At Bogex, Educational software sits at the heart of our effort to not only achieve success as a software company but to give something back to society that has sustained us so far. Even as students, we speculated about technology transforming education as we knew it. In the last couple of decades, it did - only now, the opportunities seem even more abundant. We are excited by the reach of computers in the internet age and the potential to alleviate the need for experienced and committed manpower.
One good schoolmaster is worth a thousand priests.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll
If that's the case, one great tutoring system has to be worth so much more. Well-designed software by its very nature is free from the inconsistencies and limitations exhibited by human beings. There is no substitute for a great teacher who inspires his pupils to greatness.
However, great teachers are hard to come by. Software, on the other hand can reach those far corners of the world where millions of eager bright minds crave proper tools of learning but have no access to them.
Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education.
-- John F. Kennedy
Developed and developing nations owe a lot to their educational infrastructure. We see a great benefit for administrations around the world to take up remote schooling and e-learning as a serious low-cost and effective alternative to resource-starved conventional programs. Isolated towns in the United States have witnessed reasonable success by investing in remote schooling. We see no reason why such programs should not become the norm for many parts of the world.
Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
-- Confucius
In teaching it is the method and not the content that is the message.
-- Ashley Montague (b. 1905) (American anthropologist)
The primary aim of tutoring is to engage the student. We do this by providing a framework for the student to interact with the system. The user interface is designed to encourage questions from the student. The users have easily accessible options to annotate the content they are reading. The system tracks all interaction and can alert administrators to students who need more attention.
Expecting all children the same age to learn from the same materials is like expecting all children the same age to wear the same size clothing.
-- Madeline Hunter
That brings us to the content itself. The system maintains a master repository of knowledge and serves dynamic content based on each student's skill level, a parameter that can be gauged by tracking his/her interaction over a period of time. Content should never be static. If a student is learning, he should also be able to shape knowledge that serves him. The systems constantly seeks and tracks feedback in the form of questions asked, annotations, bookmarks and usage statistics to enhance the existing body of knowledge through a carefully scrutinized editorial control.
Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.
-- John Cotton Dana
Greatness comes from humility. While we strive to make our software the best available, we recognize the tremendous challenge in augmenting if not replacing decades old pedagogic methodologies. Lessons learnt as a result of past efforts will continue to guide us to produce even more effective tools for tutoring and learning.