The education technology industry most recently is witnessing a lot of promising solutions and companies, which are trying innovative models of student engagement and learning outcome improvement. The stakeholders, however, are circumspect and still cautious while trying out something new. More so because we are yet to witness a genuine transformation in the way learning happens specifically in our government schools even though its been close to 2 decades that technology in various forms has been introduced. The biggest challenge as observed with the digital learning tools is that these are not utilised regularly and are unable to engage all students equally.
Rohit Prakash and Puneet Goyal, batchmates in their business school came together to seed iDream Education to solve some fundamental challenges in regular utilisation of digital learning tools by focussing on finer innovations that could break open all infrastructural and psychological barriers to regular usage and student engagement.
The Co-founder duo fell in love with the idea of taking enjoyable and growth-oriented digital learning content to the last mile learners in their local language. The dynamic duo understood that the primary gap is to build a proactive excitement in students to learn and to make it very simple for the teachers to use digital learning tools inside the classroom. Rohit says, “Students should be enabled to learn as per their interests, their pace and learning levels. They need to enjoy coming to school every day and connect learning with their life growth.”
And hence iDream Education works on student-centric digital learning solutions which are deeply aligned with the natural psychologies of all stakeholders. Along with improving student participation, the company strongly believes that these kind of solutions will enable teachers to do what they do best, which is to teach and not overburden them with unnecessary operational responsibilities.
Providing Integrated Solution through Innovative Mediums
Today iDream’s learning solutions are running in 14 states and have touched the lives of 60,000+ students through various solutions offered such as TABLAB, Learning TV and offline digital content in local languages.
iDream Education has introduced a learning platform that works on all kinds of android devices, online and offline and also delivers multiple categories of enjoyable content such as videos, activity-based videos, books and assessments, etc. in local languages on a single dashboard. iDream’s flagship product is TABLAB, which is custom-designed for schools as a tablet-based plug and play digital learning lab. This integrated solution consists of an android tablet with a screen guard and protective cover, a storage and charging trolley and each tablet is pre-loaded with enjoyable digital content in English medium or local language and aligned with CBSE/ICSE or state board curriculum. Student wise report is captured, saved offline and periodically synced to a cloud based reporting dashboard for anytime, anywhere review. TABLAB is specifically designed to reduce all operational hurdles, to proactively excite students to learn and to empower the teachers.
Further, to simplify how smart classes can be set up and used in schools, iDream offers a Smart TV-based smart class. This solution can be installed on any Smart TV with the use of a pen drive that has pre-loaded offline digital content. It can also be utilised in Android Projectors that provides the same benefit as the smart TV and are compatible with the pen drives and the learning platform. The biggest advantage being that all usage reports are captured, saved offline on these devices and whenever they get the internet, reports are synced to a cloud based reporting dashboard.
The learning platform is multi lingual; both TABLAB and Learning TV can be customized as per any regional language and for any state board.
Practicing Different Approach to Gain Trust of Stakeholders
In today’s education industry, a leader should be well aware of the vision, have strong confidence in what one is creating, and how is it solving the problems. Because only then as a leader, will you be able to build the same conviction in stakeholders and decision makers.
Fulfilling the Stark Contrast between a Private and Government School
Rohitduring his first start-up worked mostly for private schools. Few years later, under a corporate project, he and his team were asked to work and create a program for students in government schools. While explaining his experience further he said, “When I first went inside a government school, I came back with a lot of questions. I was surprised to see such a stark contrast between a private and a govt school. I went deeper and for a long time, I continued my search to find an answer as to how we can enable a government school kid with a platform that can create an equal set of opportunities as are created for a private school kid. And with the number of govt schools in India, this problem had to be solved at scale.”
While working on the solution together, Rohit and his partner Puneetpicked an insight, that the government school students even from the most remote parts of the country were comfortable in using touch-based devices. They decided to leverage the familiarity, which students have with touch-based devices and give them engaging content in their own language. iDream Education was set out with the agenda that students would be able to build a proactive interest in them to learn, while at the same significantly reduce the burden on the teachers.
Further, on his professional journey Rohit added, “If I could do one thing differently in my professional journey, I would want to bring more focus and build an absolute clarity on my goal. This I believe was lacking in the earlier days of my professional journey and came about much later in my life.”
Move beyond the Academic Content and Focus on Life Skills The iDream Education platform plans to reach a stage where it can offer learners multiple types of enjoyable content in all local languages on a single platform through any device of the learners’ choice. Along with this, the team is also looking to upgrade the platform from academic content and focus on life skills, moral values, and content, which can enable all-inclusive growth. Rohit further asserts, “We are also planning to leverage AI and ML to be able to truly personalize the learning experience for every child basis their interest and learning levels.”
