About Us
Schools On I-Net
Schools On I-Net is a web-based school management and community link system. SOIN makes the connection between technology and personal experience and provides its users - administrators, teachers, parents and students - with tools that they can use to easily carry out day-to-day activities and make informed decisions.
REKHA KARNIK
Founder, President and CEO
RK Solutions, LLC
Vision Technology Group, Inc
Optima Consultants
Rekha Karnik founded Vision Technology Group, based in Oradell, N.J. in 1995. Since then, she has built an organization of more than 150 employees, providing computer consulting services to major corporations from offices in Northern New Jersey and India.
Ms. Karnik has a passion for education, instilled in her at an early age by her mother who was an English teacher for 35 years. Besides teaching in school, Ms. Karnik’s mother devoted her time in giving free private tutoring to neighborhood children. During Ms. Karnik’s high school and college days, she helped her mom tutor these children. Ms. Karnik has a high respect for her mother and the teaching community as a whole. She believes teachers are the pillars of our society and deserve respect and acknowledgement for their hard work.
Ms. Karnik’s dream was to give her daughters the best possible education in the United States. She has done that, with her older daughter who graduated from Barnard College, Columbia University and is now working with Ms. Karnik on the Schools On I-Net project. Her younger daughter is attending Boston University.
Ms. Karnik developed the idea for SchoolsOnInet.com to help parents like herself keep track of her children’s school activities and schedules while managing her growing computer consulting company. Karnik strongly believes that parental involvement and the parent-teacher partnership is the key to a child’s success in school. But she is well aware of the many demands on parents’ time. As a single parent of two young daughters, she has faced the challenges experienced by all parents, particularly single parents and working parents. She reasoned that if she, a successful businesswoman, could use the internet to communicate with her clients and employees, then why couldn’t she apply that technology to facilitate better communication between families and the school community. So was born Schools On I-Net - using the power of the internet to connect parents, students and the school faculty!
In today’s society, with respect to the advancement in education, the onus is shared mostly between the teacher, to make sure the student learns, and the student, to complete homework and make sure he or she “gets it,” while parents have a multitude of responsibilities and often find it difficult to get the school information they need to play an active role in their children’s education. Schools On I-Net provides a powerful tool to make that information available to parents allowing parents to share in the responsibility and accountability for their children’s educational advancement. The best part is that Schools On I-Net make it easy and fun; it is personalized, customized, current and secure.
Schools On I-Net completes the triangular partnership between the school, the student body and the parent body. The website is a tool that uses technology to make the education experience more personal giving easy access to communication among the members of the school community.
Ms. Karnik’s vision is to bring Schools On I-Net to every school in the country. She believes Schools On I-Net can do a lot more than facilitate parental involvement. It can keep parents abreast of their child’s progress on a day to day basis, not just at the end of a marking period. Parents can have an informed dialogue about school activities with their child; their active involvement can bring out the best in their child.
Ms. Karnik held several senior-level positions designing and developing complex computer systems for major corporations before founding Vision Technology Group, Inc. She has worked at AT&T, Lucent Technologies, Goldman Sachs, Smith Barney and Firemen’s Insurance in the capacity of Director of Information Technology, Project Manager and Project Lead.
Ms. Karnik holds a Bachelor’s degree in Microbiology from the University of Pune, India. She is actively involved in the efforts of the Maharashtra Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the aid and advancement of rural villages of Maharashtra, India. Ms. Karnik resides in Westwood, N.J. with her family.
SUNITA PRADHAN
Chief Operating Officer
RK Solutions, LLC
Vision Technology Group, Inc
Sunita Pradhan joined Vision Technology Group, based in Oradell, N.J. in 1999 and is responsible for many of the day-to-day operations of the more than 150 employee computer consulting firm.
Ms. Pradhan also plays a major role in the development of the Schools On I-Net portal, as it was initially designed to help her mother, Rekha Karnik, Vision Technology Group founder and president, get more involved in her and her sister’s school activities and schedules while managing a growing computer consulting company.
Ms. Pradhan joined Vision Technology to manage the Schools On I-Net project after graduating from Barnard College in New York City where she received her bachelor’s degree in Chemistry.
When she graduated, she considered going to medical school to become a pediatrician because she wanted to work with and help children. She planned to stay with Vision Technology Group for only a short time before heading off to medical school.
However, she soon became intrigued by the power the Schools On I-Net product had to positively affect the lives of children and their families by enhancing their educational experience. She also felt she could draw on her college experience and the fact that her generation was witness to the early evolution of “cyber-education” that used the Internet for the first time as a viable information resource.
Ms. Pradhan continues to play a key role in developing new features, maintaining current data, handling business affairs and serving as liaison between the client schools and the development team.
In addition to her professional activities, Ms. Pradhan worked with students at Columbia University to buildup their mathematics and chemistry skills. She worked with an after-school tutoring program. and has served as volunteer at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, N.J. Ms. Pradhan resides in Westwood, N.J.
