(M)Apping a new way

Gone are the days when young learners had to turn to grubby text books to know their numbers and alphabets, or stay abreast of Science and Geography. With steady market influx of of interactive softwares and mass access to cell phones, application or app-based learning, which had gained popularity amongst India's students and parents. Here are three apps, each differently focused, that have been changing the game

mGuru: The quiz monkey

mGuru, an Android mobile app to tutor students upto class five in English and Mathematics, was started by 23-year-old Adam Khorakiwala. This Stanford University graduate who majored in Public Policy, aims to resurrect the quality of primary school learning. "In India, most students of class 5 have the grade level of class 2 or 3 students. Even the level of English of those in class 6, 7 or 8 might be below class 4,” Khorakiwala reveals. "This app that works offline, lets students solve problems on the mobile, under 2MB." It currently instructs in English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Bengali, and will soon include Kannada, Telugu and Tamil.

mGuru entices students with short quizzes, visuals and phonetics to teach new words. Going by a jungle theme, a monkey Motu doles out mangoes for every right answer. Relying on the age-old successful teaching method, storytelling, it hosts 100 short stories by Chennai-based publishing house for children, Pratham Books , over 100 videos and 300 activity-based tests. "We're adding more complex stories with longer paragraphs and grammatical structures to push the bar for students doing well,” Khorakiwala says. The app now includes Maths till class 5 of all nine state boards and 33 new grammar concepts and a ranking system that doesn't just measure a child's success rate by the mangoes but even accounts the efforts to solve problems.

To stay relevant to the times, mGuru is currently trying out an social experiment at a public school, where few students can access the app daily and others don't. At the end of three months, a comparative analysis will be drawn between those empowered by the app and those not.

Initially self-funded, this Android app won the NASSCOM Social Innovation 2017 of 10 lakh. mGuru also sells B2B to NGOs, corporates and brands. While the app charges Rs 120 per month or Rs 640 a year to tap advanced levels, it seems like a minor hiccup.

Robomate+: Belling the CAT and more

“A study friend, a class away from class, an exam-study test prep tool, a teacher training tool for teachers, and a spoon-feeding product in remote areas where there are no schools and teachers,” is how Chhaya Shastri, Director of Mahesh Tutorial (MT) Educare, describes its Robomate+ app, designed to crack entrance tests for engineering – JEE Main, JEE Advanced, Commerce – CA, CPT and IPCC, MBA aspirants – CAT and CET, Medical – AIIMS/AIPMT and board exams of classes X and XII.

“A child's attention span today is between 8 seconds to 5 minutes. Hence the app's content has a very modular, quiz-like structure to challenge the student in the comfort of their home,” explains Shastri about the app launched in August 2016. To keep studies snappy, this revision tool, has a Learning Management System feature, where every lesson is a 5-minute video tutorial and a 5-question test. The child takes these tests at home, the score of which sinks into MT's data cloud that's synced with the teacher's app. The teacher receives a diagnostic report for every student, which lists areas one is lacking in, time taken to solve the test, and even if solutions were peeked at, to decide the pace of teaching and conduct tests accordingly—reports of which are sent to the parent. “Chances of improvement are greater with this 3-way system,” Shashtri says.

E-books and other study material, a ranking system to track one's place in class and online forums where students and faculty can discuss notes are some added features. Compatible with iOS and android devices, Robomate+ plans on adding languages from Maharashtra, Karnataka and Punjab, belts where IIT's have a huge market. “The topper of All India Rank (AIR)1 in JEE Advanced 2017, Sarvesh Methani, from Chandigarh, studied purely on Robomate+,” Shashtri adds, proudly.

Jellow Communicator: All about inclusivity

Jellow Communicator, a free Android app, empowers the 'slow learners' or children diagnosed with autism, cerebral palsy, Down's syndrome and others forms of speech impairment. This product of Industrial Design Centre (IDC) by the Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay (IIT-B) can also help tiny tots to learn English and adults who have accidentally lost their speech.

The primary interface has nine icons that represent daily activities such as greet and meet, eating, people, places, time and weather, etc. A double tap on every icon opens up sub-categories. For instance, 'eating' includes lunch, dinner, breakfast, sweets, drinks, and another double tap leads to a full-fledged menu of khicdi, paratha, raita, sabzi, etc. Additional three icons on each side stand for ‘like and don't like’, ‘yes and no’ and ‘plus and minus’. For example, if one clicks on 'eating' then hits 'yes', it translates into a summon for food, a ‘don’t like’ for say, ‘khicdi’ means the child doesn’t like the dish. Google’s text-to-speech free feature announces each chosen activity. A keyboard option lets you feed in sentences in English or Hindi to receive correct pronunciations aloud. While the app can be used in Hindi and English, with an Indian accent, onboard next is Bengali.

“We’ve included activities of daily living that we take for granted but children with special needs struggle with. So ‘brushing teeth’ is broken into three steps. Step 1 – Put toothpaste on the brush, Step 2 –brush right and left sides, Step 3 – rinse,” Sudha Srinivasan, post-doctoral fellow, IDC, and speech therapist, who provides clinical content for the app. Principal investigators/mentors, who lead IDC’s team of graphic designers, animators and software programmers are professors Ravi Poovaiah and Ajanta Sen. Incidentally, IDC developed two Jellow apps: the Indian version has a tricolour icon with a sun and the western one has a single large sun. You can opt for a display of just three icons in large font and scroll down for the remaining options. “Children prefer to see the icons big instead of nine tiny icons that clutter the screen.”The plan is to advertise the app to 800 schools in India that cater to children with special needs, followed by NGOs, schools and therapists.

Distinct from the test-and taget-based apps in the market, Jellow's refreshing idea of learning at one's own pace is both thoughtful and efficient.