TIRUCHY: In the movie 3 Idiots, Aamir Khan's character Rancho starts a school where children learn science through experience, and by doing experiments. They don't learn by rote, and the focus is on conceptual, practical learning. Imagine a school like that in real life. It is the vision of Propeller technologies to open a STEM school like that in Tiruchy.
STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education is one of the fastest developing, and in-demand lines. Propel.study, an e-learning platform from Tiruchy, and a parallel of Propeller Technologies (EduTech Company) is focusing on STEM education. Starting in October 2021, Propel.study has been accredited by STEM.org.
The platform provides courses like artificial intelligence, app development, space technology, the internet of things, satellite, robotronics, etc. Each course is anywhere between 21-30 days. To make the course available for more students, especially government school students, the space technology course has been offered for free. More than 25,000 students across the country did the space technology course so far, and 20,000 more have registered.
"We are on target to reach more than 1 lakh students in the next 3-4 months. When a rocket is launched, everyone is curious as to the process. Through our courses, children can learn more about space and rockets. Students from any part of the world can study through our courses," said Antony Navis Amarnath, Executive Director, Propel.study.
This platform is an extension of the work already being done by the STEM curriculum based edutech company Propeller technologies. Propeller was started in 2015 by two engineers fresh out of college, Aashik Rahman and N Salman. After finishing a project for DRDO Avadi, they thought of starting an edutech company.
"We noticed that many edutech companies offer robotics courses, by just giving kits. Children don't really explore or solve problems with that. We (salman and me) did research, designed a curriculum, where we worked on what a child is going to use in real life. We developed unique tools for problem solving," says Aashik Rahman, Founder & CEO, Propeller Technologies.
Aashik is the CEO, Salman is Co-founder & COO, Mubeen Rahman is CTO, and Antony is the CODS.
They have worked with 350+ schools, and provided 3.5 lakh training programs so far. Through them, children have worked on 93 research projects. They have also created budding entrepreneurs, who have started 6 start-ups.
Propeller also created the Zafi robot, which was used during Covid in 2020 at Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Government Hospital (MGMGH) to deliver food and medicines to Covid patients. Several other hospitals and organizations are using this robot today.
"The country is in a phase of transformation. STEM is the future, and Tamil Nadu can be on the forefront. We want to create young scientists, Programming experts, drone experts and make TN a hub for tech innovators," adds Aashik.
The Made in Tiruchy company employs about 30 people, all from Tiruchy.