ORIGINAL TITLE : LokSewa Nepal
ORGANIZATION : Mantra Ideas Pvt. Ltd
COUNTRY : Nepal
CONTACT : mail@ashokbasnet.com.np
LANGUAGE : English, Nepali
WEBSITE : www.mantraideas.com
DOWNLOAD THE APP : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lok.sewa
Online help for students preparing for PSC exams in Nepal
Launched in November, 2014, LokSewa Nepal is a web and mobile based solution to help students prepare for LokSewa exams conducted by the Public Service Commission, Nepal.
The solution offers up to date notices from LokSewa, question bank on various subjects, general knowledge related articles and news, syllabus of various government related subjects, yearly calendar and forms for entering into LokSewa, practice questions for different government posts such as Section Officer, Computer Engineer, Civil Engineer, NASU, etc., subjective questions for NASU, more than 10,000 questions on various topics, facility to play Hangman (Learn by playing), updates on current affairs and questions from Gorkhapatra published on Wednesday every week.
The android mobile app is available free from Google Play Store and AppsJhola and users can easily download and start using it immediately.
Before the development of this solution, students had no alternative other than reading books and magazines to prepare for PSC exams. Moreover, people were earlier forced to come to Kathmandu for taking classes and they needed to pay a lot for staying in the capital. The app makes the preparation, tuition and practice facilities available online and accessible from any location that has Internet connectivity. Students are also able to take tests using the app to measure their performance as to where they stand. The company’s vision is to be an online information hub for all government jobs and provide people with all resources and materials needed to prepare for the various exams.
The revenue source for now is from Google Admob banner placed on the app. The company plans to generate revenue in the future by selling Test Sets and books through the app, from local Ads from related fields like institutes, publishers etc. and Google Ads.
The application has so far been downloaded more than 45,000 times.
ORIGINAL TITLE : Shikkhok.com
ORGANIZATION : Shikkhok.com
COUNTRY : Bangladesh
CONTACT : ragibhasan@gmail.com
LANGUAGE : Bengali
WEBSITE : www.shikkhok.com
DOWNLOAD THE APP : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.codetic.shikkhok
Providing free high quality education to rural students
The Shikkhok.com project founded in August 2012 by Dr. Ragib Hasan, a computer science professor at the University of Alabama, US, is an open and free online education platform or Massive Online Open Content (MOOC) education site in Bengali language. It aims at providing free high quality education to underprivileged students in rural areas of Bangladesh and India. It was established at a cost of only $15, but has reached more than 700,000 students and delivered 6 million lectures in less than 2.5 years.
Shikkhok.com provides education via its website, http://www.shikkhok.com which is optimized for mobile devices. It also distributes content via mobile phone shops in rural bazars where students can go and load the videos of lectures on their phones.
Shikkhok.com contacts and organises volunteer teachers from across the world who are experts in their own areas. It shows them how to create videos with tools as simple as their laptops and webcams. The videos are uploaded to Youtube and it creates courses which are posted on its WordPress hosted website. The project uses all the free tools that it can get.
Students can get the videos from the website. Rural students who do not have Internet access can get them through village mobile shops and load the streamlined and short videos on their low-end phones. In addition, Shikkhok.com has developed a Raspberry Pi-based (credit card size computer) kit which is then loaded with course lecture videos and given to rural schools without internet access.
It has so far developed a set of 75 courses all created by subject matter experts (PhDs, researchers, teachers, professional chefs etc.). These are all in Bengali, and range from class 5 level to advanced PhD level, and subject matter varies from science, math, education, biology, genetics, biotechnology, nanotechnology, computer science, French culinary arts and cooking, German language, time management, etc.
ORIGINAL TITLE : Smartur 3D
ORGANIZATION : Trendyworks Technologies Private Limited
COUNTRY : India
CONTACT : neeraj@smartur3d.com
LANGUAGE : English
WEBSITE : www.smartur.com
DOWNLOAD THE APP : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.smartur.android.smartur&hl=en
Making learning fun with 3D stereoscopic experiences
Smartur 3D is a mobile app that offers learning content compliant with CBSE and NCERT curriculum. The app helps students to study science, solve complex mathematical problems, answer questions and prepares them to score well in board exams.
The main idea of Smartur 3D is to bring learning out of the books and make it an experience that students enjoy.
The app makes use of augmented reality and thereby merges the real and the virtual world. Students can experience stunning models in stereoscopic 3D and interactive 3D. Each topic is further subdivided into components for learning, exploring and also certain challenges to test the child’s grasp of various topics.
Features like study module, flash cards for quick revision of the concepts and game based practices are also included. For maths, there are plenty of practices and challenges to prepare the child for the mighty board exams. Also, each of the problems, come with an entire solution, which helps out the students whenever they aren’t able to solve a problem appropriately. Students can also capture a screenshot whenever they want to, helping in quick revisions later.
The developer company Trendyworks Technologies believes learning through Smartur 3D will contribute to the episodic memory of the child, rather than the semantic memory since learning here is through personally experienced unique episodes. Episodic memory is known to be a faithful record of the experiences, and thus lasts for a lifetime. The learning through augmented reality is also known to reduce the cognitive load and thereby makes learning easier.
Developed at a cost of Rs 1.5 crore, the app was launched in March 2015 and has garnered over 40 thousand downloads in India. Trendyworks plans to monetize the app by charging a reasonable fee from the academic year 2015 onwards.