New Delhi: Two Rajasthan government employees have developed more than 250 mobile applications in eight years to provide study material in Hindi to rural students free of charge. Known as "App Gurus", Surendra Tetarwal and Suresh Ola got to work in 2015 to make learning easy for students who were finding it difficult to get study content in their preferred language, Hindi, online.
Both Tetarwal and Ola, hailing from Sikar district, have postgraduate degrees in computer sciences. While Tetarwal is a sales tax officer, Ola is a headmaster in the education department. Tetarwal and Ola's efforts to help students pursue education with ease have won them recognition and both central and state governments have conferred them awards.
Among the major awards received by the duo include National ICT Awards 2019 by the Union Ministry of Education; Rajasthan Bhamashah Shiksha Vibhushan Samman 2019-20 for donating mobile apps to the state government for up-gradation of education in the state; and Rajasthan E-Governance Award 2016-17 for remarkable contribution in the field of e-governance by mobile apps in the field of education. "We developed these mobile applications in our free time after government service hours. While we were preparing for competitive exams, we found that rural students were not able to get study content in Hindi. We first uploaded content on blogs (for the students) and later in 2015 started developing subject-specific mobile applications," Ola said.
He said applications carry the study material for primary, middle, and senior secondary classes, as well as for students pursuing graduation and post-graduation. He said they have donated about 100 mobile applications to the state government to further develop study content and cater to the needs of the students. "Our mobile applications have been downloaded by lakhs of users and have crores of page views," Tetarwal said, adding during the Covid pandemic, students greatly benefited from these apps.
The apps are available on Google Play Store for free, he said. Ola said keeping in mind the importance of ICT in education, they have also created a free, open-source mobile app maker platform theappstation.com for the teacher community. With its help, thousands of teachers have contributed to the digitalisation of education by creating their own mobile apps without any technical knowledge, Ola said. From this platform, mobile apps related to audio, video, quiz, notes, calendars, radio, chatbot, and other features can be created by drag and drop method, he added. "Currently, server shifting work is going on presently and the platform will be live in the next four-five days," Ola said.
