What is your solution?
Imagine if Tinder, MasterClass and Lolli had a baby. NTPCKY is an app that uses AI, machine learning, big data and blockchain to:

Which dimension of the challenge does your solution most closely address?
I believe that NTPCKY ultimately makes learning fun for every student — which is incredibly hard to do in a normal school setting. This idea reinvents what school  and education looks like,  while increasing engagement of learners anywhere. 

Personally, I am someone who enjoys attending on-campus sessions, and some former students I spoke to said the same thing. What was interesting was that we all didn't like going to school because it was necessarily better for our learning, but because we like interacting with our friends.

I believe this issue  can  be tackled easily. When schools everywhere reopen, students can choose to go to school remotely, or in physical environments. However, "learning" would happen virtually. After classes that cover "theoretical" aspects of  the subject, students can have on-campus learning experiences that include hands-on experiments or imaginative play.

 

How might we help teachers and long-distance parents, engage and motivate learners outside the classroom?

Children in rural areas are often raised by their grandparents while their parents find work in the city or overseas. Their learning is often limited to what is available within a classroom of 40 or more children and at this time of the pandemic, only via sheets of assignments or homework.

 

 

I took the point of view of Gonzales, a 13 year-old student based in islands of Philippines who is unable to attend classes because schools are closed, and given stacks of assignments by their school and teacher. Gonzales' parents are divorced and her mother is working in Singapore as a helper. She is raised by her 67 year old grandmother.

 

There are a few challenges for Gonzales to continue her learning.

 

Even during pre-covid times, the odds of her learning are stacked against her as she is one out of 40 children in the class to 1 teacher. Outside of the classroom there is almost no other form of formal education or learning.

 

Increase the engagement of learners in remote, hybrid, and physical environments, including strategies and tools for parental support, peer interaction, and guided independent work.

 

How might we continue student engagements on the activities that’s beyond just the classroom while they are studying remotely?

There are many platforms out there that provide online learning experiences, but not many that support the communities and activities. School communities such as sports teams, music bands, and stage performances are a big part of the school experience that should not be stopped by the remote learning situation.

I took the point of view of Sam, a 12 year old, single child who lives with busy working parents who are constantly in meetings even when they work from home. As a 12 year old, Sam has a lot of energy and time. He is or used to be in a school music band and because of the pandemic, his band has to stop. He is getting depressed because he has more free time at home but not getting to spend time practising with the band like he used to. He also missed being part of the communities and spending time with friends.

This platform will help him get back with the band, friends and community. And enable him to spend his free time practising music, and reduce the chances of him getting depressed. Sam knows that he needs to practise and get better for the school performance.

Which dimension of the challenge does your solution most closely address?
Enable access to quality learning experiences in low-connectivity settings—including imaginative play, collaborative projects, and hands-on experiments.

 

Is it fair that in a global pandemic, some students have access to top of the line high end computers, while others have to do distance learning on their parent’s phone? Or that they struggle with emotional issues from home based learning? Currently, parents have to support their kids all the time, parents who may have their own challenges working from home – or even have difficulties earning a living.?

 

=Class is a digital and hybrid classroom platform that levels the field, gives students support throughout the studies, looks out for the child’s physical and mental health and helps teachers giving the kids the best possible education, even from home.

 

=Class will supply a Raspberry PI system, fully equipped with a camera, keyboard and mouse – ­and is preinstalled with =Class at less than $100. It can be hooked up to any HDMI screen, like a TV or a cheap monitor.

 

The =Class software has everything Zoom offers, but since it’s custom made for education, it has special features:

 

·      Integrated activity and exercise tools that allows teachers to give work and homework – all solved in the same platform. They can be collaborative or independent exercises. 

·      An algorithm that assesses video-feeds in real time to discover when children are struggling, need a break or getting cyber bullied.

·      A time bar that counts down to next recess

·      A help function that allows the student to ask questions in private

·      Automatic recess sessions where kids can interact with their friends. No one will be left behind.

