SchoolCom Launches SmartTabs In Schools, A Ubiquity Focused Device Pre-Fed With Master Data Of A Particular School

Changing the way schools operate is yet another credit to one of the most eloquent disciplines of the decade- 'Technology'. As to the core influences of technology in schools, it is speculated to have solved the spot on problem of stagnant data and sparse communication for the stakeholders. The X generation of consumers in retrospect had humdrum routines of receiving education on blackboards and performance reports on customary school-printed cards. They rarely sufficed the complete information sought by parents and students. Moreover, teachers taught without personalized approach towards students mainly owing to the lack of real-time and targeted information at their disposal.

SchoolCom is a cloud based analytics platform which was developed with the sole proposition of fine-tuning the ineffective information system in schools. Till date, it has been able to successfully leverage management of affairs at schools by serving real-time insights availability, visual representation of report cards, detailed performance analytics concerning each student and topping all with germane two way sms alerts exchanged between parents, students, teachers and principals. Hence, connects the dots by bringing all stakeholders together.

Contributing more innovation, SchoolCom has launched its flagship product, “SmartTab” for the utility of principals and teachers at schools. SmartTab is ubiquity focused device pre-fed with master data of a particular school viz. student records, modules, teachers, sections; etc. Moreover, the tab has inbuilt Wi-Fi connectivity and offline-online syncing technology which does away with any impediment to the access for the user. Tabs have different usability in the technical insights with respect to teachers and principals.

[caption id="attachment_98276" align="aligncenter" width="700"] SchoolCom's SmartTab product being inducted in JSS School Dharwad- Hubli[/caption]

SmartTab empowered Principal of a school can take management decisions sitting at his desk with succinct statistics presented in the form of infographics as deep till each classroom and individual student studying in it is covered. Using SmartTabs teachers are no longer needed to confide their reliance in tedious manual records of grades, attendance, section comparatives and much more. The master data enables them to feed real-time records against it and the servers flip those data into presentable insights ready to be used by teachers.

SmatTabs have been successfully piloted in two schools, JSS School Dharwad, Hubli Karnataka and Achyuta Public School, Dindigul Tamil Nadu over two months of inception. A base of around 100 schools who have partnered with Schoolcom and the confidence of dealing with a database of over 1 lakh students in south region, SmartTabs come well rounded with anticipated projects.

SchoolCom's co-founder Mr. Bhuvana Kotteswaran, who is a young technology entrepreneur says, "We have already tested SmartTabs in two schools and response has been overwhelming. Never before in two years of partnership teachers have come to us and discussed the product and its pros with us and even suggested more applications. This has been inspiring for our diligent techies who have been working hard day-in and day-out for the project implementation. We do believe in the market need for this product and plan to take it to as many schools we can this year".

SchoolCom, registered under the corporate name Banyan Learning Solutions India Private Limited is a firm headquartered in Chennai. It came into existence in 2012. It is a cloud based product which helps to make sense out of school database and presents insights in the form of graphics, statistics and color codes to make the information interesting, easier to assimilate and purpose driven. Product encases digitized report cards, sms alerts, elaborated and insightful analytics for every student, and zero percent data entry from the schools. The product has already gained goodwill in the southern region and has been successfully serving more than 100 schools
and 1 lakh students in Chennai and Bangalore. Further plans are to penetrate other tier 1 and tier 2 city schools pan India; such as Pune, Hyderabad, Delhi, Gurgaon, and more in coming years.

With employee strength of 60 at present, they aspire to become the largest and only complete school analytics platform in India. They plan to reform the data entry processes in the schools with the introduction of flagship technical device meant for the use of schools. They are a team of young techies and marketers with a mission to simplify our education sector. Enhancing their services further, they work towards providing schools and parents with real time personalized communication services, thus breaking an experience gap between the two stakeholders. They are on the course to pioneer a healthy education system in India.

Bangalore-Based Edutech Startup SuperProfs Raised $3 Million From Kalaari & IDG Ventures India

Bangalore-based Edu-Tech startup SuperProfs.com has secured Rs 18 crore (about $3 million) in its Series A round of funding from Kalaari Capital and IDG Ventures India reports VCCircle. SuperProfs is an online platform that connects students preparing for various competitive exams with professors.

