Great Lakes Institute of Management, in collaboration with YakSee, a Silicon Valley start-up, is all set to roll out a new integrated live broadcasting platform www.YakSee.com, currently in the beta testing stage, to support interactive distance learning projects.
The formal launch will be facilitated by Prof Bala V Balachandran, Founder Chairman, Great Lakes, along with Shah Talukder, Chairman and CEO, YakSee and a former GM, Cisco, at the B-school’s campus on January 9.
YakSee, developed by Talukder and his team, is an integrated platform that allows people to connect using smartphones or tablets to create their own live distance learning broadcasts from anywhere in the world. After its launch in the US and Bangladesh, YakSee will officially launch the platform in India during the annual inter B-School festival – ‘L’Attitude 13°05’.
Talukder is a former student of Prof Bala from during his time at the Kellogg School of Management. Prof Bala is supporting and sponsoring YakSee in India. Great Lakes will also be running a pilot programme using YakSee to enable the ongoing interactive engagement with students and alumni.
At an interactive session at the platform’s unveiling in Chennai, where Talukder connected seamlessly with his wife in LA and with partners in Hyderabad, he said that a robust 3G or 4G network would be required for the platform to stream smoothly. Explaining the features of the platform, Talukder said Yaksee allows the use of white boarding and also lets the teacher show clips from web sites (such as YouTube) or recorded videos while interacting with the students. “All of these capabilities improve the ability of the teacher and students to engage in a more natural interactive way,” he said.
The platform will have a professional broadcast channel for which it will charge the users a fee. One can broadcast a message in the thousands, said Talukder, adding that YakSee is currently available for download through Google Play Store.