Q. What is the meaning of
BodhaGuru? A. Bodha
means knowledge, wisdom or enlightenment. Guru means teacher,
mentor or guide. In a nutshell, a teacher who imparts his/her
knowledge enlightening the students.
Q. What is our dream? A. Our dream is to make learning
interesting, relevant and affordable for every child on this
planet - with the help of technology.
Q. What is social enterprise? A. We are working as a company
(enterprise) focusing on a social cause - so we aim to meet
two bottom lines - the net impact and the net profit.
Q. Who are our main customers?
Where are they located? A. We have been partnering with
schools that are serving children at the bottom of the pyramid
- like government schools, affordable private schools and NGO run schools. Additionally, we have released a large
part of our solutions online - so that we can serve children
and teachers across all spectrum of society and across
geographies.
Q. How do we foresee the
future? We foresee a bright future for
learning where every teacher and child will be able to learn - anywhere,
anytime. Everyone will have access to best self-learning
material, in the language they understand, in the form they
can use on the device they have access to and at the price
they can afford.
We strongly believe this learning material won't be
created by a single company or single person- however it will
be created, contributed and consumed by the community at large
- including children, parents, teachers and other passionate
people from educational fraternity - very similar to Internet
which is not owned or used by single company. With this
passionate community empowered with simple to use tools,
everyone will contribute and make the community better. As
more people start contributing to this community, the network
effect will kick-in and the learning tree will be filled with
interesting, relevant and affordable learning material - for
everyone.
Q. What are we doing to achieve
this future? We started by designing
interesting learning material (apps, books, videos, questions) for kindergarten to class 5 Math/Science/English subjects, Class 6-10 Maths/Science subjects
and validated it with children and saw positive impact on the
learning outcome. We all know it is very costly to generate
this learning material. And to do it for all classes,
subjects, languages, boards - it makes it further challenging.
Hence, we have started building technology based tools and
platforms that enables other stakeholders (teachers, SCERT, NCERT) to generate the best learning
material. By incorporating the assets and technology we built
after years of research and development, this cloud based children book authoring, publishing and reading platform provides
educational community with a rich set of assets (images,
sound, videos), quiz, animation and effects to start with - without requiring passionate
educators to spend huge amount of cost on illustration,
background music, sound effects, animation and coding - all you
need is sheer passion and a strong will to make a difference.
Come lets change the world - lets make learning
interesting, relevant and affordable to every child on this
planet!
Learning philosophy
Q. What is your learning
methodology? A. We strongly believe SHORT
STORIES and PRACTICAL EXAMPLES are the best way to learn
anything. We all remember stories (and the associated lesson)
for a very long time. Don't you remember the Panchatantra
stories or Amar Chitra Katha? Hence, for almost every topic of
the curriculum, we have designed rich animated story that
generates the interest in the given topic and gets the due
attention of the child. Our stories have characters, emotions,
fun, action, drama, music (just like a short feature film).
Each story imparts a life-learning lesson to your child (e.g.
be brave, work hard, help others, love your parents, care for
your friends etc.) in addition to the "indirect" subject
learning. Once your child goes through the immersive story, we
try to go deeper into the topic of curriculum in the
subsequent detailed videos that take the examples from the
story and walk through the entire topic in an easy to
understand and practical way. After watching the videos, the
child can enjoy, practice and explore critical parts of the
topic by playing simple fun based mobile games.
Our goal is that your child understands the concept and
its applicability compared to memorizing the definitions and
terms.
Q. What do you mean by making
learning relevant? A. In our stories, examples, games
and problems - we have focused on applicability of the concept
as applicable to today's environment. Let us take few
examples:
The child has learned by heart types of pollution,
but still throws the plastic bag on the street after using
it- we try to address the impact of pollution in one of our
story.
Every parents work hard a lot to get their child
quality education - but does the child ever realize the
value of money and this sacrifice - we try to address this
in one of our story.
The child knows parts of the plants but still plucks
the flowers for fun - we try to address this in one of our
mobile games.
The child understand the formula of simple and
compound interest - but can the child help the parent to
avoid taking new loans to pay the interest of previous loan
- we try to address this in examples taken in compound
interest topic.