·      An “I need a video break” button, that allows students to turn off the video for up to a minute or two. The screen will count down until video is turned back on

 

We will create a homebased learning computer class for older students, that can assemble and install the platform for their younger school mates.

 

= Class is cheap, flexible, and purpose built for learning. Everyone will get the learning and help they need – and teachers can teach without worrying about the students not participating or feeling left out. 

 

 

 

A game-like platform that provides education to primary and secondary learners in a simulated virtual school environment that will increase their engagement in learning as they get incentivized with tokens by staying within the platform, completing quizzes, worksheets and providing mentor service.  

What specific problem you are solving?

To onboard all primary and secondary learners to a platform that extends learning beyond physical classrooms. By integrating some gamification, learners acquire new knowledge at the same time staying engaged with fun and educational activities within Vschool. 

In low connectivity environment:

Learners would have the option to download the videos, quizzes and worksheets in nearby places with better connectivity in order to work better in offline mode. They would upload their work upon completion and receive results upon their next download.

To help teachers with grading:

Teachers can make use of smart contract in the blockchain technology to write the exam questions in the blockchain with the correct answers and scoring parameters. Blockchain would then handle the grading upon students’ submissions and reward them with V tokens based on results accordingly.

To manage the massive amount of storage space:

Since the platform is going to handle a massive amount of data from videos, students’ submission, regularly updated contents and so on, VSchool will incorporate a decentralized file-storage system built on top of Filecoin for a better cost saving option and a better prevention to data loss as the storage is distributed.

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Primary and secondary learners: 
 To receive learning beyond physical classroom environment. In a hybrid environment, learners may do solo/group activities in physical classrooms and then upload their work to share in Vschool. By constantly receiving new information through sharing will help learners to expand their knowledge and widen their perspectives. Secondary learners also develop leadership skills as they provide mentor services to other learners within the platform.

Parents:
 Parents collaborate with their children to complete certain activities in Vschool to improve bonding. Parents will have access to the parents portal where they will get information on their child’s completed activities, overall performance and receive notifications from the teachers. This way, parents will be able to monitor their progress and help to improve on the areas that the child is not so good at.

Teachers:
 Teachers will create tutorial videos, quizzes and worksheets for the learners and upload them into Vschool. All materials will be blockchained to ensure that only the user with their own private key can decrypt them. They will also provide online consultations or phonecalls to students who need their help.  Teachers will try their best to make Vschool a good reputable school to attract more students to enrol into the platform.
 
Which dimension of the challenge does your solution most closely address?

Increase the engagement of learners in remote, hybrid, and physical environments, including strategies and tools for parental support, peer interaction, and guided independent work by:

·       Integrating gamification features and rewarding users with tokens to increase engagement through a fun learning environment.

·       Sharing of work done in physical classrooms through uploading to Vschool and connecting with the remotees via video conferencing in a hybrid environment.

·       Using a parents portal to monitor child’s performance and progress.

·       Forming communities of common interests groups, doing group activities and through mentorship services to enhance peer interaction.

·       Teachers offering online consultation services to the students.

The lack of support and opportunities for growth beyond academic learning - with Covid-19, the school’s main priority will be to ensure that academic learning will proceed as per normal, but this might mean that extra academic activities and school events might be neglected. School events provide a lot of intangible growth to the students and should still be continued to build connections with other schoolmates, a sense of camaraderie and to develop leaders for the future. 

Beyond the Books provides all students with the platform to host, organise and execute events based off the weekly challenges. Students will select from a range of varied challenges and self-organise to create a project pitch. The best pitches will be rewarded and executed for the school to participate in. Teachers will play supporting roles as mentors to guide students, and students will be able to cross-collaborate across different academic streams and potentially across varies schools. 

Challenge topics can be aligned with school modules such as History or Literature, or they could revolve around other events, such as hosting a “Sports Day” for school students. 

