program

EducateZilla is a tablet assisted self-learning program specially designed to improve the quality of learning in local medium rural government schools.

Suvidya Foundation has been running the EducateZilla program in several Kannada medium rural government schools across Karnataka since the academic year 2013-14.

As part of the program, Suvidya Foundation gives each school, totally free-of-cost, a set of tablets loaded with the Textbook-on-tablet technology.

The Textbook-on-tablet technology includes

Several scholastic games to make learning English, Kannada and Mathematics fun for children from 3rd-7th standards
EzTextBook app along with enriched, interactive curricular content for English and Mathematics for 5th-7th standards to facilitate self-learning of curriculum

Considering that the apps do not need Internet connectivity at all, any school with basic infrastructure for charging the tablets can benefit from this program.

Suvidya appoints a local woman graduate as a mentor for overseeing the day-to-day operation of the program. Suvidya mentors use the EzMentor technology every day on the mentor tab given to them. This technology facilitates the day-to-day activities of the mentor in the field such as

Guiding the children to self-learn using the Textbook-on-tablet technology effectively
Getting software and content updates from the Suvidya server and distributing the updates to the tablets in schools using Wi-Fi
Collecting the progress data from the schools and uploading the same to the Suvidya server
Managing user accounts on the school tablets
Preparing school visit reports, issue reports and so on.

From 2013-14 to 2019-20, the program was conducted as a year-long inter school competition. At the end of each academic year, prizes were distributed to the children who performed well throughout the year.

During the COVID pandemic, Suvidya reinvented the program to sustain the children's focus on learning. Instead of the year-long challenge, now the EducateZilla program is conducted as a series of challenges each lasting for a period of 8 weeks. In each challenge, the children of 3rd and 4th standards learn English and Mathematics through scholastic games whereas children from 5th to 7th standards attempt to master the lessons selected for the specific challenge using the tabs.

At the end of each challenge, the children's progress is analyzed across all the schools and cash awards (deposited directly into children's bank accounts) are given to those children who

put in consistent efforts throughout the challenge and achieve the highest scores in the scholastic games
answer the highest number of questions and achieve a high knowledge quotient in the curricular challenge
put in a lot of effort and significantly improve their performance from the previous challenge

In the past twelve academic years this program has reached 12,000+ children of standards 3-7 from Kannada medium rural government schools across Karnataka. Benefiting from this, many of these children have aced the entrance tests and secured admission in Karnataka Residential Educational Institutions such as Morarji Desai and Kittur Chennamma residential schools which offer them more challenging and fulfilling learning environments. Many others have confidently transitioned to English medium in high school.

Read the blog to learn more about the program

A brief look at the technology

Textbook-on-tablet technology

The EzTextbook app and the associated scholastic games that facilitate self-learning in rural schools are collectively known as the "Textbook-on-tablet" technology. The picture below lists the salient features of each of its components.

Other major components of the technology

The technology used for the EducateZilla project, being an end-to-end solution, also includes the aforementioned EzMentor technology as well as other supplementary components for content creation, data analysis and hardware management. The picture below lists the salient features of some of these components.

Program management

A field operation such as EducateZilla requires

Continuous training of school mentors both offline and online to carry out the day to day activities at schools effectively
Constant monitoring, servicing and periodic upgrade of the hardware
Continuous enhancement of the software and the content based on the children's learning needs
Evaluation of new schools for program expansion
Inventing new applications for the existing technology. For example, content for the NMMS competitive examination has been developed to facilitate the use of EzTextBook app to prepare for the same.
Inventing new technologies to enable even the most remote schools to take advantage of the EducateZilla program. For example,the EzMentorLite technology enables one of the teachers to function as the Suvidya mentor for the school using a mobile.
Ceaselessly looking for the right NGOs to partner with in order to reach out to more rural government schools

Program expansion

Encouraged by the positive outcome of the EducateZilla program so far, Suvidya Foundation plans to extend the program to more schools in the future. It plans to enable as many NGOs in Karnataka as possible to use this technology and content to benefit rural government school children in their region. Further, Suvidya Foundation aims to partner with NGOs in other states to increase the reach of this technology to rural government schools pan India.