We believe that if the children are able to apply a
part of their learning to their day-to-day environment, we
have achieved a big success compared to making the child a
post-graduate.
Q. What do you mean by making
learning interesting? A. Our goal is to ensure a child
enjoys learning and doesn't get bored thinking about school or
get phobia looking at a Math equation. Hence we are building
rich stories animated walk-through of concepts, picture books
and mobile games to add fun element to the learning.
Q. What is Njoy N Learn Store?
A. We believe in fun-n-learn based
approach for children. Njoy N Learn Store is our virtual store
that encompasses following offerings to make learning an
enjoyable experience for children: Mobile based learning apps
- please visit apps page
Learning products - for schools, teachers and
children - - please visit products page
Platforms - for children book publishers, authors
and eLearning content development companies - - please visit
platforms page
Q. Is Njoy N Learn store only
encompasses learning offerings created by BodhaGuru? How can I
be a part of this learning revolution?? A. From March 2011, we have been
working on creating immersive animated educational videos,
cool apps, beautiful books, thought provoking questions. We
have positively impacted tens of thousands of children
directly by partnering with schools that are serving children
at the bottom of the pyramid - like affordable private
schools, NGO run schools and government schools. Additionally
we have reached lakhs of children online - who are learning by
watching our videos, reading our books and practicing using
our apps. However, we feel this is just a tiny drop in the
ocean. We felt children need much more quality content - in
their mother-tongue, catered to their country/region, etc. We
believe, if everyone around the world gets involved in this
dream, many more stories could be created faster and spread
faster too.Keeping this in mind we have released a cool
application on Android and iOS platform - ‘Read N Create Children
Book'.
With this app, we believe everyone - children,
parents, teachers and authors can create children books and
share their creation to the world. We strongly believe Reading
is fun, Creating is more fun and Sharing is even more. So
please download these apps and be part of this learning
revolution.
The goal of the videos is to watch a topic and
understand it. It includes rich animated stories, detailed
videos explaining the entire topic broken into one or more
lessons and experimentation videos.
The questions and quiz are meant to generate new
thoughts and ideas. Hence our questions include open ended
subjective questions and multiple choice questions.
The books are meant to improve the language skills
(specifically communication skills) and ponder over open
ended questions that help the child to build a view-point
about the point raised in the question and communicate the
same.
The learn and practice applications are meant to
practice and explore the topic.
Q. Which classes and subjects
are currently supported by BodhaGuru content? A. "The journey to thousand miles
begins with the first step." And we have taken the first step
by choosing pre-primary (kindergarten early learning material) first, then primary (grade 1 to 5 Maths/Science/English) and then slowly added high school (grade 6 to 10) Science
(Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Maths) because we
wanted to give a solid base to the children on which they can
learn further in higher classes.
Q. Why not high school or above grades? A. "A castle is built upon a
strong foundation". Hence our strong belief is - children need
to have strong fundamentals of the core concepts being taught
from primary to high school classes before moving to higher classes, as the
higher classes are completely built on top of primary and high school class
fundamentals.
Q. Will other classes/subjects
be supported soon? If yes, when? A. We are a start-up with BIG
dreams with aim to reach every child on this planet. And yes,
we will also like to support all classes/subjects. However, we
don't want to compromise on content quality in search of
quantity/breadth of content. Hence, we are currently focused
on improving the learning outcome of pre-primary, primary and high school
children (i.e. class KG to 10). We have done good progress on
this, but not yet satisfied that we have nailed it completely.
Hence it will take a while before we jump into other classes
and subjects. But yes, they are definitely in our radar and we
will keep you posted on the updates on this side. Join us on
our social networks - facebook, twitter or Youtube - for
regular updates from our side.
Q. Which board and curriculum
is currently followed - CBSE, state board, ICSE etc.? A. We have followed NCERT
curriculum and extracted the core concepts of the subject from
the curriculum of multiple boards - like CBSE, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana
State Board, and Madhya Pradesh State Board etc. We believe
the core concepts (e.g. how a plant grows from the seed)
remain same across the board with minor changes across boards
to add region specific knowledge (e.g. how rice grows in
Andhra Pradesh). As we have focused on core concepts, we
believe it will apply to most of the boards across India.
