Education 2020: The lessons that were learned
While 2020 was a terrible year over all, necessity is the mother of invention, or in this case, innovation, as the field of education saw a huge spurt towards digital learning this year. As schools were forced to shut and students had to turn to online classes and learning, various educational groups launched apps and tools to help children at home.
Learnflix is a home learning application from the house of S. Chand group that offers comprehensive learning in Math and Science for classes 6 to 10. It is based on the latest CBSE syllabus and useful for ICSE and other State Boards. “With the growing demand for digitisation in the education sector, we launched Learnflix for students of classes 6 to 10 in March this year.
It is fortuitous that the app was launched at a time when all educational institutions are in the lockdown,” said Vinay Sharma, Head — Digital & Services at S. Chand and Co., adding, “The app has witnessed huge success in terms of downloads and subscribers during COVID-19 (over 1 lakh downloads since launch) because of its affordability.
Schools and students even in Tier-II and Tier-III towns are using it as per their own convenience, and teachers are using it to impart remote teaching effectively.” Meanwhile, Fliplearn Edge, fortuitously launched in March 2020, is a platform designed for schools, which offers everything needed for a virtual learning experience and continued learning. Speaking about the impact of COVID-19 on education, Divya Lal, Founder and Managing Director, Fliplearn Education, said: “It has brought in a seismic shift in the school education space and brought ed-tech innovation to the forefront.
With the growing demand for digital learning, in what can be now seen as a prescient move, we launched in February this year, our new product called Fliplearn Edge - a virtual learning tool for learning institutions to help guide, monitor, and evaluate a student’s learning even when the child is away from school. Similarly, launched in April, Birla Brainiacs is a collaborative Learning App which offers learning in Math, Science & English for classes 1 to 12.
The focus of the platform is not limited to the school curriculum, but also spans courses on Software Coding, Vedic Math, as well as competitive exam preparations (IIT/Medical). Set up by Nirvaan Birla, the app has seen 40,000 downloads as well as 30,000 subscribers since its inception. The app is Nirvaan and team’s second entrepreneurial endeavour after building and growing one of the international school chain: the Birla Open Minds International School.
“We are now endeavouring to extend the legacy of the Birla Family’s contribution in Indian education from the brick and mortar model to an online, artificial Intelligence-based learning model”, says Nirvaan.
Thanks to these apps, the gap in education that would have engulfed an entire generation of children has been largely bridged. “It is heartening for us to have played a role in helping schools navigate their way through this pandemic. We have added over 300 schools and on-boarded more than 15,000 teachers on our platform, and the app has benefited more than three lakh plus students till date,” concludes Lal.