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AGE is designed for the poor
- to reach the rich and the poor.
Currently most systems in the market has been designed to use the state of
art platforms and systems. These are suitable for computer labs or homes of
the connected rich. How about the poor unconnected urban and rural ?
They remained unconnected because using systems that require one to be
online is just not practical or cost effective in education to the rural or
urban poor. Neither are CDs/DVDs cost effective nor able to be easily
distributed.
What we did - we created AGE
We have decided to use older systems OS to create very small sized modules
that can be easily downloaded and run offline. This way even a slow
connection speed through dial up modems would work just fine.
We developed what we called AGE, to be able to overcome such limitations and use legacy
and modern OS like DOS and Windows to overcome such limitations.
AGE modules are so small that for days of animated instructions, which are
what students need, it takes only seconds of downloads through slow dial up
connections.
We further developed a simple tool for the teachers to be able to self
create simple practical interactive digital modules on the fly. This would
enable any teacher with very basic knowledge of computers to be empowered
from the blackboard to the digital level.
The benefits of being able
to do the above enables us to do the impossible.
Have a look at our power point presentation ,
http://www.paperlesshomework.com/ppt/agemoe.ppt
Paperless homework
how to go paperless
Teachers today are
complaining about having too much work. Many man-hours are spent preparing
and correcting such paper based question papers. AGE is able to help to cut
down the workload of certain teachers now giving out objective based
homework.
Teachers can
1. Choose our
readymade modules to be given to students to do at home
2. Prepare their own
using AGE Workbook Generator
3. Send their
questionnaires to us , and we can help to convert them to AGE format to be
given to students
4. Get from the
questions pool contributed by teachers around the world.
The entire process is paperless thus helping the environments.
Collation of students performance data
For any educator wishing to monitor students' performance, it is important
to be able to collect and collate such data. AGE has simplified local or
nationwide collation of such data to enable quick and early corrective
interventions. The data are easily collated into digital spreadsheets by
teachers who in turn can send such to a central body to be collated.
This means that there is no
necessity for expensive data collection devices. This is a big plus.
Existing PCs are used.
Read on more about AGE
AGE is the missing link
Effective ICT in mass Education and complements all the other three
platforms 1, 3, & 4 below.
1. Paper based contents.
Universal but old and non interactive... the reasons why Computers are used.
Still the main platform used the world over in spite of all the advances of
technology.
2 Missing link
AGE
Can reach anywhere, anytime, any level of poverty through
CDs, diskettes, thumb drives, dial ups, broadbands, satellites and mobile
phones.
Runs off line after download. No need Internet to run. Not as rich as CDs
and flash platforms but gets the job done - total education.
3. CDs/DVDs -
Rich multimedia but limited in reach and expensive on
national scale. Yes, use these, but for reaching out cheaply use AGE.
4. Flash /Java online
Rich and small sized but requires
broadband always online , non transferable to another computers . Use
AGE, where broadband or not Internet access limits this platform, to
complement the offerings here.
AGE is a fourth platform
after paper, CDs/DVDs and flash/Java platforms
that can be used to deliver educational contents .
Using AGE platform allows the user to send very small sized animated
modules across slow dial ups in seconds for hours/days of usage. This
enables any electronic delivery vehicles available today to distribute
to the most remote areas animated multimedia contents.
AGE is able to overcome the limitations of current
platforms CDs and flash/java broadband systems for delivering of
animated multimedia contents through Internet to be able to reach out to
remote rural areas.
If a country wishes to have an effective ICT in mass Education, the
country must be able to equally reach out to the entire country's urban
and rural areas almost instantly. Otherwise there would be one system
for the connected and another for the remote poor or urban poor.
Currently the ICT penetrations to rural areas
compared to urban areas have been very minimal. As technology advanced
with richer contents, these rural areas are left even farther behind.
The main reasons for these states of affairs have been the inabilities
of current technology to reach them and the impractical ways of using
such platforms. One of these efforts has been to lay out broadband
to rural areas. This would take time and money with no assurance of
success. Meanwhile the unconnected remain unconnected.
AGE has overcome this inhibition by being able to send in seconds for
hours/days of usage of multimedia contents through the slow dial up
lines. These dial up lines are the norm in less developed countries as
well as in rural areas (even in developed countries).
AGE's modules are very small in sizes in the
region of 20K to 40 kbytes for a typical set of modules (which may make
up to 21 sets per module) when normal platforms would take up to 10
mbytes. This kind of sizes will enable rural areas to receive in an
instant animated modules which would benefit rural schools. It is very
suitable for ULPCs too which normally have limited storage space.
This means that using AGE, every school no
matter how remote , can have access to good contents anytime, anywhere
and any level of poverty. AGE runs offline and does not need any
Internet connection to run.
The benefits arising from this would be...
...
seconds of
downloads, hours/days
of animated
instructions
(first in the world)
with a simple
slow dial up connection, easily distributed to all
and runs offline!
.... a
jumpstart
ICT
in Mass education project for developing countries
.... a project to
close the
digital divides
of nations and urban/rural schools
Current
technology has failed to close the digital divide...
it is getting wider.
.... a project to
use less paper
in schools for
a
greener
world
.... a project to
empower teachers
to the next level in developing countries.
.... an
ideal solution for global ULPC/OLPC
initiatives because of limited storage space.
If you are buying a new machine to use AGE make sure
it runs on WinXPs or Win98.(Vista not supported yet)
Get a WinXP ULPC (contact
us for compatible models) or download AGE
to test it first!
