Wiring up classrooms

Ice People

He may be passionate about education, but he's equally passionate about the art of living.

Shantanu Prakash, 37, director of the Rs 20 crore Educomp Datamatics, undertook Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's Art of Living course some two years ago.

Ever since then, he's been practicing yoga and meditation every morning. "That perhaps is the only worthwhile thing I do other than work," confesses Prakash.

He devotes almost all his time to his business which has made him "somewhat unidimensional," he complains.

But the students in schools where his company is implementing the Smart_Class programme are not complaining.

Smart _Class is Educomp's latest project "� it is wiring up leading schools in India like Delhi Public School at R K Puram in the capital, Dominic Savio at Lonavala in Maharashtra and Padma Seshadiri School in Chennai.

The schools have hired Educomp's services on a turnkey basis to set up a knowledge centre in the school that can be accessed by teachers in classrooms. Every class in these schools is equipped with several 17-inch monitors connected to a personal computer controlled by the teacher.

The teacher's PC in turn draws its resources from a common nerve centre where all the information is stored and can be pulled out at the click of a mouse.

In short, in a geography class students can now actually see a volcano erupt rather than just read about it in black and white. A history class could see video films on the wonders of the world or other historical monuments.

Though the Smart_Class programme has been introduced in a handful of schools, Prakash's ambition is to network at least 1,000 schools in the next two to three years.

But then, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, alumnus is known for setting stiff targets for himself.

For instance, he claims that his company will double its turnover in the coming financial year, thanks to the ever growing number of projects that he bags.

Besides Smart_Class, aimed at premium private schools, the company is in the middle of implementing several education projects for state governments in Karnataka and Assam and Delhi.

It continues to run its education portal Planetvidya.com, as well as the integrated campus management and administration system, called eCampus, among a host of other things.

In fact, PlanetVidya.com recently signed an agreement with a leading Brazilian e-learning company Ensinoweb for launching a Brazilian version of the education portal to tap the Latin American market.

Prakash is so enamoured of the idea of transforming education in India that his reading is also confined to latest research work in education. He firmly believes that IT-empowered education is the future in India.