Q. Does the concept to class
mapping change according to the board? How do I know which
topic my child should watch? A. Yes it does changes a bit.
Hence, we have grouped topics in a way that it can be broadly
classified in different categories like class 1-3 and class
4-5 - based on children's age group. It may occasionally
happen that some topic you find class 1-3 is present in class
4 in your board or vice versa. Additionally we have state board specific packages
where all the topics are aligned to particular board.
The primary goal of question and answers is to generate thoughts and
come up with newer ideas compared to testing the child.
However in reality it happens other way around. Hence we
focused more on former - our limited questions helps child to
ponder for a while and then deduce the answer. The rest of the
questions and answers to pass in the class test are anyway
given in school books, home-work and questions banks.
Q. What are the languages
currently supported on verbal and written text in videos? What
is the dialect supported? A. Currently we are supporting
English, Hindi and Telugu. We have kept
the spoken language to a dialect which the child can
understand - like Indian English. For the non-English
languages, we have kept the text in videos in English with
voice over in local language explaining the terms in both
English and local language. Our field trial suggests that the
children from non-English medium school learn English faster
with this approach.
Q. How is your content
organized? A. We have organized our content
following this terminology Subject, Course, Unit, Topic,
Lesson For example: Science, General, Plant World, Plant
Reproduction, Growth of new plant from seed
Devices
Q. What are the devices
supported? A. We have built the content from
scratch to ensure it works across different screens - smart phones, tablets, PC and TV/projector of different sizes
and resolutions.
Q. What software platforms are
supported? A. Our online video are
tested for Android, Apple based mobile devices and Microsoft PC platform. Our application/games are supported for Android, Apple based mobile devices
and Windows platform. Our offline solution based on NjoyTeaching and Njoylearning
supports only Android platform (version 4.0 and beyond). Our
DVD solution works on any DVD player or PC that supports dual
layer DVDs (i.e. 8.5 GB DVDs)
Q. What is NjoyTeaching? A. NjoyTeaching represents a
technology enabled self-learning solution (app + content) from BodhaGuru -
which can be used by teachers to learn about various concepts and newer pedagogies anywhere, anytime. This means that the
teachers can learn at their own pace, at any place (e.g. home,
school), any time (day or night) using any affordable mobile
computing device (smart-phone or tablet) - with
or without Internet.
Q. BodhaGuru has online video
library that is hosted on
YouTube. How is NjoyTeaching different from this? A. Our YouTube channel has been
heavily successful in explaining the required concepts wrapped
in the essential learning of life learning values (like moral
values). Millions of online video lessons (and increasing every day
by thousands) have been streamed in a short period of time
and users across geographies have appreciated our effort and
content. However, NjoyTeaching is an initiative to reach out the
teachers yearning to get on the job trained through the above approach but do
not have access to high speed internet or high end computing
device (like smart-phones, tablet or PC). Hence, we have
re-designed our entire set of learning videos, apps, books for entry level smart-phone
phone form-factor and can be stored easily in a micro SD card
(less than 16 GB space) - all you need to do is plug-it into
the smart-phone and learn.
Q. How does NjoyTeaching help
learners? A. This will help learners to
easily understand the core concepts of the school curriculum
and apply the learning in their day-to-day teaching. This
improvement in their teaching style will directly improve
students test/exam results also.
Q. What is the NjoyTeaching
solution? A. NjoyTeaching is an app with
rich-immersive content aimed towards self-learning and can run
on every affordable mobile computing device - entry level Android smart-phone or tablet - with or without Internet. The overall
content includes story videos, topic detailed videos,
interactive quiz, practice applications and digital picture
books. However, based on the mobile computing device
capability, the solution and associated learning experience
varies.
Smartphone or Tablet: All you need is Android based
smartphone or tablet. If you have NOT purchased NjoyTeaching
enlightened micro SD card (for Android), you need to
download the NjoyTeaching Android application using Internet.
Connect your smartphone/tablet to Internet and
download the BodhaGuru NjoyTeaching Android application. After
the application is installed (which need to be done only
once), open the application and sign-up & pay by following the steps given in the application.
