Sinetek

Sinetek is an EdTech organization striving to provide a smart and effective solution to the many problems of the education system with a digitalized method. We focus on removing the underlying problems that obstruct the academic success of a student to a root level. We have two mottos – to ensure the improvement of our current education system with a bigger inclusion of technology and to support the most underserved students with vouchers and donations. 

Why we are using completely self-built devices and technology?
Unlike other organizations in Bangladesh, we are using a device completely designed and developed by us from our very own funding. The reason we preferred this to third-party devices is that our device is built in a way that can work in rural areas with the poorest network connection. Since many rural places in our country are still not under 3G/4G coverage, we have to make sure that we are providing a device that can be used everywhere, for all people.

Our project Smart Education System is a Pilot stage, ongoing project. We work to make the quality of education better for all students in Bangladesh. But younger students are our biggest priority. According to the Directorate of Primary Education (DPE), Bangladesh has one of the largest primary education systems in the world. There are 37,672 government primary schools in the country with an estimated 10.7 million primary school-aged children (6 to 10 years).

In a country far from the usage of technology and digital campus, it is almost impossible to observe the actual condition or improvement of a student for the parents and the teachers. It is difficult and time-consuming for parents to bring their children to school. Therefore, students are mostly on their own to attend their classes, which unfortunately gives them a chance to skip classes and participate in other activities without the knowledge of their parents. As a result, parents are in the dark when it comes to evaluating their children’s education. Parents also don’t know much about the safety of their children – whether or not they reached the schools at all.

The very old, traditional ‘pen and paper’ method is exhausting and time-consuming. Teachers still have to write homework in the diaries of each student in a classroom. As a result, the main class studies don’t get enough time. Classes are done in a rush by the teachers and students are distracted. If a student is sick or absent for any reason the student can't get the homework, and they are not able to keep track of missed assignments.

The huge communication gap among the teachers, students and parents adds to the poor performances of the students as well. The guardians have to rely only on the exam results to learn about their children’s performance and learning progress. As a result, the students who are not naturally motivated to study keep falling behind due to a lack of parental support and monitoring outside of school hours. Parents need a way to communicate with the teachers about their student's performance to enhance their support from home. 

As our schools are completely deprived of EdTech facilities, classes are less effective, less fun and difficult for especially the younger students. Our classes don’t have the access to multimedia facilities and it’s all adding to the quality of learning. According to the Stirling Institute of Australia, it’s important to get a hands-on understanding while studying. Especially for children, it’s imperative to create an environment that is more practically engaging to assure better knowledge retention. Unfortunately, most of our schools don’t have any computers or other tech devices in classes to enrich the lectures. Multimedia technology and its applications of it in any education system as a teaching and learning tool is a must to maintain the international standard of education. This has been confirmed in several studies that have investigated the impact of multimedia technology on the education system. Milovanovi et al. (2013)

Most schools in our country do not have library facilities. It’s depriving both the teachers and students of enriching their self-learning and in-depth studies. 

Poverty is one of the major issues in Bangladesh. In a 2012 survey, UNICEF stated that 40% of Bangladesh’s population is children and statistics indicate that 600,000 are out of school because of poverty (Educate A Child). Even after enrolling in school, so many poor children have to drop out because their parents are unable to afford the study materials. 

We have a self-built device and software (usable on Smartphones and computers). The software has a simple and user-friendly interface which can be accessed by anyone who has basic knowledge about smartphones. Our solution ‘Smart Education System’ already launched version 1 of the series in March 2022 with the following features to serve our community with a swift, easy-to-access, digitalized EdTech experience to bring solutions to these problems.

• Smart Attendance: To solve the problem of the time-consuming, traditional pen-and-paper attendance tracking methods in academic institutions, we have successfully launched a smart technology machine along with the software. Now it is super easy to check the attendance status of a student for the teachers and the parents. By using this technology, a student can confirm his or her attendance by scanning the Smart ID Card to our Smart Attendance Machine within one second. After the scan is complete, guardians receive an automated notification confirming the student’s presence. When a student doesn’t attend school, guardians receive an automatic SMS about the absence of the student. This smart technology aims to achieve an ultimate solution to the communication gap between parents, students, and schools. Thus, parents can be assured about their children’s whereabouts. This will also solve the problem of time wastage.

• Homework: By using our App students and parents can learn about the currently given homework if, by any chance, a student misses a class. Teachers can save a huge amount of time by writing the homework in the app instead of individually writing it in every student’s diary. This way a student will not lag behind as well as the parents will be notified about the study topic to ensure the progress of their child.
  

• Regular Feedback: Another major feature of our App is the ‘chat’. A teacher will provide feedback to the parents directly through the App based on the student's performance with the help of the ‘chat’ feature. Whether a student is performing poorly or improving, can instantly be reported to the guardians through the App. This will establish an unwavering communication between the parents and teachers so that the parents can take necessary steps to provide special facilities to improve a child’s studying.

• Notice Announcement: Our App has the ‘notice’ feature where teachers share any notice given by the institutional authority so that parents and students can learn about any announcement regarding the academic programs. This is a special facility for the guardians to be up to date about the school activities without going to the school campus physically.

