Indian Mindspark to teach Maths to US students

Ahmedabad based, Educational Initiatives (EI) said it has offered the authorities in US a remedial tool for better understanding of the subject Maths – their technology-based self-learning tool, Mindspark. Over 500 students in state of Texas, US will be spending their summer vacation learning Maths through this tool.

EI has bagged the license under the supplemental education services (SES) which is aimed at helping children, who come from lower socio-economic backgrounds, by supplementing their learning. The programme will be launched in Texas during the up-coming summer vacation (June to August). EI will help students learn Maths through a blended learning concept which entails personalised learning via Mindspark and on-demand support via certified teachers in an online environment.

Since Mindspark is a self-learning tool, the constant supervision of a teacher is not needed. This will reduce the cost incurred on teachers and will help getting better quality of teachers, mostly from within the local community. EI will not only provide their internet-based tool, but will also give notebook computers to the children who are a part of the summer programme.

EI is also pilot testing for another project in Lansing, Michigan where the students are using Mindspark in an after-school programme. This is a pilot programme being conducted with 57 children in the district of Lansing in Michigan. The current results have shown that some of the Class 8 students are actually at Class 4 or Class 5 level and are picking up from there.

The questions in Mindspark were designed keeping an Indian child as its reference. Before the tool was given for use to children in US, there was a process of contextualisation that had to be done. For instance ‘roti’ had to changed to ‘pizza’ or ‘bread’; ‘taxi’ became ‘cabs’ and Indian names into names in US so that the child can connect with the programme better.

Educational Initiatives was established in 2001 by three graduates of Indian Institute of Management – Ahmedabad (IIM-A) – Sridhar Rajagopalan, Sudhir Ghodke and Venkat Krishnan. "EI aims at addressing fundamental problems of learning with a competitive team of professionals from the industry and strong trust based relationships that we share with over 2,000 schools in India and abroad over the past 10 years. We believe in ‘learning through understanding’. Through our other interactive tools like Asset, detailed assessment, CCE certificate course, teacher evaluation program, teacher sheets and more, Educational Initiatives assists thousands of teachers in improving their students' achievements," Sridhar Rajagopalan said.

Mindspark is also soon going to Singapore, where the tool will be integrated with video games and computer games which will promote the concept of ‘learn-while-you-play’.