Education globally is going through a major shift today, but there’s still lack of access to schools and teachers and even where access is good, the outcomes are not. There are high
drop-out rates of high-school kids who are unready for college and of college kids who can’t find jobs. The only way to transform the educational space is by inspiring teachers, and this is the motive behind the creation of Guru-G , which is the world’s first gamified platform for teaching, teacher training and certification of teachers. Guru-G believes that the most vital component of education is teachers.
Over the past years, there has been a lot of innovation and investment in education. New technology, content, curriculum and schools have come up, yet the changes in student outcomes have been marginal, that’s because on every important element of education is forgotten, that is teachers who are the single most important factor for student progress. As the classrooms are modernized and as the skills that students need change, teachers need to be re-trained for the 21st century education. Most teacher training companies are made up of a handful of star trainers who can only work with a limited set of teachers. The most common thing that teachers don’t like is additional preparation outside the classroom and this is the one thing that most of today’s products assume that teachers will do. To motivate teachers, things that make their job more fun and interesting need to be done. There are three things that drive teachers; first is that they like being adaptive in the class, to class rules and to students’ learning styles, secondly they like the social aspect of teaching, collaborating with their peers and recognition from their peers and the community, and lastly they appreciate feedback. Guru-G focuses on enhancing these three elements for a better teacher experience.
Features of Guru-G are as follows:
It works with an adaptive teaching algorithm and content is inserted through teaching packs that can be localized for curriculum, language and culture.
The content and teaching packs work together along with an easy-to-use user interface that teachers can use as an in-class companion on any tablet or smartphone.
It works on the same principles that are used in today’s popular games to make teaching fun and addictive for teachers.
If teachers use good teaching practices in class it rewards them with points, levels and certificates that they can use on their actual resumes for career progression.
It also collects analytics on what is taught in class and how it is taught in class.
It has a simple business model:
If you’re a teacher training company or publisher, it helps you reduce your costs of training by about 60%, while letting you add more teachers to your programs, thereby increasing your revenues.
If you’re a government or foundation, one of your major challenges is measurement and evaluation and the analytics that the platform collects, facilitates the same.
Guru-G allows teachers to learn new methods of teaching and to engage students in a subject. Its app available on iOS, Android and it is also available as a web application. The app helps teachers change teaching styles with different tools depending on how students are behaving. The teacher can also mix up styles to see which works better. The platform uses principles from game theory, neuropsychology, evolutionary biology and fuzzy logic to create an algorithm to accurately predict human behavior. The GuruG app also provides methods to assess, revise and analyze student lessons and performance. The app takes into account non-scholastic metrics to see how students perform in class. The non-scholastic assessments help the teacher to understand and focus on individual problem areas. The Guru-G platform also allows teachers to create their own games and learning experiences by simply dragging and dropping elements.
The major milestones that Guru-G has accomplished are; the commercial adoption of its teacher solutions by schools across 10 states in India, partnerships with foundations & companies that directly support over 3,000 schools and reach over 2.5 million students, it has helped several education companies build their K-12 products/business, it is involved in talks/demos at TEDxMcGill, EDGEx, Borderless World, Bangalore IT.biz., it has got featured in major national newspapers (Indian Express, Economic Times), MSN India homepage, EduTech and many more. Other recognition that Guru-G has achieved is the award for the Star Young Entrepreneur Award-2011, it got featured in ‘Making India Proud’ book by Intel, has received Student Award @SBP09 Conference (Phoenix), Global Student Entrepreneur Award, India, and is the winner of Bplan contests & incubation offers from IITB, BITS Pilani, IIMA, IIMB.
Guru-G wants to connect with more partners that can help it to shape its strategies to bring it to the U.S and to other parts of the world. To achieve this, Guru-G is focusing on school teachers and K-12 education space as the first step. But the larger potential of Guru-G is that, as an adaptive instruction platform, it can be used in vocational training, higher education, homeschooling and medical instruction.
I encourage teachers to utilize the services that this distinctly innovative platform, Guru-G offers, to have a fun and interesting teaching experience and make learning more effective for their students. Share your views on the context. The Comment Box is waiting.