You will receive the micro SD card via courier. If
you have purchased NjoyTeaching enlightened micro SD card (for
Android) already, just install the BodhaGuru NjoyTeaching
Android application and sign-in the application by following
the steps given in the application. The best part of this
application is - all the content is available offline -
inside the micro SD card and you don't need to pay for
Internet bandwidth charges after the application is
activated. This application provides a rich user experience
while accessing the BodhaGuru content (videos, quiz,
books stored in local micro SD card)
in a structured way (class -> subject -> topic -> content).
This application helps the teachers to easily understand the
core concept by watching lesson videos, interactive books and
prepare questions for the class from rich
interactive quiz that is a mix of text and pictures.
Q. I am teaching in a primary
school. How can NjoyTeaching help me? A. There are two steps of
teaching: first is to understand the subject and second is to
teach it to children. NjoyTeaching will enable you on the first
part - to improve your understanding of the subject (e.g.
easier examples, sample stories to co-relate etc.). It also
has content for the second part (i.e. teacher training module)
which is be a mix of short pedagoy articles and worksheets. If you are interested, please
email us at info@bodhaguru.com.
Q. What is the difference
between NjoyLearning and NjoyTeaching? A. NjoyLearning is BodhaGuru
in-class room solution - that is available in two
form-factors: a) NjoyLearning Set-top box Device that can be connected to
any TV/Projector b) NjoyLearning projector.
NjoyLearning is aimed for in-class room teaching by teachers,
whereas NjoyTeaching is mobile based learning for
teachers.
Q. I am already using
NjoyLearning Device at my school. How do NjoyTeaching help me? A. You can buy NjoyTeaching content at
a bundled discount rate (as you already have bought
NjoyLearning) and store it on your computer. You can then load
it on your school teachers' smart-phones - this will help the
teachers during prep-work for the topic to be taught. Please email us at
info@bodhaguru.com in case you need more information.
Q. I am working in field of
education (e.g. helping rural children/teachers to get quality
education). How can NjoyTeaching help me? A. We will love to partner with
NGOs working in this field by providing them our NjoyTeaching
content at heavy discounted rate under a simple term: you
share us the periodic assessment reports of the children using
NjoyTeaching content. This assessment data (which you may be
collecting already) helps your organization to measure the
learning outcome of this technology based intervention and
showcase it to your stakeholders. This will further increase
your good-will in the neighboring community. This relationship
will help us in our dream of spreading the quality education
to everyone and also get the content feedback in terms of
learning outcome improvement, thereby improving the quality of
our future learning content. Please email us at
partners@bodhaguru.com and we will love to partner with you.
Cost
Q. What do mean by making
learning affordable? A. A lot of our high quality animated
videos are available 100% FREE on the Internet via YouTube streaming -
just stream the content and learn.
Q. How will you make money? A. Yes, we need to make money :-)
to make this social business sustainable and growing over a
period of time. Otherwise, we will not be able to fulfill our
mission to make learning interesting, relevant and affordable
to every child on the planet. Hence, our online
videos will be free for end users (ad sponsored) and
applications will be mix of free, ad sponsorship and paid
apps. We will be charging a very affordable price for our
NjoyTeaching based self-learning solutions for teachers
and Njoylearning based in-class room solution for schools.
Copyright
Q. Who owns the copyright of
the content? A. All our content (video, books
and games) are conceptualized, designed and developed by
BodhaGuru. BodhaGuru owns the entire copyright of the content.
Q. I will like to partner with
BodhaGuru. How should I connect with you? A. Thank you for your interest in
evaluating a partnering opportunity with us. We have a BIG
MISSION, which cannot be achieved alone. We are actively
working on building partnerships with the different companies
where we see synergies. Please connect with us by sending
email to partners@bodhaguru.com and we will
definitely get back to you. Let us "Enlighten the Million
Minds" - TOGETHER!!
BodhaGuru Learning Private Limited 2nd Floor, Plot 50/51, Doyens Colony Main Road, Opposite HCU, Next to HP Petrol Pump,
Serilingampally, Hyderabad, Telangana, India - 500019 Phone: +91-9346423157, +91-9966026342
Want more information?
info@bodhaguru.com
Would you like to collaborate with us? partners@bodhaguru.com