英語で読むデザイン【14】この状況でスタートアップはどう革新を起こす？『インドの教育アプリ』
このパンデミックは、インターネットインフラの加速と、ネットを介した教育を増強させているようです。インフラがどのように変化しつつあり、具体的にどのようなサービスがどのように教育機会を提供しているのでしょうか？こういう時は、いわゆるリープ（跳躍）＝急に何段も状態が進化がおこるのかもしれません。
The emergence of the corona pandemic in the world has given rise to a new found resolve to look for innovative and effective means of reaching out to even the last mile learners like students from rural and tribal pockets of India, altering the way we will learn for generations to come. With a rapid increase of mobile internet users in India, which is expected to reach 85% households by 2024, technology is allowing ubiquitous access even in the remotest areas of the country.
Google, with the support of a research company named Aser has been piloting a personalised reading tutor app, Bolo across 200 villages in Uttar Pradesh over the past few months which has improved the reading proficiency of many children. Aide et Action in partnership with iDream Education launched a free digital learning mobile application “iDream Learning App” that caters to the K-12 education segment. The app enables the provision of diverse content in 9 languages- Hindi, English, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, and Oriya. Likewise, two software engineers from CISCO have developed an app to help teachers from rural schools to learn English. A primary teacher, Balaji Baburao Jadhav, from Nagpur developed 16 apps which benefits not just students but also parents and teachers. In fact, the offline mode helps in resolving the internet connectivity problems in rural areas.
he government has made sure that rural areas of India have access to educational programs through channels like Swayam Prabha on television. It also has ensured the ongoing running of e learning platforms like Diksha, e-Pathshala, NROER (National Repository of Open Educational Resources), NIOS (National Institute of Open Schooling) and other IT initiatives e-yantra (robotics education), FOSSEE (open source software for education), virtual labs and spoken learning programmes app for e-learning for students to understand lectures and syllabus in rural areas. In this unavoidable situation, several ed-tech companies, including Byju’s, Unacademy, UpGrad, Toppr, Lido Learning, Educational Initiatives and Vedantu, have been offering free access to their platforms, thereby witnessing a massive surge in user on-boarding. ViDU, another Bengaluru-based ed-tech startup, has also started offering free live online classes and assessment solutions to schools.
Many companies and educational start-ups have thus taken the initiative to develop phone based apps to bridge the gap in the educational outcomes for students especially from rural parts of India.