The funds will be used by startup to invest in R&D and mobile technology, as well as to expand product offerings and study material, add more courses to its platform, in addition to expanding operations across India.

Earlier in September 2012, the startups raised an undisclosed amount in funding from Indian Angel Network.

SuperProfs is operated by its parent company Aurus Network Pvt Ltd which was founded in 2010 by IIT Kanpur alumni Piyush Agrawal and Sujeet Kumar. The online startup connects best professors to students through its platform and make classrooms more accessible, opening up more learning possibilities for students and wider reach for professors.

SuperProfs, which claims over 25,000 registered users and 100 professors, partners with top professors from across India and broadcasts their live courses online by live transmission of HD quality videos at low bandwidth. Students can compare teachers based on teaching methodology, verified ratings and reviews. SuperProfs.com has partnered with professors from Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai for various competitive exams like CA, CS, CMA and GATE.

"Besides tier 1 cities, we are increasingly witnessing a significant number of students from tier 2 and 3 towns, who earlier could not prepare well for such exams due to a lack of good teachers in their city, adopting online exam preparation at SuperProfs.com. We are happy to have Kalaari and IDG as our partners in our mission to make quality education accessible to the masses," said Agrawal, co-founder of Aurus Networks.

How To Incorporate Technology In Education

Integration of technology and education is inevitable in today’s day and age. Our lives are entwined with the frequent usage of the various digital appliances that has definitely made life easier for us. Nowadays even education system has seen an enormous change globally. There was a time when students used to completely depend on pen and paper; and today education has drastically evolved and has become digitally active.

Higher education has seen technology becoming a part of their daily curriculum. Most of the campuses are going digital and the availability of the online world is free flowing.

Here are few ways to incorporate technology into your institute:

1. Wi-Fi Campus: First and foremost, get Wi-Fi on campus. Make your institute completely Wi-Fi enabled. The capacity of your Wi-Fi should be reasonable, keeping in consideration of all the students and teachers who would use it. You could put a limit for usage per system and ask students to pay if they cross a certain limit.
   
   
   The availability of Wi-Fi on campus, helps the students and teachers to be online and on the same network. Plus communication gap reduces and flows smoothly between individual on the same campus.

2. Digital Badges: This basically indicates an individual’s proficiency level. Experts believe that in the future digital badges would either replace diplomas and certificates or use a combination of them. Digital Badges would be a virtual proof of your qualification and competencies.
   
   
   For example if you have a Microsoft certification for some course, a JAVA certificate or say you have completed a course in animation or graphic design etc. On completion on your course you would be given a digital Badge for it.
   
   
   When you share your profile with recruiters, you would not be required to give certificates and diplomas, your digital badge would work as a validator for your competencies.

 

3. Devices: Today, in this virtual day and age most of the students are already carrying various devices like smart phones, tablets, laptops etc. Institutes need to make sure that they incorporate that in their day to day activities.
   
   As an educator you cannot ignore the fact that, the mobiles etc. have become a part of our daily lives, so if students are sitting in your class 'whatsapping', why not include mobile phones as a medium to gain more information and knowledge. This way student would still be on phones, but they would also be ‘present’ in class.

 

4. Digital Courseware: To make use of the digital devices, the institutes need to make some of their courseware digitally available. You do not need to make your entire course online, because even in-class sessions are required; may be choose courses or subjects that require more self-study and that can be followed by an interactive classroom.

5. Analytics: Analytics are used to give information for various websites in terms of viewers, page traffic, what they view, which page is surfed more etc. This concept can be brought to the educational institutes, to keep a track of what students read, how long they spend on it etc. This knowledge would help the institute to know what they should do and what they should re-think. 

6. Virtual teaching: As an institute, you can make use of Skype and other online video conferencing software, through which you can get expert professionals and ask them to take a class from where ever they are. Virtual teaching helps students to interact with experienced people of the same field.

Plus this concept can be used to pre-record classes etc. and students who are pursuing distance learning or online courses – can view these videos anytime they want.