elementory

An intuitive STEM problem-solving toolkit.

The Problem:

The hallmark of any education system is to develop students into critical thinkers, capable of solving the problems of the world in which they live. Many schools in India face a great difficulty in doing this because they are incapable of providing their students with problem-solving experiences. The primary reason for this is the lack of resources (content, technology, and training) available to them. Problem-solving experiences help students to understand the relationship between what they learn and the real world. Not having them, will deprive the students from having interest in learning, particularly in STEM related concepts.

The Solution:

Elementory provides tools to educators to bring these problem-solving experiences to kids. This STEM toolkit consists of modular hardware (built using Arduino), easy to understand block programming (built using Blockly), and a challenge-based learning content.

The hardware and software to control it — both open-source — are developed to encourage tinkering and allow the kids to prototype their ideas fast. The learning content consists of nano-challenges which are designed to familiarize the student with the hardware and software, along with problem-solving frameworks. As the student progresses, these nano-challenges become more open-ended and community oriented, encouraging creativity and critical thinking. 

The open-ended challenges will be available on an online portal. Students and educators will have access to the all the content and they can post their solutions, exchange ideas, and receive feedback from their peers and community coaches.

The learning content will act as a manual to guide not only the students, but also the educator, as the process of learning never ends. However, it will not be instructions to perform a task. It will be intuitive.

The Potential:

The goal of elementory is to catalyze problem-solving attitude in kids from a young age, enabling them to design solutions to societal challenges when they are older.

The most recurring issue faced by educators is to make STEM concepts more relatable to kids. The elementory toolkit is designed to be the bridge between school curriculum and the real world. When kids are more aware of the relevance in what they learn, they remain curious to learn more. Elementory is especially empowering, as the kids themselves become the problem solvers, rather than mere passive observers of problems in their communities.

Although the open-source arduino platform is easy to use for the undergraduate level student, it isn't intuitive for kids and adolescents. Hence, there is a need for more accessible tools. The entire learning experience can become faster if one has the fundamental knowledge, in any area. 

The elementory toolkit is developed on arduino and includes a technology challenge-based learning. It removes the precision in dexterity required with arduino, and the hassle of syntactic errors in text programming. The system allows kids to plug in various modules and learn through play. The block programming allows creative freedom to work on projects.

The elementory toolkit is built using open-source technology — Arduino and Blockly. Because of their widespread nature, there is a plethora of things that kids can work on which will make the tinkering experience fun and intuitive. The primary reason for this is to have future collaboration and partnerships with other companies. 

Technology is used as a facilitator to help the kids creatively solve problems, rather than being the eventual solution to any problem. More importantly, internet is leveraged to connect kids with community members, peers, and mentors, as the goal is to help them solve problems within their communities.

Currently, blockly is only available to use on computers. Kids these days have an easier access to tablets and smartphones, than computers. We are working on making an app for more market penetration.

We are also continuously testing the prototypes at schools to collect feedback and improve them. We conduct workshops for school kids and use these prototypes to finalize the challenge based content, which will be available online.

Currently, we are working with one school. We want to test this at least 3 more schools to run pilot programs for 6 months.

In the years to come, we wish to host various hackathons, makeathons, meetups, and national competitions. We would be doing this by integrating this into the school curriculum and partnering with companies to reach out to more users.

By giving kids a platform to express their ideas creatively and apply what they learn in their schools in a fun way. We think that working on nano-challenges and projects will bring relevance and a deeper understanding to strengthen the concepts they learn at schools.

Customers will be reached through partnership with schools and makerspaces. We will also be using direct to consumer materials.

Our vision to retain our customers is by creating an online community, and having regular open-ended challenges, community events and competitions. We will also be adding more modules to be used with the hardware.

Due to the product being open-source (both hardware and software), it is available to anyone who has access to internet. 

The software is available on GitHub (link provided below). The hardware would be available for purchase. The hardware design will also be available on GitHub soon.

We are still in the hardware and software prototyping phase. Currently, we are working with 100 unique users — kids in the age group of 11-14. These users are also helping us test the products. We are taking a slightly slower approach in testing and evaluation because we do not want to compromise the quality of the products.

These kids have now been introduced to block programming which is used to control electro-mechaical hardware, so that they can work on simple projects that can be related to what they see around them (for example, simulating traffic lights, as shown below).

We are limiting the numbers to make sure that the product quality, especially the learning content, is not compromised.

In the next 12 months, we will reach out to 750-1000 kids, and in 3 years, the number will be approximately 1.1 million kids across tier-1 and tier-2 cities of India.

What we expect to see the students develop a problem-solving mindset, where they have the capacity to identify problems around them, brainstorm for potential solutions, use the toolkit to implement prototypes and assess the efficacy.

We expect to see these results in approximately 6 months after the first “intervention”.

We have performed research by reading journals, articles and books, and also by speaking with parents, teachers, and experts in the field of experiential learning and pedagogy. 

We believe that having an intuitive design is important to facilitate a fully functional product. We have experience in STEM fields since we have studied them in our undergraduate and graduate programs. We also have expertise in hardware prototyping, manufacturing and design. 

Since we are using open-source technology and modular design, we have been able to reduce the developmental costs.

Our business model involves selling the problem-solving toolkit and the learning content to consumers through e-commerce. We would also charge a minimal fee during any event we organize.

These events will act as marketing channels to attract more customers. They will help us reach out to other parents and students, who are the potential customers. This will lower our customer acquisition costs.

Education is a an industry where collaboration is crucial to ensure quality. By participating in Solve, we can receive good feedback from the experts who are working to achieve something similar to us. 

The most important reason is to network with peers and look for collaborators who would partner with us in the future.

There are two barriers where getting help from Solve would help our team to proceed with more confidence:

1. Impact assessment of hardware for kids.
2. Pedagogical research between interaction of hardware and software for kids.