Kashmiri and Lucknowi duo at IIT Bombay come up with app for teachers, students of J&K

Kashmiri and Lucknowi duo at IIT Bombay come up with app for teachers, students of J&K

SRINAGAR: Two IIT-Bombay batchmates, Mubeen Masudi from Kashmir and Bilal Abidi from Lucknow, came together to solve the problem of slow internet speed in J&K that was hindering online education there. They decided to develop a technology platform that would be a one-stop gateway to teachers as well as students, doing away with the need of using different platforms in order to carry out academic duties, including giving assignments, holding discussions, and conducting exams.
Being a teacher himself for eight years and having personally experienced the hardships faced by students in Kashmir, Mubeen Masudi along with his friend conceived the idea of developing a mobile-based application in July this year, which would cater to the requirements of teachers as well as students in a situation of low-speed internet.
“Even tech-savvy teachers like myself faced difficulties in online teaching, as we had to switch to different applications for different academic purposes. For live sessions, we used Zoom app. For assignments, we used Google Classroom. For discussions, we used Whatsapp. I couldn’t find any apps available which could offer a one-stop solution to such problems. So, I decided to come up with an application offering these all features on a low bandwidth, keeping in view the slow internet speed in Kashmir valley,” Mubeen told Kashmir Reader.
By the end of July, both friends were ready with their application, called “Wise App”, It provided a 2G-friendly video interface along with complete classroom features.
The 2G-compatible app enables teachers to conduct live classes on Zoom, which has been integrated within the app, without any hassles of sharing meeting IDs and passwords. It helps teachers to send and receive assignments, facilitate discussions, share study material, and get automated attendance reports, all at one place, besides monitoring the time duration of each student attending the online class.
“The main idea behind developing the app was to integrate all the online teaching challenges on a common platform, to make online teaching easier for teachers and for students. At low-speed internet, using several apps was not only cumbersome, but also distressing. Our app was aimed at relieving this burden on teachers as well as students,” Mubeen said.
Wise App has also earned recognition from the Education ministry, which tweeted about it. “Two graduates of @iitbombay have developed an Andriod application “Wise App” to enable #onlinelearning on 2G service. The application is extremely user-friendly, completely free of cost, and comes without any advertisements. Kudos to the team,” the Ministry of Education’s official Twitter handle posted on August 13.
Mubeen told Kashmir Reader that he and Bilal had to take the help of many professional app developers in the process of designing and developing the app, which cost them several lakhs of rupees. They spent the money happily from their savings, interested only in the objective of helping teachers and students hampered by slow internet speed.
Since the app has been launched, about 5,000 teachers have enrolled thousands of students for online teaching, including college, school and tutorial educators. About 100 teachers among them are from outside J&K, who have found the app both interesting and helpful.
“On Wednesday, a Kashmir-based female educator pursuing her PhD from University of Chicago registered herself as a teacher on Wise App. She holds online classes for mathematics for over 150 students in Kashmir free,” Mubeen informed.
Mubeen says the app is available on Playstore, and doesn’t require a teacher to be tech-savvy. Any teacher can use the app easily and teach students online, he said.
The app also offers cloud storage for each user, to enable teachers and students to store important assignments and other study material without consuming the memory of their phones.
About security and privacy concerns, Mubeen says that Wise App doesn’t have any such issues as it has security features of the highest standards.
“We value the security and privacy of users, due to which we have added an extra layer of privacy in the app. Only the teacher can access the profile and contact number of a student who is in a group. This solves the problem of girl students who are insecure about their phone number being visible to everyone in a group,” said Mubeen.
He also informed that Wise App featured in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Atamanirbhar Bharat campaign in August, and was ranked 43rd among the list of 74 success stories that were selected to mark the 74th year of India’s Independence.
“We’re looking forward to seeing our app being used by every teacher and student of J&K, especially. We’ve dedicated this app to them, along with several others who are struggling with similar problems. Our efforts and money will pay off once we see Wise App in the phone of every teacher and student,” Mubeen said.

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