Aakash makes education affordable for poor US kids

India’s very own Aakash tablet may have been developed with an aim to make education accessible to the poor kids in the country, and even as the credibility of that remains to be assessed, the tablet is creating waves abroad.

Thanks to the efforts of a certain Chris Evans, the Aakash has found its way into the classrooms of the not-so-privileged children in North Carolina, courtesy a pilot project. The Economic Times reports that software entrepreneur Evans first heard about the Aakash project from Vivek Wadhwa. Convinced, he agreed to fund 100 units of the Aakash tablet for the US-based non-profit Communities in Schools (CIS). Evans is on the board of CIS, which also conducts summer camps for these children.

Making education afforfable the world over!

ET quoted Evans as saying, "(The richer kids) were already using smartphones and tablets at school. And I thought the Akash would be an affordable way to keep them in pace with their classmates and engaged with their studies.”

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Despite its rather unsuccessful run in the country, the Aakash tablet continues to excite tech enthusiasts. Earlier this month, Minister of Communication and Information Technology Kapil Sibal announced that the Aakash 4 tablets will be available by January 2014. This will be the fourth generation of the troubled Aakash series low-cost tablets. The government announced the specifications for the tablet earlier last month after much deliberation. Aakash 4 will be seeing changes in the hardware side of things, which will enable it to dual-boot Android and Linux (through a microSD card). It will have 1GB of DDR3 SDRAM as well as 4GB of internal storage and up to 32GB microSD support. The tablet will have a 7-inch LCD display with 800 x 480 resolution.