This allows students to continue to have a holistic development despite the limitations, to build friendships beyond their own classroom and to learn soft skills that can help them beyond as they progress as students and members of society. This gives students something more to be excited about for school, to encourage them to pursue their own interests and passions within the challenges.

My solution addresses the ENTIRE growth of a student in their schooling journey - not just focusing on their grades or the papers they study in class, but the many other skills that make great leaders and innovators in society. It is beneficial to support and grow the street smarts, to recognise their own set of talents and skills as they might not necessarily excel in an academic setting. 

Additionally, Beyond The Books encourages...

- friendships beyond a classroom setting, to break barriers against being in different academic streams. 
- hybrid learning between online and offline collaboration and communication.

Keep Me Safe mobile application.

An app that empowers children to seek help when they suffer from domestic violence and sexual abuse. 

The suspension of schools during the lockdowns in the pandemic times have escalated cases of child abuse.  Victims are forced to stay in the same households as their abusers.  

Also, because of  children’s increased exposure to digital technology has given rise to technology-facilitated violence.  Children are groomed at the mercy of online sexual predators.  

Victims often fear the repercussions of telling the truth of what happened to them.  In their mind, there is no way out of the bad situation for them.  Nothing’s worse than having to live with the abuser under the same roof or having to face the abuser on regular basis.

There is the sense of helplessness and not knowing who they could turn to.  

Children.  I want to empower children and teens with the tool that they can use if they sense any danger or have suffered abuse.    This app will be their lifeline.  

Parents. Parents are very good at telling their kids about stranger danger.  However, abusers are usually someone their children know.  Mainstream media hardly put a spotlight on child abuse.  This app will be a tool that facilitates parent-child conversation on sexuality and sexual abuse. 

Keep Me Safe app - has the following features
- Direct access to help with press of the button
- Location tracing
- Tips on body safety skills. To learn about sexuality and sexual abuse. 

Ensure the physical safety and mental health of learners —for example, through tools for crisis support, reporting violence, and mitigating cyberbullying.

What specific problem you are solving?   Create a better daily remote & physical learning environment, for kids with difficulties sustaining attention and focus, and create the space for them to flourish in a holistic manner . 

JTBD include provide the tools and skills for optimising learning experience, reduce friction to learning, and reduce drop-out rates.  

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives? Students, Parents, Educators and UN World Food Program. Happy kid means a happier parent. 

The users comprise: 
1. Children (aged 6-12 years) who have difficulties sustaining attention and focus, with ADHD, or Sensory Processing Disorder, and their parents.
2. Educators who are faced with constant challenges on how to better design their Learning packages. 
3. Adult Lifelong learners

We create a playful and interactive learning online environment with the tools and resources needed to support the students experiencing learning and attention issues, setting them up for success. 

The (kid) individual is a whole person, and the solution will look into 
1/ Health & Nutrition eg right nutritional meal plan
2/ Movement eg optimal physical activity 
3/ Emotions eg storytelling, verbalisation techniques 
4/ Mental Wellness eg tools for fidgeting. 

(Pay it Forward) Prior to Covid, 1 in 2 or 388 million children receive a healthy and nutritious school meal everyday. Now with the disruption, the priority is to re-establish effective school feeding programs to feed 73million vulnerable children. With every subscription, we will match and fund the UN World Food Program, to expand the concept of education to address health and wellbeing and build back equitable health and nutrition for every schoolchild. 

Most closely addresses increase engagement of learners in remote learning environments and enabler through proper nutrition for a better quality learning experience for those living in low-connectivity settings (assumption of rural areas) 

 

What specific problem you are solving? Education inequalities is a systemic problem; minorities will always lose out - be it an African American in the US, or a teenager in rural areas of India. 

 

Some scary facts:

Source:  U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation

 

YOUR HISTORY AND WHERE YOU COME FROM DOES NOT PREDICT YOUR FUTURE. Learning is lifelong and it should not discriminate. What the education system acknowledged, but fail to execute well is that everyone learn differently. A standard education system does not always work for everyone. And for students who are already marginalised, it repels more than it attracts.

