Stimulating Education & Enhancing Development (SEED) has a 3-pronged approach to stimulate economic development:

The Scenario

India needs a model that comprehensively lays the foundation for education-driven economic development. SEED addresses this need. Instead of reinventing the wheel, SEED seeks to partner with appropriate NGOs to achieve this goal of comprehensive development.

The Proposition

Digital Study Halls can be used to increase reach. Digital Study Hall digitally records live classes by the best grassroots teachers, and distributes them on DVDs to poor rural and slum schools. Education experts and teachers use the system to explore pedagogical approaches involving local teachers actively "mediating" the video lessons. By harvesting a "viral phenomenon" of community participation, DSH aims to help train teachers and deliver quality instruction to underprivileged children. The project is a collaboration between computer scientists and education experts.

The Opportunity College can use the e-learning course work developed by Adayana. The Institute currently provides training in nine vocational areas: diesel mechanics, motorcycle repair, data processing, dressmaking, refrigeration and air conditioning repair, radio and television, satellite servicing, agriculture and animal husbandry, and primary and pre-primary teacher training. Thus technology usage will provide the scalability and impact.

The Results

A live deployment of DSH has been operating in India since the summer of 2005. As of spring of 2007, DSH have accumulated about 550 recordings of lessons in English, math, and science, in Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and English and works with minimum infrastructure like room and AC/DC power.

Future Steps

The pilot will be done at IIT Roorkee and then extended to other IITs. Initial seed funding is already available and the learnings from IIT Roorkee pilot will be adopted before replicating the models around other IITs.