Two IITB Grads Develop 'Wise App', a 2G-Online Learning App for Kashmiri Students
Two IIT Bombay graduates have developed a learning app that runs on 2G internet in a span of just two months to help students of Kashmir. The developers of the app are Mubeen Masudi who has been coaching Kashmiri students for engineering and medical entrance exams since last eight years and Bilal Abidi, both being 2011 IIT Bombay graduates. The app encompasses features akin to those in Zoom application besides easy attendance and teacher control.
Post the division of Kashmir into two union territories, Kashmir Valley has been struggling to get 4G internet as the Indian Government has restricted some services citing security reasons for last one year. But due to Covid-19 and closure of educational institutions, online education has become the need of the hour. However, it needs high bandwidth which is exactly what Kashmir Valley has been deprived of! “Two graduates of IIT Bombay have developed an Android application ‘Wise App’ to enable online learning on the 2G service. The application is extremely user-friendly, completely free of cost and comes without any advertisements,” tweets Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal.
According to a report in news agency IANS, Masudi realized the challenges of conducting classes online while teaching on Zoom. He adds, “I used to share meeting IDs/passwords through WhatsApp, assignments through mail and study material through Google Drive links. It was very chaotic and difficult to manage. My focus shifted from teaching to juggling across multiple apps. Consequently, this negatively affected the learning experience of my students. That is when I realized the need for a unified platform myself”. Abidi says, “Unlike the existing ones in the market, the app does not expect the teacher to be tech savvy”.
Established in 1958, the second of its kind, IIT Bombay was the first to be setup with foreign assistance. The funds from UNESCO came as Roubles from the then Soviet Union. In 1961 Parliament decreed the IITs as ‘Institutes of National Importance’. Since then, IITB has grown from strength to strength to emerge as one of the top technical universities in the world. The institute is recognized worldwide as a leader in the field of engineering education and research. Reputed for the outstanding calibre of students graduating from its undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, the institute attracts the best students from the country for its bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programmes. Research and academic programmes at IIT Bombay are driven by an outstanding faculty, many of whom are reputed for their research contributions internationally.
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