Very promising pitch / TOC. Thank you for sharing it.
I would like to seek your opinion on a couple of thoughts.
a) Have you found / done any study which discusses access to digital platforms such as mobile phones, laptops, computers (with parents or govt schools) with illiteracy among peoples of Hindi speaking states?
I believe delivery of your service (along with the development) will be a crucial element of the success of this intervention.
b) Partnering with existing education focused organizations like Labhya, Teach for India, Child Rights and You, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, etc. at the stage of development may make these interventions substantially more effective.
These organizations, grounded in reality of Indian education system, curriculum, and its limitations can help in developing more directly actionable insights. If you do not intend to scale your ground force for delivery and dissemination, then you can consider becoming their tech partner.
I apologize this suggestion if you have already approached them.
Thanks Shubham! a) yes, agreed that delivery will be crucial (and may well be harder than the development). We haven’t done a study ourselves, however are basing our work on several other studies:
the Annual Status of Education Report found that 2⁄3 of rural students had access to a smartphone. I presume (and am backed by my own experience) that this is higher in urban areas.
Our literature review found several studies of EdTech in India, though most of these involved the researchers/school providing the hardware, rather than using parents’ phones.
b) My organisation, DEVI Sansthan, has partnered with Teach for India in the past, and we’re aware of Pratham, Labhya, LLF, CSF etc’s work. We are ourselves quite well grounded in the frustrating intricacies of the Indian education system, through rolling out the paper-based ALfA program in thousands of schools. But it’s a good point that if we involve some other organisations in the development of the program, then they could be very helpful in distributing it (in a sense, this is what we are hoping with Google’s ReadAlong).
Hi,
Very promising pitch / TOC. Thank you for sharing it.
I would like to seek your opinion on a couple of thoughts.
a) Have you found / done any study which discusses access to digital platforms such as mobile phones, laptops, computers (with parents or govt schools) with illiteracy among peoples of Hindi speaking states?
I believe delivery of your service (along with the development) will be a crucial element of the success of this intervention.
b) Partnering with existing education focused organizations like Labhya, Teach for India, Child Rights and You, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, etc. at the stage of development may make these interventions substantially more effective.
These organizations, grounded in reality of Indian education system, curriculum, and its limitations can help in developing more directly actionable insights. If you do not intend to scale your ground force for delivery and dissemination, then you can consider becoming their tech partner.
I apologize this suggestion if you have already approached them.
Thank you,
Thanks Shubham!
a) yes, agreed that delivery will be crucial (and may well be harder than the development). We haven’t done a study ourselves, however are basing our work on several other studies:
the Annual Status of Education Report found that 2⁄3 of rural students had access to a smartphone. I presume (and am backed by my own experience) that this is higher in urban areas.
Our literature review found several studies of EdTech in India, though most of these involved the researchers/school providing the hardware, rather than using parents’ phones.
b) My organisation, DEVI Sansthan, has partnered with Teach for India in the past, and we’re aware of Pratham, Labhya, LLF, CSF etc’s work. We are ourselves quite well grounded in the frustrating intricacies of the Indian education system, through rolling out the paper-based ALfA program in thousands of schools. But it’s a good point that if we involve some other organisations in the development of the program, then they could be very helpful in distributing it (in a sense, this is what we are hoping with Google’s ReadAlong).
Thanks again!