During the recent hype of online learning, JEE focused Amazon Academy (1) contests in India’s EdTech market. Earlier called JEE Ready App launched last year in beta version now took a fresh face in 2020.
With free enrollment and JEE mock tests to track your progress, amazon academy gives in-depth analysis to students into preparing the competitive exam offering expert level JEE faculty.
Why Amazon entered India’s Ed-Tech market?
Amazon academy provides students who are preparing for JEE to improve their learning and practice by practicing with handpicked JEE tests by professional JEE teachers; it also recommends students take full tests, part tests, chapter-based tests, and previous year question papers and provide a detailed performance report. It enables students to solve high quality to easy-level questions with their comprehensive question bank with over 10,000+ items with detailed step-by-step solutions and hints to learn the syllabus of this competitive exam easily. With great reviews by the students and users, amazon academy impresses by providing a shortcut to solve questions subject-wise and memorize crucial concepts and facts through mnemonics. In all, amazon academy is here to compete with a huge package to master one competitive exam by providing in-depth coverage of the syllabus.
EdTech: Let’s understand what’s the hype about?
Edtech is a combination of IT tools and educational practices aimed at facilitating and enhancing learning. Making education portable and accessible to students without being available physically in classes. The digital form of learning is more engaging for the students, and it brings fun and creativity with a basic knowledge of the operation of computers for normal use. The upcoming century will be entirely based upon IT, where everything you want or need will be at your fingertips instantly. With the internet, video calls sitting at home give the in-class comprehensive communication between students and teachers. Here we need to understand that EdTech is not a substitute for teachers; it is just the medium where the teachers can use different forms of tools available to make education accessible for every student in need. The motive is to bring knowledge into the reach of every child who deserves a decent education. The usage of multimedia doesn’t compact just to videos when it comes to tools for EdTech. When it comes to recent viral edtech tools in the nation, there are top 5 that can be mentioned.
Some ed-tech tools in India:
- GuruQ (2)– figuring out the best tutors who can provide quality education for your child can be a task, not anymore. GuruQ is India’s largest tutor community platform where you can choose certified and professional tutors who offer both face to face teaching and online. Users can pick from the top-rated tutors ranked by the reviews given to each tutor on this platform.
- LogicRoots (3) – this initiative to make education fun is applauding upon the idea of learning with the help of games to boost the scientific and mathematical skills of the students. This Jaipur based startup develops educational material in the form of interactive games.
- Byju’s (4) – hands down currently, Byju’s is India’s high-end leading edtech company. Using a psychological and technical approach to make education engaging for the students changed the methods of learning. It also offers teachers different tools to provide the most complicated concepts in the most simple form.
- Toppr (5) – this platform is amazing when it comes to practice and sharpen your skills when you’re preparing for school boards, olympiads, engineering, commerce, medical, and other competitive exams. It also provides personalized tests and additional practice papers to improve their examination scores and reach their full potential.
- Cuemath (6) – Curemath launched the first ” Mathematical Universe” where the students can learn from basics to top-notch mathematical algorithms and its multi-format approach by using fun puzzle games, card games, workbooks, math boxes, and tabs; these comic books style medium made mathematics magically easy and fun to understand and clear the basic concepts.
Casting education with the spell of technology
For students:
- The individualized learning experience where the students can learn at their own pace and the teachers can frame the courses according to the children, as the study material is available to the students on the go, they can do as many revision as they want in their desired subject and continue learning in their own pace without any rush of competing with other children consider every student ahs his her capabilities to understand. Learning at their own pace brings not only confidence in the students but also enhances their skills. Whereas the survey says that the students enjoy learning online, approximately 92% of teachers believe that technology in education has helped them change the orthodox methods to teach and look into a broader education view. Edtech affects students and teachers differently in a positive way.
- Edtech has increased the collaboration between the student to student, teacher to teacher, parent to teacher, or student to teacher interaction. Students can use the cloud-enabled tools that allow them to discuss and share their views on the ongoing topic in class, teacher-teacher collaboration where the teachers come up together to bring out the best plans for the students for the better outcome taking help if each other from their respective experiences this brings understanding in between the colleagues. Parent-teacher meetings are frequently held due to edtech, where the parents can keep a check on their students and discuss their progress with teachers via video calls.
- The digital environment makes it easier for the student to learn wherever, whenever, whatever, with easy access to learning through various digital devices. The devices enabled with wifi allow them access to the institution’s multiple platforms, learning or gathering more information through different media without being physically available in the classroom. Some applications also provide teachers and students to conduct doubt sessions.
- There is always a teacher we hate and the one who was our favorite, we cannot change how we feel about those teachers, but we can develop personalized educational experiences. The education during the era of edtech has more emphasis on personalized learning experience given to the student directly sitting at home where teachers plan classes according to the students by making customized learning, enhancing the growth of students’ strengths, skills, and interests.
- With edtech, teachers can ask students to perform tests constructed by the teacher, the ways of doing homework have changed, the submission of assignments can be made through video calling for filling the feedback form, they can also take the help of podcasts and even construct another way to do their homework.
