Attending the prestigious Nobel Prize ceremony is not something every student can boast of. So, when two students, Kaarika Das from Delhi University and Abhishek Kaushal from IIM-Ranchi, shared the limelight, witnessed the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and also emerged victorious in the Telenor Youth Forum (TYF), it put them on the national and international map, it was indeed the icing on the cake, for the duo.
Kaarika and Abhishek were winners from India, among 25 delegates who went to Oslo, Norway, for TYF 15. They were shortlisted for their ideas on how technology can successfully create an impact in the field of education and health.
GOING MOBILEWhile Kaarika’s idea, Teleshiksha, a mobile platform to share educational videos, clinched the deal, for Abhishek, his app, E-coach, did the trick.
Kaarika explains how, according to a United Nations study, Indians have a greater access to mobile phones than toilets, and this fact, coupled with an experience she had while teaching Math to some students, gave her the brainwave for Teleshiksha. “I am associated with an organisation called the Esteem Youth Foundation. Last January, a group of friends and I were doing a community intervention programme where I used to teach Math to kids. During one of the sessions, a student, Siddharth, came up to me and asked me if he could record a video of the class, on a phone. It wasn’t even a smartphone; he had borrowed it from one of the instructors. He explained to me that his friends were busy playing cricket instead of attending the session. As the exams were fast approaching due to which they did not want to miss out on what was being taught, they had asked him to record the session. That’s when it hit me that if the session was recorded, the impact of what I taught would be doubled. While 12 students attended the class, over 30 of them learnt what I taught, through the recording. That struck me as important and gave me the push to start Teleshiksha.”
The mobile app will provide a social platform to enable collaborative sharing and building knowledge through video courses and publicly-shared curriculum. “What sets this educational app apart is that it not only allows access only to institutions like MIT, Harvard or Oxford, but also to billions of people who want to discover, watch and learn originally created courses by students, educators and instructors. All one needs is a mobile phone and an Internet connection,” says Kaarika.
She further elaborates on how the content on Teleshiksha will not be restricted — it could have content ranging from primary school courses to those that are vocational. “For instance, if you are a teacher who is well-versed in origami, you could upload videos on the subject and collaborate it into a course. I am vouching for knowledge that is not limited to any periphery.”
Abhishek’s inspiration for his app, E-coach, came to him as a solution to combat lifestyle diseases that kill millions annually, and other health-related disorders that affect the quality of life. “I was shocked to learn that my mother suffered from diabetes. While diabetes cannot be cured, it can, however, be managed, if we know how a person is prone to it,” he explains. “For instance, if we are aware that an individual is likely to suffer from diabetes because of his or her lifestyle, it can be nipped in the bud by taking stock of the individual’s lifestyle. It is precisely this reasoning that played an instrumental role in shaping my app, which also helped me emerge victorious in the TYF,” he adds.
E-coach will help create awareness on food habits and healthy living. It will track user’s everyday activity levels, sleep patterns, heart rate and weight which will then be uploaded to the mobile app through a wearable health band and weighing scale that is enabled by Bluetooth. “The main feature of this project is a Master Health Risk Assessment Test that evaluates patients’ lifestyle and thereby figure out what health risks they are most likely to be prone to,” adds Abhishek.
Both apps are not yet out in the open. While the design for Teleshiksha is still a prototype, Abhishek’s team includes doctors from Bengaluru who are working on the project. A technical team will work on digitising the data and results.
NORWAY EXPERIENCEBoth Abhishek and Kaarika are unanimous in expressing excitement at attending the ceremony and their admiration for Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, whom they had a chance to interact with. “While attending the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony was overwhelming and gave me a high, it was also a great learning experience,” admits Kaarika. “It was a great experience,” says Abhishek. “Rubbing shoulders with great people at the ceremony was nothing short of amazing. It was a humbling experience, meeting and interacting with the likes of Jimmy Wales and the others.”
