His work on Educare earns him State Award

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, September 5

To ease the online study-at-home burden of students during the pandemic, a bunch of teachers developed an app in early 2020. Used for online education across 10 states in the country with a whopping nearly 48,79,783 subscribers today, the app is actually a brainchild of a bunch of Jalandhar teachers looking to ease their pupils’ online study strain.

The Educare App, developed by a group of Jalandhar teachers in early 2020, went viral within weeks. One of its founding members was awarded with the state award today for his contribution to education and for the improvement of students’ communication skills.

Chandrshekhar, (40) one of the founding members of the app, who was awarded today, said, they had never imagined the response it garnered.

It was around May 2020 that the Educare app was developed. Burdened with a steady stream of videos and study material, they were asked to download it on their phones in the beginning of the pandemic. Many students found it difficult to cope with it initially.

Chandrashekhar said, “Both the teachers and students found it difficult to handle the onslaught on their phones. There were repeated complaints of phone memories running out. So some of my colleagues and I got together to design an app for the children which comes handy and is easy to use. None of us are from the IT background. We had never imagined the kind of popularity the app would garner.”

Within a week of starting it in their schools and then the Jalandhar district, the app already had 5 lakh subscribers. On July 11, 2020, nearly two months after its Jalandhar launch the app was adopted at the state level. The easy-to-use app has takers in 10 other states as well — UP, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir.

It is available for all school students for free. The app is such that if a student misses an assignment, an online session etc. they can find everything on the app the next when they log in online.

Teachers who developed the app along with Chadrashekhar are Jaswinder Singh, Deepak Kumar, Harjit Kuamar, Haridharshan Singh and Umeshwar Narayan.

Chandrashekhar said, “I am thankful that my efforts have been recognised. I am grateful to the Education Department. I think of it as our collective award. We worked as a team and the aim was just to make students’ lives a bit easier.”