For teachers:
- Providing information when you’re surrounded by a massive amount of information on every topic is difficult. Hence, it isn’t easy to stand out and let the students see your worth. Even teachers are also profiting from edtech, providing knowledge. Simultaneously, you save time, and the task which astonishes the most to the teachers where they don’t have to is over busy work they did during regular teaching.
- Google forms or google surveys and other educational platforms provide a grading system hike with artificial intelligence. It has become easier than ever for the teachers to grade students fairly due to different edtech tools and methods.
- Wasting paper and high budget spend on printing have reduced since edtech institutions’ growth with digital learning has the easiest way to grade the assignments and record their homework. Edtech has helped teachers to understand the mindset of the students and give focus to the needy students.
EdTech: Marketing strategy
Considering the best time to enter the online education market in 2020, out of 5000+ ventures active from the past 10 years, 435 came into the business in the last 2 years. Online learning platforms like Byju’s, Unacademy, Diksha, and Khan Academy have been developing in the EdTech field for years.
- Generating marketplace – for the users where you can either publish your work to teach or buy a course/skill you want to excel in. such an example is Udemy and Skillshare where the structure is commission based. Half the commission goes to the tutor or the buyer, of course.
- The in-house team where the company’s team members make the courses generated with the information’s authenticity. The group’s methods have specified subject coaches to instruct students by their trained professionals for the company’s highest performance.
Monetize through EdTech
- The freemium business model where the premium services are provided is free of cost to the user. Still, the applicable charges are made for the company’s additional services to grow its functional features. The educational platform Unacademy provides free courses, but the user is asked to pay for some special features like to download or to save the course to watch later.
- The paid courses where the service is sold for a fixed prized and the user can pay for the course they’re interested in. the platform that offers paid Udemy courses.
- Subscription model where the service provider asks in-build subscription and the user gets access to the courses, Amazon academy itself uses subscription model medium to monetize.
The recognition of technology’s need with its advantages and disadvantages has formed a cluster of various edtech providing companies where the knowledge is available from the poor to the richest. The national education policy 2020 came into the act on 29 July 2020, contours the vision of India’s new education system. Complimenting NEP 2020, India’s Digital India Campaign facilitates the growth and development of the EdTech market.
With immense power comes responsibilities
even though online learning is easily accessible, there is a need to understand the leverage we are given to other dark matter for the web. Edtech has become an ocean of knowledge. In contrast, we need to acknowledge its potential risks and dangers. Before handing over this knowledge’s command in your child’s hands, providing instruction and disclaimer manual would not harm.
The scope of EdTech in India
India is the second-largest country globally as a consumer after China, with over 1.33 billion population. Being the largest schooling system in the world, the Scope of edtech in India is vast, and due to pandemic, it has escalated to immense growth. During the past year, India has become the second-largest hub for edtech usage, where over 400+ new companies have enrolled in the field of edtech. Education technology’s worth is now 247 million dollars, which is expected to reach around 1.96 billion dollars by 2021. The impression of edtech has partially spread nationwide, yet at some corners of the country, which are underdeveloped and lack the survival of necessities, and being digital for education seems a long way but not impossible. PM Modi’s Digital India campaign has made it possible to provide students from all over the nation to connect through technology and indulge in online learning.
Amazon academy focuses mainly on jee preparation, whereas other platforms such as Unacademy and Byju’s, the current leading edtech companies in India, focus on all education streams. The specialized orientation amazon academy can benefit its further growth by targeting a particular audience section and making it a chaos-free one-stop destination. With such a target-oriented approach, various other edtech companies provide specific specialization to the users making it easier for them to have everything desired in one place. The app still being in development has over 3+ rating and 500k+ downloads on the google play store. The app includes in-app payment options to have access to specific premium courses. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took a challenge into entering the highest-grossing Indian EdTech systems. Still, the main focus on understanding the students’ actual needs is a difficult task to be accomplished here. With so many various mediums available in the market at this point of time where online learning is actively practiced due to covid 19 pandemic, it is difficult for the students to chase and invest their valuable time in the best resource for the optimum usage of the EdTech mediums provided in the country.
Selection from the best is an uphill task. Pick from the best of the available applications for education technology. There are numerous resources. Hence, selecting the best from the best is the most difficult task. Some courses online are paid, and some are free but still provide comparable matters as of the paid ones. The best way to select the best available resource for your skill enhancement is to know about the subject. In case of students, they should thoroughly go through the syllabus that is provided for the exam or the topic, research about your which platform provides the study material in context with the syllabus, go through the trial videos over few media so that you know the study methods of the tutors and how effective it is for you, look for the platforms that offer the doubt sessions after the completion of a topic learned online through their medium, other than this is research research research! Find what fits you the best according to your needs, understanding which is your strongest subject and in which you need a bit more help. After the selection of the course, it is all your hard work and practice. Choose the learning platform that provides free mock tests, at the first attempt the free mock tests for training, and later go for the paid ones by subscribing in the app-based paid version of the company’s mock tests or platform.
EdTech is the future for our education system and has some amazing assets to fashion our old educational methods into hi-tech intellectual learning versions. So, flow with the vibe, learn a new skill, break the barriers, and indulge in enhancing your skills and looking into great opportunities ahead. Knowledge brings confidence, and there is no age bar to attain knowledge. Take advantage of these accessible tools.
