It began with a glaring need... Rural and regional villagers all over Asia are being left behind as the "Digital Divide" gets wider and deeper every day. While urban dwellers have access to educational and other opportunities as technology advances, the people in the rural regions have watched from a distance. As education grows more important and as technology, and access to it, becomes increasingly essential to use technology to provide educational access to all... but in villages that do not even have telephone lines, how do you do this?

The answer: Sat-Ed's Learning Cafe . Each village Learning Cafe uses our Sat-Ed Digital Library to provide access to a multitude of educational content and courses for people of all ages; iPSTAR satellite to deliver high-speed broadband Internet; IPTV educational Video on Demand for those people who are not computer-literate; VoIP for making affordable calls; a business center for using e-government services; an IT professional to help train people and maintain computers locally; the opportunity to purchase low-cost computers; a partnership to sell goods made in the village to the markets all over the world; e-health information and a whole host of other services. Whether you are a farmer looking for information on new "best practices" in agriculture, an under-house silk weaver looking to get a better price for their silk or a student wanting to start University; the Learning Cafe has something for every villager.

Sat-Ed firmly believes that education is the way up and out of poverty. We are using advanced technology to better the lives of people in rural and regional Asia and helping to build bridges across the Digital Divide... One Village at a time.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

03/02/2009 Satellite education – Providing quality education under extreme conditions

In the middle of an armed conflict, Sat-Ed Systems is delivering educational video on demand and other broadband services to nine local schools in the south of Thailand.

The area is the Deep South of Thailand where separatists are fighting the Thai army. The insurgents are fighting a guerrilla war against the government infrastructure and one of their favourite targets has been schools and teachers. School buildings have been the targets of bombings and teachers have been targeted for assassination from drive-by motorcycle shootings. Against this backdrop, Sat-Ed Systems decided to trial the concept of providing teachers with video clips to illustrate lessons. These brave teachers continue to go back to the school day after day even though they are at great risk...

The first step was to source content for the schools. Sat-Ed aggregated culturally sensitive educational content for the schools from its content partners. Sat-Ed’s goal is to first look for existing content and then, if necessary, create content if none exists. Through their partners, Sat-Ed was able to obtain content that enhanced the educators’ ability to teach while ensuring that it fitted into the curriculum and was sensitive to the Islamic religion which is predominant in this area. (See Video... )

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bringing down the boundaries
“If not now, when?” This is the question raised by the Department of
Education of the Philippines in a presentation on their Cyber Education
Project – a distance learning resource for those in rural and isolated
communities. It is a good question. Governments across the world, in
Asia especially, are investigating satellite-based distance learning to
enhance the skills of their population. Satellite Evolution finds out why.

The issue of distance learning is key in today’s world and is also
key to the development of certain regions of our planet. In fact, the
significance of distance learning must not be underestimated. There
have been a plethora of programmes initiated throughout Asia, Africa,
and South and Central America and a great deal of these programmes
are underpinned by satellite technology. China has been
particularly successful with the use of distance learning where satellite
technology was adopted to deliver the programmes at the turn
of 21st century.(See Video...)