ZeClassroom - An innovative technology that can bring education to students from rural schools amidst their technological limitations

Mahatma Gandhi once said that the “The future of India lies in its Villages”. As per the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation around 65% people of India lives in rural areas and 35% lives in urban areas as of 2020. The progress of our country depends on empowering the rural population and education plays a major role in their upliftment. 

The choice of right technology and resources along with right minds together can bring a revolutionary change in educating the students from rural areas. 

This led to our research in finding the fundamental problems in conducting online classes in rural areas.

Problem

• The main hindrance to conducting full-fledged online classes in rural areas is the availability of high-speed Internet for students and parents as well as for educators in rural areas. 
• Most video conferencing softwares consume high internet bandwidth which leads to slow video streaming and loss of internet data for students. 
•  Purchasing costly internet data packs is unaffordable for parents from rural areas. 
•  Students are currently dependent on multiple tech solutions for attending Online Classes. They rely on different apps for sharing documents, video conferencing, online exams, viewing study materials and recorded videos, etc. which makes education and learning cumbersome for students and educators.
• Security issues have been reported in many of the existing Online Classroom softwares where unknown participants attend these classes creating a panic among the students and the educators. 
• Students may not prefer to install apps due to lack of free space in their devices and security issues. 

      Our Vision

The vision of Zermelo Technologies is to make education available to the students of rural areas. We believe in what Swami Vivekananda said that “If the poor cannot come to education, education must reach them at the plough, in the factory, everywhere”. Hence we are open to provide ZeClassroom for free to institutions of rural areas who do not charge any fee to their students for their education / infrastructure.

Solution

• ZeClassroom consumes least bandwidth as less as 256 Kbps ensuring seamless video conferencing experience for students from rural areas.
• ZeClassroom consumes least internet data in the range of 100 to 400 MB for a session of one hour for students, when compared to 1 GB or more by other apps and enables students to go for cheaper internet plans.
• ZeClassroom is browser based software, which means no installation is required and enables students to save space from app installation. This also prevents hackers from stealing any information from the device.
• ZeClassroom has a 3-level authorization and each user has individual credentials using which they are authenticated. The application ensures that one user can login only from one device at a time making it highly secure.
• ZeClassroom has a very intuitive user interface and is accessible to users across all age groups and will be easy to use for rural students.
• ZeClassroom is multi device compatible.
• ZeClassroom has all essential features like attendance, high speed video conferencing, timetable, online exams, interactive live quiz, study materials, streaming video player, live class recording, etc. bundled together in one single application which makes it easy to manage for students and moderators.

ZeClassroom has the ability to work with very less internet speed and consumes least bandwidth during live classes which is the need of the hour, especially in rural areas where only 50% or less number of students are even coming to school. 

We see a huge potential to bring education to students in rural areas even if they don't come to school due to the pandemic. The students have stayed away from school for nearly 8 months and the repercussions of this is huge. There are reports of rural parents loosing job forcing them to send their children for child labour. Many such factors will create a socio economic unrest and the efforts taken so far to educate the rural students will go in vain. 

We believe in a hybrid model where online and offline education can go in parallel in rural areas thus enabling the rural schools to also go digital. 

ZeClassroom has a very easy to use user interface and many features like an interactive live quiz online exams etc will help the school to use a single platform to go digital in a very short time.