Live Tutor: Educating with a difference

By Sudarshan Kumar   |   Wednesday, 10 February 2010, 22:48 IST   |    3 Comments
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Live Tutor: Educating with a difference
Bangalore: Now with more number of schools facing the problem of getting quality teachers and education across the country, Smartlinx VoIP Networks, a subsidiary of Smartlinx, a New York listed company has come up with Live Tutor- an online learning service to provide better learning to students, using VoIP connect between the student/school and tutor/teacher. Live Tutor Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is a virtual classroom service, equipped with audio and video infrastructure. Through Live Tutor @ School platform, a teacher from one location can teach students at a different location using audio visual and whiteboard tools over the broadband using Live Tutor Virtual Learning Environment. Taking the first step towards providing quality education, recently Smartlinx signed an agreement with Hyderabad based Sister Nivedita School to connect with its other campuses in city through voice and video over IP (VVoIP) based application platform Live Tutor Connect. "This is a first step towards spreading quality education to every corner of the country, beginning with Andhra Pradesh. We will continue to strengthen our footprint and work towards guiding in a brighter and more secure future for Indians," said Job Thomas, Director and COO, Smartlinx. To reach out to more number of schools and make aware of the service, the company plans to launch door-to-door campaign service in coming months. Thomas said, "We have planned to reach out to 1,200 schools in Tamil Nadu, 800 in Karnataka and 725 in Kerala by June this year, and to achieve that goal, we need to reach out to especially rural areas where people are not aware of online education." The company has partnered with Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL), to provide video based learning using Voice and Video Over Broadband (VVOBB) to students in India, built with the idea, that learning should be affordable, available and personalized. Live Tutor service portfolio includes a delivery of learning using internet with two delivery models, 'one to one' and 'one to many'. It is made available as a value added service of BSNL broadband. The company claims to enroll independent tutors who are expert with high knowledge and teaching experience to ensure that students get all the guidance they require. It offers packages in 10 sessions with each session of one hour. These packages are divided into basic and premium packages for primary, secondary and higher secondary students. Above all, it offers complete flexibility of scheduling and customized pace of learning to students. "With quality teachers in all subjects, our goal is to provide a platform to deliver high-quality educational experience to students. Live tutor will help the students learn from home itself, avoids traveling, inconvenient schedule while breaking tuitions, and have the best of talents to teach irrespective of their geographical boundaries," said Thomas. To get this service at home, any student or teacher just needs to have unlimited BSNL broadband connection, personal computer with Headphone or Microphone and speakers for voice transmission, webcam for video transmission and digital pen tablet for writing text formulae. Making this service to reach every needed student, the company plans to invest around $1.5 million (about 7 crore) in the next one year marketing, sales and technology.