 

What’s more is this group are also causing the govt. and economy billions annually in healthcare and in public welfare (for homeless and unemployment). There is a need to redirect investment to the future.

 

The JTBD is to make education more approachable and less intimidating by

 

Students – flexibility to pick and match learning subjects with room to nurture (intrinsic skills), and room to explore (unearthing new interest). Gamification element keep them interested. Mentorship programs inspire them to dream bigger and to keep at it by breaking modules into bite-sizes.

 

Long-term: Incentivised to help and keep their children interested and work towards building a scholarship which will elevate the family’s finances. 

Short-term incentive is to redeem groceries coupons with each completed subject his/her child complete.

 

Federal Government – Lower welfare cost in a long run, championing education for minorities  spending less taxpayer money, winning votes! 

 

Corporate Companies and Sponsors - they get to vet out the best of the best through the system. Everything will be in blockchain – no way to fake the result. Investing in the future.

 

Mentors – contributing back to their society. These need not be academically sound or successful business owners. Mentors reflects everyday people and they could be a nurse to a reformed convict. There is nothing like learning through real life experience (of others).

 

HOW? A hybrid platform: Learning virtually through MINDTHEGAP platform, with one-on-one mentorship time and real-life-playtime with other students within the neighbourhood.

 

Smartphone penetration is the US is at 87%. We can work with Telco or corporate companies to donate credits/ data specifically to access MINDTHEGAP platform, giving every household assess to the education platform using their own devices.  

It addresses 2 key dimension of the challenge, namely:

An app that guides students with their homework and revisions through step-by-step instructions.

 When students face difficulties with their homework, they often have to turn to their friends, parents or tuition teachers to get help. 

But what happens if their friends or parents are unable to help, or if they don’t have access to tuition?

Children from disadvantaged families receive less access to financial and social resources than their peers from other social economic status. 

These gaps widen with each year, and their parents, who may be equally disadvantaged, struggle to understand their kids’ education needs and are unlikely to be able to provide them with access to expensive resources such as tuition. 

If this persists, the children are likely to fall behind in their formal education, get discouraged and unable to enjoy their time in school. 

 

This app will help provide students with clear explanations on how to navigate their homework. 

Students just need to take a photo of the homework with the app, and the appropriate solution and step-by-step workings will be generated. 

Essentially, it relieves the burden on less educated parents and provides an alternative to tuition teachers. 

This hopefully levels the playing field between the haves and the have-nots, and reduces the gap between them.

 

In fact, this app will be useful to all students regardless of their family backgrounds. 

To be financially viable and sustainable, the app will generate revenue from able-to-pay customers through a subscription model, in order to provide children from less privileged backgrounds with free access. 

This solution will increase the engagement of the less privileged learners, to provide them with an easily accessible tool for independent work. More importantly, this will enable access to an equitable learning experience regardless of socio-economic class.

In Conclusion
Over a decade ago, the US created a charter so that 'no child gets left behind.' The initial focus was to ensure that children from low income groups got the same opportunities as those from higher income groups. Somewhere along the way, children with disabilities got ignored and left behind.

It's time to change that, and with today's technologies it's easier than ever to implement that change.

LISTN  has the potential to become a tidal wave of inclusion if 'you' back it. Will you? I guess that depends on how well you've been "LISTN -ING".

A unified learning platform that helps primary school students learn, interact and collaborate, by simplifying the way they access learning apps, to improve their home-based learning (HBL) or blended learning journeys. 

 

When HBL was implemented in Singapore in April 2020, primary school students and their parents grappled with the sudden change from their day-to-day learning. For most, it was a big pivot, and they were expected to know how to use the various learning apps, including Parents Gateway, the parents’ portal by MOE – all while juggling online work and submission of assignments.

