– Dipta Joshi

iDream Education (estd. 2016) an edtech startup delivering digital learning content as per state boards and Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) for grades 1st to 12th. It offers digital content in seven regional languages for students conversant and learning in these vernacular mediums. iDream Education’s Gurugram, Haryana-based co-founder, Rohit Prakash says their solutions completely align to the National Education Policy 2020’s (NEP) vision of empowering every student with digital education in a language suitable to them.

What services does iDream Education provide in the edtech Sector and how wide is its reach?

We provide State board and CBSE content in English as well as in regional languages like Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Oriya thereby serving both the best of private schools and also our local language government schools.

We are focussed on bringing together all types of content including interactive video lessons, STEM and do-it-yourself (DIY) experiments, digital book library, life skills and practice questions with tests in an integrated mobile app or tablet platform.

For our all solutions including smart class, learning app/tablets and tablet based school labs, we have worked with close to 800 schools serving more than 1.5 Lakh students in 15 states across India.

By providing educational content in regional languages as well iDream is aligned to the directives of the National Education Policy 2020. Comment.

Majority of India’s student population still attend government schools even today and are more conversant in their mother tongue rather than English when they enter school. Therefore, to ensure that our millions of rural students adopt digital education, availability of quality digital content in local languages is imperative to hand hold them to mainstream inclusion and growth.

The National Education Policy 2020 has taken a transformational step forward in this regard, and has outlined a strong and inclusive framework to bring the last mile students into the learning circle.

The (MHRD) now Ministry of Education and State governments too have been promoting local language digital content through the DIKSHA App (a platform offering teachers, students and parents learning material as the prescribed curriculum). The central government’s PM eVidya initiative in the COVID-19 crisis to promote digital learning will further this objective of having local language digital content for e-learning. At iDream Education, we are aligned to this national vision of empowering every student with digital education in their language.

Did the lockdown due to Covid-19 and the subsequent shutting down of schools shift the focus from smart classes and tablet-based schools labs to the tablet platform and mobile app?

With schools shutting due to the COVID-19 pandemic the learning usage of smart classes and tablets happening inside schools pausing, schools and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) requested us to offer solutions for in-home learning in both English medium and also in local languages. Since we were already working on an integrated learning app, therefore immediately after lockdown we launched the ‘iDream Learning App’ (March 29). We have also made use of the app, free for all to ensure even underserved students can access education despite the absence of in-person schools.

The Army Goodwill schools in Kashmir and in the union territory of Ladakh have adopted the iDream Learning App for students confined to their homes. Currently 75,000 students across the country are learning from the app from the safety of their homes.

Another strong realisation witnessed during this time was the value in giving personal yet monitored educational tablet directly to students. The iDream platform is custom designed for only educational use. The tablets are connected to a teacher app, so that their teachers and schools get their usage reports automatically. Teachers use the app to assign tasks and monitor their student’ progress based on the data being generated.

Do elaborate on iDream’s future plans?

In the next 2 years, we plan to strengthen the iDream Learning App and the learning tablet to serve students, teachers and schools across all states in India. One of our top priorities is to enrich the digital content on our platform across all the categories and languages. Whether it is academic, experiential, practice, reading, life skills or hobby based content. In the near future, we envision growing iDream Learning App and Tablet to serve every learning need of our students in a single integrated platform.

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