Our project Smart Education System V2 and V3 is working on the following upcoming features:

• Online Payment & Vouchers: Currently, we are working on setting up multiple payment systems so that parents can pay their tuition fees online. Another huge initiative that we are taking is to offer vouchers to the students who cannot afford their study expenses. This voucher will be collected as a donation from various sources in hope of giving study opportunities to the students in need who fail to manage their tuition fees. 
  Why we prefer providing vouchers instead of financial donations?
  The reason is obviously simple. While the poor people in our country are struggling to manage food and shelter, they may spend the given endowment for something else instead of the education of their children. So, we provide chances for the poor children to be enrolled in schools for very reduced fees and discounts. According to a 2021 press report by UNICEF, nearly 37 million children’s education is at risk because of the economic collapse caused by the pandemic. We commit to bringing a major positive change by fundraising and helping poor students.

• Free Study Materials for underserved students: In addition to the vouchers, we will provide study materials for the children who can not afford the books and other study materials. This will ensure more involvement of poor children to be at school and receive a quality education.

• Digital Library for enriching the quality of learning: We focus on creating a livelier study environment in the schools. One of our upcoming project features is to create and establish digital libraries in the schools to build the practice of self-studies and in-depth learning for students and teachers. We have been creating a data vault with all necessary articles, films, videos, audio lectures, graphs, eBooks and stats for every grade individually. We have been making our own virtual books and also collecting the previous papers made for the related topic. This will reduce the waste of time and ensure the direct and instant application of technology in classrooms. According to The Mind Lab Expert Dr. David Parsons, digital learning is greatly important because it increases access to education and knowledge and empowers students with the mindset for success (The meaning and importance of digital learning, The Mind Lab, January 2022).  The modern education systems must include virtual teaching for children’s better understanding. 

• A low-cost computer for bringing EdTech experiences into the classrooms: We are developing a very low-cost computer with a big monitor using ARM Cortex-A53 processor and dot matrix display for a more exciting, lively and engaging class environment. Studies showed that younger students tend to have better knowledge retention when they are given the opportunities to learn with video instruction and the like instead of plain textbooks and lectures. Fundamental subjects like Science, Sociology, History, and Mathematics need to be taught in a new, innovative, tech-supported method. One of the recent DPE surveys shows that around 70% of children are unable to read or write properly, or perform basic mathematical calculations even after several years of studying in Primary schools (The Daily Star, Problems with our education sector, 2014). This will make the learning more fun and effective for the students and bring more flow to the teaching method. 

• Well-designed and innovative syllabus: One of our major project features from Smart Education System V2 is to build a well-designed syllabus. Unfortunately, the current academic syllabuses are poorly designed, and even poorer is the implication. Our syllabuses are mainly theoretical and students are deprived of the practical knowledge and applications of their learning. To hone a student’s skills to their full potential, it is imperative that there are enough practical activities to cover. We will design syllabuses with plenty of practical lessons and track the completion of the lessons with our smart App. This will remove the problem of keeping students solely in the theoretical learning zone. The fact is, it is not only the students that can deceive and ditch classes. Often, the teachers may avoid performing classes that require more responsibilities and difficult to perform the lessons. We will keep track of the activities of the teachers as well if they are completing the assigned lessons by the checklist provided by our smart App.

• Online Platforms for FREE training to build students’ work skills: Another of our project features is that we plan to provide online platforms to build and hone the skills of the students with special work skills. Every child is good at something besides their academic learnings. We will provide them with proper training and other necessary support. Especially for the underserved students, we will provide freelancing training for free so that they can fight poverty and be self-sufficient. 

Sinetek is one of the very first and one-of-a-kind organizations with the mottos of raising the education standard and helping underserved students in Bangladesh. In this country, we don’t have another potential competitor quite like us though in a global platform like LEAP we have many. Currently, we are providing our services to four schools in our capital city covering around 600 individuals, and planning to expand our service to a greater scale.

To understand the various adversities children, teachers and parents face in any educational organization, we have done many interviews with parents and teachers personally and professionally. Our team members performed details surveys to adapt our project and products based on the needs of the community. Our survey helped us to address some of the major common problems that have a direct and strong negative impact on students, especially, the younger ones, school-going children. 

Additionally, our self-built software, ‘Sinetek Smart Education System’ keeps the track of the engagement of the users and monitors the activities that give us a deeper look to measure our impacts. We have come to know that the tech-deprived classrooms greatly hamper the pace of learning for the students. It is difficult for the teachers as well to deliver the lectures in such an old, traditional, and completely handwritten ‘pen and paper’ way. The recent pandemic situation of Covid-19 has affected the communities to the greatest extent. We have had some surveys to monitor the situation and noticed students’ absence or disengaging in the online classes because of the lack of previous experience or practice in engaging in virtual classes. Many teachers find the process of online classes very foreign because they don’t have previous experience. Same picture for the parents as well. 

