Sunday, June 03, 2012

Interview with Aashita Jadhav, School in Mobile, Innovators in E-Learning Series


Mobile learning via smartphone has been a possibility for learners since the earliest smartphones (T-Mobile Sidekick was an early example), but the the recent explosion in apps, access, and the essential ubiquity of mobile devices, there is a growing demand for instructional content that meshes with the learner's lifestyle and learning habits. In a smartphone world, developers can no longer simply try to make their content mobile-friendly (early example: smartphone science class). Developers have to think of the mobile environment first, and then make it also accessible via laptop. The best schools now must incorporate new strategies for delivering m-learning. One innovator in mobile learning is Aashita Jadhav, whose SchoolinMobile.org has developed a platform to enable expanded access to instructional content that is both engaging and effective. 

What is your name and relation to elearning / mlearning?

My name is Aashita Jadhav, the founder of the SchoolinMobile.org 

What is School in Mobile? 

School in Mobile ( SchoolinMobile.org) is a FREE educational platform (accessible by web and as an FREE Android App)

OUR MISSION - Every Student in the world to have access to learning material, the green way.

School in Mobile provides the following benefits:

                Fast - Students can learn a chapter in less than 30 minutes including test.
                Useful - Helps students pass the STAR test and thus helps improve the school rating.
                Fun - Students get cool badges for getting good score from the quiz.
                Green - As the content is in digital format , it helps the environment.




What needs does School in Mobile address?

I consider that we are fortunate to be at the time of  three big revolutionary shifts - - mobile, social and cloud. Every industry is trying to make the best use of these advancements. School in Mobile is helping the Education sector with this shift to make learning an engaging process.

Students have been caring heavy textbooks around for decades. Today technological advancement make it possible to change this.

School in Mobile provide ease of access , speed of completing a chapter and finally helps them pass the grade tests.

What kinds of devices does School in Mobile work on?

School in Mobile is practically available on all devices.

                A FREE Android app is already present on Google marketplace.
                For all other devices ( including Apple devices) , it can be accessed through the web link
                We just launched FREE Chrome Web Store app



What are the underlying learning strategies and philosophies in School in Mobile?

School in Mobile is not just provider of content in form of books or videos.

It is an end-to-end platform for student to learn as well as test their knowledge.

Proven research shows that students learn by going through summary notes and retain the knowledge for longer duration.

School in Mobile provides
                Ready to use summary notes in text as well as movie format. 
                Once the students have studied a chapter at school. They can revise it on School in Mobile in less than 30 minutes including quiz test.
                Engagement is increased by this quick and easy tool. Also the cool badges which students get from test makes it fun.



How can you overcome the problems of access to the cloud? What happens when students do not have wifi access to the cloud or wifi connectivity?

Currently School in Mobile is available on the cloud and accessible everywhere. We are working on the next phases to make it easy to download on the device making it available without wifi connectivity. This is crucial for developing countries.

What are the next steps for School in Mobile?

The  steps are really exciting for us.

We are working on enhancing  the platform by several ways like

                Making  more grades, subjects and chapters available
                Add capability to login using facebook and google accounts
                Open the platform to allow teacher add content. We are partnering with more teachers . Any teacher can reach us at info@schoolinmobile.com

Also we are working to deploy this to other countries.



How can students and teachers try out School in Mobile?

You can download the Android App from Google marketplace.
OR 
Access the web version ( for all devices including Apple) from our website ( SchoolinMobile.org)

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