Coming to the aid of lakhs of government schoolchildren who have little or no access to technology , former UIDAI chief Nandan Nilekani’s EkStep Foundation will now link textbooks to digital content. A child in a government school can go beyond the textbook to study a chapter. And all that is required is for his or her teacher to have a mobile phone to download the content.
“Our idea is to democratize the learning process. Today, if a child in a private or international school wants to learn more on a certain chapter in the textbook, there are so many resources like YouTube, online mentoring, reference books, among other things. But a child in a government school is restricted to learning the examples the textbooks offer. It’s all about access. And that’s what we are addressing,“ EkStep Foundation’s chief executive officer Shankar Maruwada told TOI.
The project is expected to be completed in six months. The Rs 65-crore EkStep (one step) looks at addressing learning challenges through a technology-led platform. It uses gamified apps, hosted on Google Play Store. The digital platform that went live in July this year is designed to allow large-scale crowd-sourced collaboration, curation and assembly of relevant content in multiple languages. In Karnataka, nearly 10,000 government schools are using the EkStep platform to enhance learning levels of children. The platform is operational in English, Kannada, Hindi, Marathi and Telugu and is expected to be enabled in more languages. In all, 18 states are using EkStep through various NGOs.
“The aim is to create a technology backbone, which others can use for solutions. Essentially EkStep is a digital spine which allows others to build solutions. It is a free public open infrastructure for education,“ Shankar said The EkStep platform leverages the accessibility of smart phones and mobile devices. It provides the pedagogic digital infrastructure for learning that includes fundamental concepts in numeracy and literacy . “Initially, only the teacher needs to have a mobile device to make those significant learning changes in children. It can be scaled up later,“ he added.
Multiple functions
The platform anchors analytics for content creation, tutoring and assessment. All these functions are available through application programming interfaces. “The biggest problem today in education is access. And that needs huge collaborative efforts by various stakeholders,“ Shankar said.
Source – Times of India – Bangalore – 26th December – 2016