We have worked on a field level to collect information on how the old and traditional teaching method is being super ineffective for children. Also, the pandemic pushed the whole system to the brink of collapse. Almost 37 million children in this country are at risk with their education. (UNICEF, October 19, 2021)

As a poverty-stricken country, the education sector in Bangladesh is always affected. The poor families find it luxurious to send their children to schools while struggling to earn basic human needs like food and shelter. Our project focuses on providing vouchers and free study materials for underserved children besides improving the quality of education. We directly communicate with parents, teachers, and organizations to learn about the financial conditions of students to prepare the donations and distribute them to an academic level. The Covid-19 situation has hampered the speed of our work and though we are currently working with four schools, our ambition is to reach and include 50% of schools and education organizations in our country by 2025. 

The Motto of our Theory of Change is to improve the overall quality of education for all children with the involvement of smart technology and to ensure the participation of underserved students equally with the application of digital donations.

Our services from Version 1 are providing smart campus facilities to ensure quality education to the students of our country. Besides, our App features is a key solution to most of the communication gaps that parents face while dealing with their children’s proper education. The voucher facility is an initiative to resolve poverty-based illiteracy among underserved students.

The features of ‘Smart Education System’ Version 2 are going to contribute to a better quality of education at a fundamental level, directly in the classrooms. The digital library will enrich learning and build foundational skills for both children and teachers. Engaging multimedia elements can leave an instant positive impact on easier and more effective learning for younger students. A better syllabus with the feature of tracking the completion process assures a better and more reliable outcome. 

We also believe that it is essential to assure work platforms for students so that they can apply in their lives what they learned in their classes. That is why Version 3 of the project is going to provide online platforms to train the students for honing their works skills besides only academic learning. We believe that a good quality education system will always go beyond the mere theoretical aspects of learning and focus on the practical sides as well.

According to Nesta’s Standards of evidence, Sinetek’s level of evidence integration is level 3. We collect the data of evidence by studying and analyzing the previous research on Edu-tech projects that are relevant to ours. Our team members are constantly experimenting with the studied knowledge to bring newer aspects of development to the project. We focus on bringing changes that improve the quality of education for all children and manage vouchers and donations for poverty-stricken students. 

In addition to the research studies, we perform surveys on a very personal-professional level. We have a 12/7 customer service system to monitor and keep records of the feedback from the consumers of our services and products. In our last performed survey, we interviewed parents, teachers, and some students to learn about the impact our products are leaving to bring the changes. More than 10% of the teachers gave us a positive feedback with in-depth descriptions of how the application of our project has changed the quality of education for the better. Students are more engaged than ever and the guardians have better communication with the teachers. As result, monitoring a child’s performance is the easiest for our users.

The ‘Homework’ feature from the software is making the instructions given by the teachers more effective since they can add images and audio/video files to the homework. Students have an easier understanding of the assignments they are given. School life has become smoother for both the teachers and the students because of the digitalized method. Saving a lot of time is helping everyone to focus more on studying.  

To evaluate the impacts of our services, we have done one on one consultations with our customers. More than 30 percent of consumers responded positively and more than 10 percent of parents mentioned how hugely it changed their lifestyles as a guardian. The feedbacks tell that our consumers have become able to experience a better system regarding their children’s education which they never experienced before. Our smart IoT device assured more accuracy and a sense of safety for their kids. They can now monitor their kids’ progress through smartphones by using our App service and they no longer need to rely on the term exam results to know about their kids’ study conditions. The App reports can keep the parents up to date. With the help of our device and software, we can quickly and easily check the performances of the users.

We occasionally interview students as well. Children are finding the new system more fun and interesting too.

We have a tech team of five senior engineers and a customer support agent to constantly monitor and improve our services to the consumers. For our smart education system V2, we are working on four new features. Our team is currently working on the ‘Online Payment and Vouchers’ feature and we are targeting to execute it in the next five months. We keep performing professional and personal surveys and keep records of the feedback and opinions gathered from the users of our services.

We also organize seminars and small training sessions to monitor the ability of our users to understand how and where we need to remodel our project and products. Also, we strive to assure that the users know how to use our software and device properly. 

Establishing an effective strategy and smart approach to ensure a better quality of education with the application of up-to-date technology and also assuring the inclusion of the most underserved children.

Although we have initially piloted our service to four schools due to the slowing effects of the pandemic, our aim is to provide our service to the whole country in order to ensure quality education in an effective way. To establish a smooth distribution of our service and to build our system to an advanced level, we need –

• Professional consultation and advice to find out fields to improve our business model

• Media coverage/networking opportunities and promotion to distribute our services in a wider range

• Sponsor to expand our manpower and workplaces to keep our project running. The sponsorship will help us to complete our version 2 features and many more to come.

Our question to the LEAP fellows will be, “How can we assure the development of our business model in a reasonable price while maintaining the quality of services?”

LEAP has professional experts with exclusive foundational skills and fitting experience that can help our organization to thrive in our technology sector and to work on the drawbacks. With the help of their mentorship and guidance, we can strengthen our project with methodical, strategic, and technical advancement. Moreover, the international exposure of LEAP can help us to get the media coverage to promote our services to the people of our country and hopefully from global communities as well.