Your normal class.
(Below are situations reflective in most countries teaching English as EFL/ESL including Malaysia)

You as  an English  teacher

    1. You are a teacher and have only limited number of periods a week of English classes.
    2. You come to the class, and explain all the rules of Grammar.
    3. You read out to the students a passage or two. Can you repeat that too often. No you can't.
    4. Oh .. you do have projectors and notebook 
    5. to project the CDs or online flash (e.g. Schoolnet) and if you are lucky you manage to finish the lesson.
    6. Many a time, the lesson cannot be finished in time or the online systems break down from overload (often too) 
    7. The class ends... and you go to another class. Your huge sized rich contents cannot be copied to the students.
    8. Is that it?   What happens after that?   
    9. The students will go back to speak their native language (mother tongue) among themselves.
   10. At home, their parents would not be able to help and have to depend on books.
   11. These students hardly have any chance to practise English.
   12. To learn a language one must constantly be able to hear how it is spoken... not through plain books!
   13. What about homework?  Print out reams and reams of environment unfriendly papers?
   14. Need to correct and collate the answers ? Lots of work. You very soon provide only minimal exercises.

So you expect your students to excel in English?

How in the heavens can such students learn to speak fluent English is surprising unless they come from English speaking families (as many Indian families do).  True enough, students excelling in English are mostly from those families whose homes speak English routinely and those that do not simply fade away and lose interests.

The above situation is very glaring in Malaysian schools where Chinese students speak Mandarin, Malay students speak Malay and Indian students speak their own Indian mother tongues. At the end of the day, many are against the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English and prefer to use their own mother tongues because they know their students lack proficiency in the language.

In fact the entire exercise has been admitted to be a failure!
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/30283-teaching-of-maths-and-science-in-english-a-flop
It confirms that broadband system is not only costly but does not work .

Is it then a surprise in spite of having spent a substantial sum to improve English in rural/urban areas, there has not been marked improvement in the mastery of English in all schools (in spite of using the latest state of art  technology money can buy)? In fact one Minister of Education admitted that it was a failure.

It does not matter how much incentives you give to the teachers to be better teachers of the English Language and no matter how many more English classes are introduced, as long as these situations persist, the learning of English in those countries will remain static without much improvements.

These situations have been reported in countries such as Malaysia, Korea (both spend huge amount of money on English learning yet without much results), Japan and even China. India and Philippines, which spent much less, are able to excel in this language because they speak English at home.

http://blog.esldaily.org/2009/04/10/korea-bottom-end-of-the-toefl-pool.aspx?ref=rss
The worst thing is , when the Ministry of education wishes to know if their initiatives are effective they have to wait for the year end examination results after manually collating them nationwide to know if their initiative works. Gosh , so inefficient. they spent hundreds of millions and yet unable to collate the data. AGE can get that anytime, anywhere and any level of poverty using existing infrastructures- cost wise? Negligible.

Now there is nothing anyone can do about the situations in students' homes. However the best alternative is to enable students to be able to practise and listen as often as they wish to when they are at home. Using AGE is one such help. They should be able to routinely copy and bring home their multimedia lessons. It is not the teachers but the methods and accessibilities that matter most. AGE requires no Internet to run and runs on almost any computer using WinXPs and below. Even legacy computers like PC 486 runs well with Win 98. These can be had for free by the container loads. Who needs new PCs?

Many thought of importing native speaking English teachers which would cost huge sum per person. On national level, it is not practical and would not work. The number required would be too many and would be beyond budget of any country. Further, how many students can each native speaking teachers help and how many hours of attention can they give to the students? - Very few relative to the number of students (millions) involved nationally.

Spending more money or having more periods per week?
While many naive educationists advocate to spend more money or for more periods per week in schools, there would not make any difference. The moment the students get out of classes, they speak their own mother tongues - not enough practices to master the language.

Forget about all the talks about this or that wonderful pedagogy to teaching of English. As long as the above situations are not addressed, you can be sure the effectiveness would not be there. 

How AGE does it in a typical classroom environment.

1. Teacher may use AGE contents to teach in class with a projector.
2. Lesson cannot be completed in class students just copy the lesson into pen drives or diskettes
3. Students with AGE tools installed in their home computers may continue at home their discontinued lessons.
     (This is possible because AGE multimedia modules are very small sized indeed, runs OFFLINE and easily copied)
4. They listen to the passages read out and recorded  by teachers/educators.
5. They can practise their English modules with voice support and questionnaires unlimited number of times
6. All modules dispense with the need for paper, auto correct/collate the answers. It makes it convenient and cost effective to access many more modules than before. Poor students not constrained by lack of money to buy papers.
7. Once this is done, teachers do not have to continue this chapter in the next class.
8. Teachers can create their own contents and even record them easily.

Homework can now be paperless thus allowing unlimited number of exercises available to students unlike costly paper based homework. Schools can get students to form AGE contents development club to help teachers to ensure lots of contents and exercises available.

Constant practice
There is just not enough time or computers to learn/practise English (or other subjects) in schools. AGE allows students to practise outside the class rooms anytime and anywhere. Yes, the same can be done using CDs.  Can the teacher duplicate their large sized modules and run offline in CDs/DVDs for all students everytime? (May not be easy or cost effective).

To learn a language, one must be able to listen at their own time and place. When they are given the chance to listen to the passages, read out to them on demand by the computer, they would improve. Teachers in class can only read out limited number of times unlike a computer.

It is therefore not surprising most systems using current high technologies, which must be online, fail in the purpose for which they are designed.  Teachers cannot be with the students 24/7. A computer with the right software can. Can CDs or flash systems deliver cheaply or free to all? No ... AGE can.  It is one thing to have broadband coverage, it is another issue all together for the students to be able to afford to link up to broadband at home.

So you have the best in the world technology money can buy (if you can afford it of course) , can you achieve what AGE can achieve?  AGE does not need high tech.... it uses practical tech.  That is what the world needs -  not solutions that are nice to look at but does not provide the solutions desired.

     Try out AGE .. you have nothing to lose.

For the country... this is what is achievable by AGE. Try other platforms, you would fail.

AGE is the solution to enable for the first time , rural schools to be on par with urban schools or better (without broadband)
AGE achieves the following

     1.  Enables entire country (rural and urban) to access digital contents without expensive broadband
     2.  Empowers teachers from blackboard to digital enabled easily for entire country.
     3.  By going paperless homework/textbooks... a greener  country.
     4.  Lighter school bags ... use pen drives
     5.  Enable Ministry of Education to collate students' performance data for entire country anytime.
 (You don't have to wait for year end examination results to know the progress of each student for the entire country. - Get it anytime)

The above are issues, no Ministry of Education can afford not to have

Our contact is here