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Four hours of live transmission to teach Indian culture, medicinal plants and Ayurveda

University of Central Florida team spread the knowledge of Ayurveda and different types of medicinal plants to students all over the world in an interactive live discussion.A seven member team visited Dr. Susheela Tiwari herbal garden in Rishikesh on Thursday at 4:30 AM to set up all the necessary equipments for live broadcast set through the University of Central Florida. The use of herbal medicine in Ayurveda was jointly presented by botany specialist Dr. Rani Vajravelu and Digital Media Associate Professor Phil Peters through a live, virtual classroom experience. The uses of Haldi, Brahmi, Patharchur, Datura, Awla, Aswagantha, Sarpagantha and many other plants were discussed in detail by Dr. Rani Vajravelu. Connection of plants and their unique relations to Indian culture were also explained.  During this live presentation, participants were interested in learning about the uses of plants in everyday household and medicinal purposes. Questions from the online participants were directly addressed through this interactive, virtual classroom setting. According to Dr. Rani Vajravelu, the main objective of this team effort was to introduce the ethnobotany of India to the virtual participants around the world via the satellite. She added that this technology is a better alternative when the entire set of students could not be brought to the outdoor fields in India. She added that this live, interactive field experience will promote distant learning. Garden personnel Shivananth Suman, research assistant Kiran Dimiri, Vijayandra Mehtani helped in garden setting. Local coordinator and natural therapist Usha Vaishnav and her assistant Rajkumar Gaur were also present and helped in this event.