In Ludhiana district, 17 such institutes have been commissioned with required infrastructure provided by Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Trials for this project started in the month of August last year.

Edusat, the dream project of President Dr A.P.J. Kalam, is being monitored and controlled by Indian Speace Research Organization (ISRO). It is being funded by the state government under Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan. “The initial out-lay of the project is of more than Rs 12 crore, which has been released to SSA. The state government has also submitted a purposal to the Centre, for getting the project funded as a centrally-sponsored scheme,” said sources.

In Ludhiana city, more than six institutes included Government Senior Secondary School for Boys Jawahar Nagar, Government College for Boys Ludhiana, Government College for Women Ludhiana, SRS Polytechnic Haibowal, ITI Gill Road, Government Elementary School Phullanwal and Government In-sercice Teachers Training Institute Bharat Nagar have started educating students as well as teachers through Edusat.

Disclosing this, Paramjeet Singh, district coordinator of Edusat Programme, said, “Tomorrow, the project will be inaugurated by Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. I am recieving the feedback from the centres on daily-basis. At some places, there is some technical problem. We will rectify it in a day or two.”

The trials of Edusat started in August from the state hub at Mohali. To start with, the studio transmitted live lectures on mathematics and science. By now, about 50 lectures have been delivered. Hemraj Kahlon, an electronic instructor at ITI Gill Road, said, “Students eagerly attend to the lectures of mathematics and science as the syllabus taught is simillar to the one taught at their schools. Now we are waiting for the lectures related to different trades and higher education.”

The system works like video-conferencing. The students or teachers, who listen to the live lecture of Edusat, also ask querries afterwards. Sanjeev Kumar Taneja, a mathematics lecturer at Government Senior Secondary School Threekay, who also works as resoure-person for training teachers at Government In-service Teachers Training Centre, Bharat Nagar, said, “We train about 70 teachers at a time. Interestingly they take a lot of interest in learning through Edusat.”

To run this programme successfully, two teachers from each of the institutes were trained last year in September at Shiwalik Publc School, Mohali, and were given the designation of EDUSAT Coordinator and EDUSAT Assistant. The company, HUDGES, which has been working for the project has installed state hub under ISRO’s supervision at Mohali.

The 300 classrooms of different institutes have been linked with the state hub through two teaching ends, one at Punjab School Education Board, Mohali, and the other at Government Model Senior Secondary School, Mohali. The teaching ends have been provided with two studios.

According to a higher officer of Edusat, “From the state hub, along with live programmes, recorded ones based on different subjects will also be telecast. The system will be upgraded this year and it is hoped that by the end of this year we would be able to transmit different programmes related to different subjects simutaneouly.”