Getting our children to be aware
of the dangers of drugs, smoking, aids, and diseases
Closing the digital divide
among nations and
urban/rural areas reaching out to the unreached
5 billion
Saving
the trees
to save Mother Earth-
Mothers of all environment
protectors
Raising teachers to the next level
from blackboard to digital
enabled
Easy availability of contents
anywhere and anytime for students and educators
alike
Enabling ICT in Mass Education
rural and urban schools have equitable access
Saving money for students
better spent in the canteen than paying for eco unfriendly
photocopies.
No more heavy school bags
their school bags... diskettes or pen drives.
.... through universal and equitable Education for All
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Find out why AGE uses
legacy OS ... DOS and Windows?
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Beware... AGE uses older legacy OS, to achieve the above benefits.
Read
here
and
FAQ .
We call it practical
Tech not High Tech.
If you are still
unconvinced, then move on and get the thousands of good
and rich contents elsewhere. AGE is not for you.
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How does AGE achieve all these "impossible"
tasks?
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The
situation today
The problems with current
technologies used in education are the obsessions with beauty and
sophistications of software, with the result that all contents
delivered today to students around the world are large sized
bulky modules. In order to deliver these modules to the
end users current commonly used platforms are offline CDs/DVDs
or online through Flash/Java etc.
The problems with current available
platforms
The problems with these platforms, they are too
impractical and expensive to reach out to the rural poor or
remote areas to which lie the success or failures of ICT in mass
Education in every country on Earth.
The CDs/DVDs are too expensive to produce on a large scale and the
logistics to send these contents riding on this platform
nationwide are just impractical - even in developed countries.
The only other current alternative is the use of
flash/Java online systems which are very popularly used by most
online education providers today.
Yes, such systems are fast and widely used and able to reach
those with good Internet broadband connections far and wide. Dial ups
using such systems are however problematic and costly for
prolonged use.
The question starts to crop up is "Do
rural areas in developing countries have good and widespread
broadband in city or rural areas? Even if they do have
broadband, can such systems be fast enough if the entire student
population log in at once? The answer is no. The speed of
access has proven to be very slow indeed as has happened in
certain countries.
UNESCO missing the 2015 EFA target
Further evidence, is the known fact that UNESCO may
miss their target date for Education for all (EFA) by the year 2015.
This failure is not because of the people nor the money but rather
the use of rich men's platforms trying to reach the poor men. EFA is about empowering the poor and hence surely
their objective would
be impossible to achieve no matter how much efforts and fund are
put into the project. We have seen many countries failed
precisely because of these factors.
Is there any
other more practical platform?
So at the end of the day, both available options are not
practical platforms for delivery of digital educational
contents.
What then is the solution? AGE is one such able to provide a
solution
AGE is a good and practical solution
Yes, there is a platform to enable ICT in mass
education to be effected successfully. This is by using our simple platform
AGE (acronym for All Genius Educator).
AGE is able to
able to send animated modules,
very suitable for understanding subjects quickly rather than
plain html texts, to almost every part of the country in seconds
without broadband. The modules downloaded, in seconds, can then
be redistributed in diskettes or pen drives to all in the area
without the need for Internet to run.
AGE is the culmination of 10 years of
research and development to find a solution to such inhibitions
encountered from the days Internet was introduce to this day-
bandwidth limitations.
It downloads AGE modules in seconds and runs offline. There is
no need for broadband anytime. It runs anywhere anytime.
Even the most remote areas with solar panels or hand cranked computers
can get run AGE easily. Refurbished legacy computers too can run
easily with minimum RAMs so long as the computer runs Windows 9X
or WinXPs.
AGE is able to create very small sized
modules that within seconds through a low speed dial up,
is able to deliver animated multimedia modules for hours/days of
usage.
What is the
secret?
AGE do sacrifice some aspect of
properties like reduced colors graphics, using even legacy OS
(like DOS) features to enable many space savings features that resulted in
a DOS/Windows platform to allow animated multimedia modules to
be delivered through slow speed modems in seconds. AGE delivers
in low kilobytes while others deliver in megabytes.
AGE needs only seconds to download for hours of usage, others
hours of downloads seconds of usage.
Use in most remote areas
With this capability, even the most remote areas can easily
have access to fully animated multimedia modules anytime and
anywhere at very low running costs. They can make use of simple dial ups Internet
links without having to incur huge costs. This is because AGE
modules need only seconds to download, and runs offline for the
entire community where AGE can be copied freely and run offline.
The cost is only a few seconds of the Internet connection fees.
As for the computers, even in areas without electricity, the XO
(OLPCs
installed with WinXPs) computers with crank shaft using muscle power can run the
machines. These are extreme examples to show AGE can reach out
to anyone at minimal cost and thus make any attempts to connect
their entire nation a possibility.
if one can reach out to the most remote, cities and other less
remote areas would be no problem.
So for the first time, implementing uniform ICT in mass
Education is now possible.
Students can
bring home their homework
When modules can be so easily copied to pen drives or
diskettes, such modules can be taken home and completed by all
students with ease. There is no technology limitations since
even diskettes can be used on legacy computers. Such
arrangements using current state of art software are difficult
and most often impossible. Students cannot bring home their
homework digitally easily.
Teachers are empowered digitally
without massive training in ICT
Teachers would be able to have access to commonly
produced modules and exchanged very easily using AGE E-workbook
generator provided freely to schools.
Other Benefits
Above are only a few of the massive number of benefits for users
of AGE. For more information on who benefits from using AGE
click here
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Compare AGE with existing systems in the world.
The pro and cons
of using AGE....
read more
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Videos on how to use AGE in Class and in a computer.
click
here
Please note, these videos are only camera shots to show how
AGE modules work in a computer and how these are used in classrooms.
These modules are not delivered via video formats.
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All rights
reserved (C)2007 by
Paperless Homework Sdn Bhd (775641-P), Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia. |
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