Bangalore, November 5, 2012: Leading learning company Pearson -- after the recently announced merger of its brand, Penguin with Random House, the world’s largest publishing house -- has crafted entirely in India, a complete, tablet PC-based digital solution for class 3 to 12 school education. Called the MX Touch platform, it aims to give school children access to more effective personalised and collaborative digital learning with rich digital content, 3D animations, quizzes and videos. It adheres to the Indian school syllabus of the CBSE and ICSE systems.
Almost 8 million Indian classrooms are already digitized, explained Pearson’s CTO for India and Africa, Max Gabriel. And with mobile Internet access equalling, and set to overtake PC-based access this year, a connected Tablet seemed the learning device whose time had come.
The product also allows parents to monitor the academic progress of their children more accurately than ever before with easy access to assignments, difficult lessons covered during school hours and archived assessments and tests, added Meena Ganesh, CEO and Managing Director, Edurite ( a Pearson digital classroom brand).
"Our vision is to empower users by giving them a cost-effective, eco-friendly product that captures their needs and has the curriculum framework at its heart” said Naveen Rajlani, Senior Vice President and Head – School Division, Pearson Education India, “With MX Touch, we would be bringing to India the best of our global capabilities, as well as our own capabilities in content development, thereby living up to the Pearson ideal of efficacy."
MX Touch will be available in three versions: MX Touch – ActiveTouch, MX Touch – DigitALly and MX Touch – Ultimate. ActiveTouch offers graded digital textbooks is available in four subjects — English, Science, Mathematics and Hindi — for classes 3 to 8. DigitALly is loaded with DigitALly Student Edition, a Pearson patented and award-winning teaching tool. It includes animations, videos, self-explanatory diagrams, worksheets, quizzes and several hours of experiments. Ultimate is a combo of the first two variants.
The software solution is offered on a 7 inch or 10 inch tablet for approximately Rs 7000 and Rs 10,000.
On hand to assist at the launch event were Bangalore’s own cricket legend, Anil Kumble – and Genevieve Shore, Chief Information Officer and (global) Director of Digital Strategy for Pearson. The MX Touch system developed in India, would find ready use in other geographies like Russia and Brazil, Ms Shore suggested.