A three-member team from IIT Bombay’s Aakash Core Development Team led by Sachin Patel will conduct a workshop on Aakash programming in Technopark on February 16 and 17.
Aakash tablet is being developed for the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) by a team at IIT Bombay under the leadership of D B Phatak.
The two-day workshop is being organised by International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) as part of its pre-incubation support activities. MHRD plans to distribute Aakash at a subsidised price of Rs 1,130 for students. It is planned to be distributed to around 50 lakh students across the country over the next few months.
The workshop will benefit independent developers, students and IT companies who want to develop applications on Aakash. Aakash runs on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)-based operating systems such as Android and Ubuntu-12 platforms and therefore applications to be developed need to be architected on both platforms. The workshop covers the basics of designing, implementing, debugging, testing and version control for applications on Aakash, using both the Ubuntu and Android platforms.
Besides these technology aspects, the workshop will also cover marketing and release mechanisms for the apps developed for the platform.
The device is expected to link 25,000 colleges and 400 universities in a nation-wide e-learning programme.
“As an open, FOSS-based platform that can support applications that provide educational, business and social utility, Aakash holds immense potential, both for developers and software companies, as well as for large users such as Central and state governments. ICFOSS would like to offer the benefit of this programme - the first of its kind outside IIT Bombay - to students and developers, especially those who are planning start-ups, under its pre-incubation support programme,” said Satish Babu, director, ICFOSS.