We call it practical Tech not High Tech.

 

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