New tablet software aims to bridge digital education inequality in China and India
E-tech company Mobiliya Edvelop is providing digital classroom software to rural students via tablet in China and India. The initiative is being sponsored by the Chinese Government to connect urban centres with "quality teachers" to rural areas lacking such resources. The software allows teachers to instruct and interact with two classes at the same time, however, various reports suggest it is not yet clear how well students learn from the tablets without personal guidance.

High-quality teachers, textbooks, and research are now accessible to rural schools

Mobiliya Edvelop, a digital classroom platform, is delivering remote lectures to rural schools in some corners of the world — providing tablets that help rural students tap into lessons taught in urban areas.

The platform is helping governments, schools, and research wings in India and China bridge educational gaps, deliver advanced technologies for digital learning and further research-oriented programs with the help of remote teaching, offline learning tools, unique content authoring and virtual bag features.

Western China shows great educational and technological divides between its urban and rural centers. While the cities have all the learning resources, the rural schools lack quality teachers and standardized pedagogies. In a bid to resolve this skewed education scenario, the China Development Research Foundation (CDRF), a think tank of the Chinese Government, launched a rural education initiative.

The CDRF envisioned using digital technologies to connect urban centers that had access to quality teachers and learning resources with distant rural schools and areas. Under this initiative, 14 classes from eight rural schools were given tablets powered with Mobiliya Edvelop. When a teacher in a city school delivered a lecture, it was relayed to the remote rural school using the Mobiliya Edvelop platform. Audio and video sessions were recorded in the city school using camera and wireless headsets, and transmitted to rural classes in real-time.

Mobiliya Edvelop ensured that teachers could teach and interact with two classes simultaneously. Teachers could also share learning resources, tests and assignments to both the classes at the same time, ensuring that both the classes were at the same level.

As with China, Mobiliya Edvelop is also disrupting the education sphere in India, a country with the largest student populace in the world. The Sri Chaitanya School, a leading K-12 network in the country, partnered with Mobiliya Edvelop to replace books with tablets. The school distributed Mobiliya Edvelop powered tablets to more than 14,000 students and teachers in more than 90 schools.

Students and teachers accessed rich and interactive content, along with curriculum materials, through the Mobiliya Edvelop platform. A unique Edvelop-only feature, the virtual school bag enabled the users to access all textbooks and curriculums in an offline mode.

In addition to K-12 education, Mobiliya Edvelop has also been driving innovation and futuristic online learning in the Army Institute of Technology (AIT) in Pune, India. Mobiliya Edvelop is driving a research-oriented mentoring program on the AIT campus. The platform has effectively connected corporates with students to drive research in technologies like wearables and Internet of Things, and is helping students to access them and build their own prototypes and applications based on these technologies. Students can submit their models through the Edvelop platform under the guidance of tech mentors, experts and academicians on the Mobiliya Edvelop platform.

Krish Kupathil, CEO of Mobiliya Technologies, explains, “India and China, two of the world’s biggest economies, are on the verge of major education technology reforms. Both countries are relying on digital technologies to accelerate the education pedagogy and create a future-ready workforce. They have a special focus on education and skill development, and Mobiliya Edvelop has come to be the perfect solution that delivers personalized, collaborative and social learning tools, shaping the generation of tomorrow with office-ready skills.”

The platform offers a bouquet of features including LMS, content authoring tools, course builder, virtual school bag, a third party content store and daily teaching workflows consisting of assignments, tests, notices and events, offering a pre-class, in-class and post-class blended learning environment.

Material from a press release was used in this report.