Tutor Vista: Taking tutions outside India

Tutor Vista: Tutor Vista is a global education services company. It offers online tutoring services for students in various subjects and languages.
• A student gets enrolled through subscription and tutors are selected through a rigorous process
• A student select the time and subject he/she wants to get trained on. Tutor Vista selects the teacher available for the time slot and fixes the session
• Sessions are conducted over Tutor Vista’s platform. Student and teacher interact over VOIP, chat. The platform also has a white board to make it effective
• The central system is like Air Traffic Control Room – sessions are lined up for take off and closure. There are standby tutors line up in case a tutor drops out at the last minute
• Many tutors are professionals like Software Engineers, MBA Students, Radio Jockeys, Air Traffic Controllers and Army Officers apart from qualified teachers. This ensures a rich coaching with unique perspectives
• While several companies offer fixed content package for a course, Tutor Vista model is based on personalized and one-on-one coaching
• Started with one tutor and one student. Within 18 months had 400 tutors and 10,000 students
• Success of the business and need has led to demand from Korea, Canada, UK. Has teachers across the globe for students across geographies. Its currently expanding into teaching various subjects
• In November 2006, it was named the exclusive online tutoring provider for the Microsoft MSN Encarta online education portal.
• In April, 2007 Vocabulary.com engaged TutorVista as its exclusive tutoring service provider, giving it access to more than 19,000 schools.

EDUSAT: World's first education satellite Launched by ISRO

On sep 20, 2004 the Govt. of India launched a dedicated Satellite called EDUSAT (Educational Satellite) to serve the educational sectors, offering an interactive satellite based distance education system for the country. In Karnataka State the EDUSAT is being used to supplement classroom teaching in all the elementary schools (850 Schools) of one district .

Satellites can establish the connectivity between urban educational institutions with adequate infrastructure imparting quality education and the large number of rural and semi-urban educational institutions that lack the necessary infrastructure. Besides supporting formal education, a satellite system can facilitate the dissemination of knowledge to the rural and remote population about important aspects like health, hygiene and personality development and allow professionals to update their knowledge base as well. Thus, in spite of limited trained and skilled teachers, the aspirations of the growing student population at all levels can be met through the concept of tele-education

EDUSAT is the first exclusive satellite for serving the educational sector. It is specially configured for audio-visual medium, employing digital interactive classroom and multimedia multicentric system. In the first phase of pilot projects, a Ku-band transponder on board INSAT-3B, which is already in orbit, is being used. In this phase, Visveswaraiah Technological University (VTU) in Karnataka, Y B Chavan State Open University in Maharashtra and the Rajiv Gandhi Technical University in Madhya Pradesh are covered. In the second phase, EDUSAT spacecraft, once commissioned in orbit, will be used in a semi-operational mode with at least one uplink in each of the five spot beams. About 100-200 classrooms will be connected in each beam. Coverage will be extended to two more states and one national institution. In the third phase, EDUSAT network is expected to become fully operational. ISRO will provide technical and managerial support in the replication of EDUSAT ground systems to manufacturers and service providers. End users are expected to provide funds for this. In this phase, ground infrastructure to meet the country’s educational needs will be built and during this period, EDUSAT will be able to support about 25 to 30 uplinks and about 5000 remote terminals per uplink.

Complete details are available here: http://www.isro.org/Edusat/Page2.htm