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives? SMART ALEC cuts through the clutter and provides a one-stop streamlined platform for our primary school students so they can focus on what truly matters – learning. Powered by an API that enables students and their parents to connect to the apps they’re already using, and machine learning to improve teacher efficiency with personalised content. With blended learning later in the year, this platform will further simplify how they learn, interact and collaborate with their peers and teachers. 

Which dimension of the challenge does your solution most closely address?
SMART ALEC is designed with the student in mind. While engagement of students is key, they are also able to access the platform for quality learning in low-connectivity settings or offline. Furthermore, we recognise parental engagement is significant to a student’s learning development and hence why parents can also access this platform. SMART ALEC also supports teachers by bringing pages from textbooks ‘come alive’ with AR and facilitates personalised instructions to students.

A gamified, interactive and personalised fun-exercise platform that students (age 12-16) can use to move, dance, and keep fit. Think of it as a gamified Tik Tok but for exercise.    

Whenever an academic crisis strikes, the first lesson struck off the timetable is physical education. It has been argued that for students facing a digital screen so many hours a day, this sedentary lifestyle has stunted their physical development. 

A new study found virtual education during the pandemic is linked with decreased physical activity and worsening emotional health for parents and their children: https://www.aappublications.org/news/2021/03/18/virtual-education-emotional-physical-health-031821

From the pandemic, the whole world is suffering what the NPR terms ‘the other Covid-19’ – the 19 pounds you’ve gain that you are struggling to lose. These experiences can be programmed for movement in a living room or movement via larger surrounding (park or trail)  

Here are some possible jobs to be done:

 

They mainly serve students aged 7 to 16 who are in one of the important stages of physical development ie puberty. However two other important groups that be included to join in the fun are teachers and parents. Such physical exercise will help with: 

How might we bring classrooms back to rural children during Covid-19 period when all the schools have stopped?

Accessibility and connectivity are the major challenges for children in rural areas even before Covid-19 started. Children need to travel a long distance for their learning and the pandemic makes it worse when schools stop abruptly - stopping learning altogether. 

Rural School Pod is a space modular system. Easily assembled like a lego system, equipped with the necessary technology and equipment that enables children at appointed time to enter into the pod and attend preloaded video lessons and a short live class. Parents can also login to the system via school pods to see the progress of their children’s learning.

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Very often, rural children neither have access to the internet nor their families have the ability to afford the necessary digital equipment. With school pods being built by charity organisations together with the local government in the villages, children will benefit from the allocated timings assigned to them for learning. The children's progress (such as homework submission, completed video or Zoom lessons) can then be updated into the main central education system.

What dimension of the challenge does your solution most closely address?

Essentially, school pods are meant to be a mitigation during this period of pandemic as technology helps to bridge the gap on accessibility and connectivity without being limited by the distance or financial inequality. The teachers are still able to monitor the children’s learning through their login and guided lessons. Lessons are tailored by school teachers and preloaded to the school pods. School pods are powered by solar. Hence, there is no need for a power generator or electricity supply. Short live classes can still be arranged by appointed timings for all the students and their teacher to meet online to promote interaction and address problems beyond the classroom. Individual counselling session and Parent-Teacher-Meeting can also be arranged via the Rural School Pods. 

Nexus

Nexus connects under-resourced communities by delivering quality learning experiences through a combination of Bluetooth mesh-network technology and hands-on projects.

COVID-19 did not create the digital divide, but it is highlighting existing inequities in the education system. Even in highly urbanised countries like the United States of America and Singapore, there exists pockets of under-resourced learners who are unable to get online and connected to the “education grid”. 

However, being digitally connected risks students missing out on opportunities to cultivate feelings of social connection. Furthermore, going online exposes young students to other negative experiences such as cyber-bullying and cyber-predation.

Hence, how might we enable safe access to quality learning experiences that builds social connection regardless of connectivity for students in under-resourced communities?

Nexus serves students, teachers as well as parents in under-resourced communities by:

In doing so, Nexus enables the following outcomes: