Indian Education to get a digital twist

Apple doesn't seem to be happy within its territory as it sets out to conquer the education arena. It's been just three days since the iBook2 release and around 3,50,000 eBooks have been sold already. In India, the launch of iBook and iBooks author is still awaited, and Indian developers have started eying the digital space.

iBook Author is an application used for the creation multi-touch text books used for the ipad. Attano, a Bangalore based firm funded by the venture capital firm Helion Venture Partners, is a primary marketplace for interactive education e-books from India. The organization in its beta phase has developed technology for digitizing educational texts into interactive eBooks within an hour. It also helps the parents in tracking their child's progress.

According to sources, they have been working in this technology for the last two years and there's huge difference than just digitizing books. Till now the digitised versions only content the text format of the book. The technology maintains the look and feel such as the flow charts, graphs etc in the original book, which is also inclusive of built in analytics.

The best part about this software is that it can be used in any device unlike iBook Author that can be used only in Apple ipads. This software is capable of being used in any hardware platform such as Android-based tablets, mobile handsets or computers. With 200 books on board, the company is expecting to convert around 1,500 books in a month's time. It is also planning to add a dozen publishers in the next six months while adding available regional language content. It will also digitise the supplement education curriculum recommended by CBSE or other boards.

In India digital education is still at a nascent stage. Inspite of the step taken by the HRD ministry, in ordering of 1,00,000 Aakash tablets by Datawind it is only used in private International Baccalaureate schools. Various schools such as Mumbai's Billabong High International School are intending to introduce iBooks in their schools from June. Many developers are watching out for this sector, some firms like Robosoft Technologies are working with various educational firms for making the content more interactive and digitised.

It is possible that in the near future the Indian education sector will see a significant boom with the digitisation leading the wave.

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