A kindergarten teacher finishes her talk to the children, whips out her smart phone, and indicates on an app that a particular lesson is done for the day. The message goes out to all the parents and the lesson gets activated on each one’s app. When the child is home, the parent takes a text book, and where there is an indication of a video, scans it and a video of the day’s lesson is immediately activated. The child sees the video any number of times, and answers questions at the end of the video. The teacher gets feedback on her app on each child’s understanding of the day’s lesson lecture for the day. All virtually real time.
MyPedia, an integrated learning tool launched by Pearson India, the local arm of the global education company, will do all this and more, which Deepak Mehrotra, Managing Director of the company says aims to transform the education delivery in school classrooms.
Mehrotra says it’s a radical shift from offering a product to a learning solution. “As a product if I give you a book you cannot take the accountability on how that learner is using the book, or what the child is learning. This service enables us control the experience of the learner and the instructor in the whole journey of learning by measuring what the learner outcomes are,” he points out.
MyPedia, he says, is anchored on these principles. “If you are start compartmentalising the learning gets limited. However, if you can ensure that at the concept level the learner learns through multiple layers, the learning and the effectiveness of that is superior. Some children are great at learning through audio, some learners when we have a visual input going in. If all of that starts coming into play the conceptual understanding becomes stronger,” explains Mehrotra.
If a child is not a visual learner, and wants to see the video repeatedly till the time the concept is completely understood, he can keep playing it and then go through the assessment, he adds. The app, he says, will take up minimal memory space on the phone.
MyPedia will cost ₹2,000 annually for a child and it will be included in the school curriculum fees itself. Along with books and uniform every school will provide a log in and password for the app. Till now, 45 schools pan India have signed on for MyPedia. The app can be downloaded on any android phone.