myEshala helps enlighten students
By Nina Mukherji

Technology pervades all aspects of our lives, and now even educational institutions are actively adopting tech based systems. A school in Pune, after scouring the market for a suitable e-learning tool and not finding one, developed one of its own.  This innovative tool - myEshala has been created by individuals with great software skills as well as experience in education.

Nikhil Karkare, coordinator at Millennium National School, Pune says, “Many of the e-learning tools in the market now, seem to have been developed by persons who do not have much experience in the education sector. Concepts are not set down in a child friendly manner and lectures tend to be long and boring - they don’t seem to really know what will or will not work in a classroom environment.  So as engineers who could teach, we decided to combine our software and teaching skills to build this tool on our own.”

Once they developed and started using myEshala, the school found that parents and children benefited greatly from it. Students could take tests, view lectures (more than once), and play with widgets on the tool.  Student performance and progress could now be accurately monitored and teachers too had more time to develop creative methods of delivery. “After implementing myEshala we have seen a significant improvement in the performance of students with the overall percentage increasing from 65% to 75%” Nikhil Karkare happily adds.

The news spread and students from other schools as well requested to try out the tool. “This drove us to think that other children could also benefit from myEshala and we decided to put it on the retail market. Now other schools have started implementing myeshala as well.” Says Nikhil.  Another goal in mind is to take myEshala to the rural areas as well where educational infrastructure is poor and challenges exist in imparting even basic education. “We want to make sure basic education reaches non-urban areas at a very low price” says Nikhil.

The use of technology however, is not new at Millennium National School.  In fact, they have always put it to use in a number of ways. Software was used to map each student’s home address on Google Maps, and then bus routes were planned accordingly. “This means saving of fuel and time, which is not only good for us, but for the environment as well.” says Nikhil. They also predict the quantity of food to be prepared depending on the number of students present and certain other factors, by means of software. But, there are challenges too. “The end users are children of ages from Kindergarten to Std. 10. So usability sometimes becomes a big challenge. Again spending on technology is always limited, which is why we use Open Source technologies in most places” says Nikhil. 

But challenges or not, one must admit that they are doing a great job of putting technology to the best possible use. For what could be better than providing effective solutions that help children deeply explore their interests and talents thereby allowing them to reach their highest potential.

(In Techgoss syndication arrangement with Punetech)