentrate on the real success factors

Let us step back and acknowledge that we really need a three-legged stool of content, technology and people for ICT success in education. There should be equal (if not greater) focus on comprehensive teacher training and quality digital content versus the hardware and its support ecosystem.

If we look at Plan Ceibal arguably the largest and most successful ICT in education activity to date, there is an obvious concerted effort to engage the entire educational ecosystem - from teachers, to students, to parents, to administrators, to the community, and private sector, in a coordinated national program. The actual hardware played a catalytic, yet still small role.

So thanks for pushing the hardware price point envelope in India. That should be good for a few press headlines. But I'll join Michel Trucano in criticizing the often single minded focus, even obsession, on the retail price of ICT devices alone. This is a great distraction, a red herring, from more important issues.