The ongoing pandemic has definitely shifted our perceptions of the world we were familiar with. It has compelled us to change our habits, our way of life essentially. A major shift to take place is in the edutech space – classrooms went online all over the world as schools shuttered down and technology has never been a more adept enabler of education.

Even as early as 2015, when India was just about seeing significant traction in edtech, IIT Kanpur students Dhrupal Shah and his batchmates Abhishek Sharma and Pankaj Varma realized the value of technology in furthering the reach of education. This led the trio to work on a project called evive, which ended up getting launched on global crowdsourcing platform Indiegogo, and becoming the first ever to be launched by Indian university students on the platform. Following their graduation from IIT Kanpur in 2017, Shah and his friends improvised the product further to develop a digitized learning ecosystem especially for school-going children. The ages of 7-16 are highly impressionable, and this was a great window for the trio to garner interest in emerging technologies like IoT, AI and machine learning.

Hence, STEMpedia was born in 2018, offering a range DIY project kits, graphical programming software and programming tools that help children between ages 7-16 make their own futuristic tech projects. “We wanted to pique the curiosity of children in these technologies, which are going to define the future. It is imperative they start young. Obviously, we can’t teach them complex codes and computer languages, but we can definitely show them what can be made using these technologies. This helps engage them in a format that’s best suited for their age, and enhances their interest enough to want to pursue these technologies as they grow older – that’s the hope,” explains Shah.

STEMpedia offers the evive Starter Kit for beginners to learn the basics of STEM subjects, PictoBlox for AI projects, Dabble app which helps develop and build projects and a range of other DIY kits for IoT, biotech, agritech and more. In addition, the startup is also teaching the basics of AI and programming.

India, which has among the largest number of school going students, falls quite far behind in harnessing technology to facilitate learning. Shah explains how less than 8% of all Indian school going students have smart tabs, whereas in the US, more than 50% of students own tabs and are tuned to electronic media for learning. But learning goes a step further than just using tabs – STEMpedia’s range of offerings make the learning experience interactive and immersive for the students, without coming across as hard to comprehend.

PictoBlox: Preparing The Future For AI

That AI is going to be an imperative part of learning modules is no hidden fact. In fact, the recently announced National Education Policy has laid great emphasis on upskilling in technologies including AI. PictoBlox is a streamlined effort by STEMpedia to make the youth AI-ready. Through graphical programming, AI and ML are made interactive for kids. It helps them understand computer vision, facial recognition, speech recognition, optical character recognition, image based ML, pose-based ML and audio-based ML. In addition, the offering also allows children to understand what neural networks are – which form the cornerstone of AI algorithms. A comprenhensive online course aims to fill gaps in grasping these concepts. In the coming months, Shah plans to add Python programming for advanced users of PictoBlox.

Through a sample demo on video call, Shah demonstrated how easy it is to really follow the tutorial. “Children are keen learners but it is important to keep them engaged. This is why our UI is extremely graphic, vivid, engaging and colourful. Children are especially enamoured by moving objects and we have worked on making the interface very easy to use.

COVID19 Accelerates E-Learning

PictoBlox alone has more than 6,000 users since its launch in June 2020. Overall, STEMpedia has worked with more than 100,000 students in 40 countries. Specifically, Shah says the COVID19 period has led to a 2x growth in demand for PictoBlox. “We’re seeing a heightened level of trust in e-learning platforms today. Moreover, children are stuck at home and it is very hard to keep them entertained all day long, especially with working parents. This kind of DIY setup not only distracts them, but also facilitates learning.”

The modules are developed using inhouse expertise, but also with the inputs of educator volunteers from over 35 countries, explains Shah. “Being teachers first, the volunteers do have a better understanding of how to engage students more willfully and meaningfully and this expertise has helped us develop intuitive modules. We are working with volunteers who have rich experience teaching as well as managing school boards.”

The endeavour of developing learning modules that aim to teach the basics of advanced technologies also shines the spotlight on ethics and responsibility. Shah says that the module developers are mindful of building course material that does not propagate bias, unlawful or unethical notions or ideas.