Validate your problems, startup ideas to create products which people want

Create awareness about free educational content #education #EdTech

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:25:00 +0000

Due to the pandemic induced e-learning, Morally bankrupt Education Technology startups with Unicorn status in India are exploiting parents from marginalized communities.

I believe if we could create awareness about the availability of high quality education content like that of Khan Academy in regional languages, It could mitigate the instances of parents and students falling prey to these fraudulent education startups. After all they anyways steal content from free educational courses and charge a premium.

For those content which are only available in English, We need startups which can put consistent effort to localize them into different regional languages of developing countries.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Anki accumulated reviews #flashcards #education

Mon, 09 May 2022 14:07:00 +0000

Anki is a leading flashcard application used extensively by students for learning new languages to medical courses. It uses scientifically proven spaced-repetition technique to improve our memory retention and recalling abilities.

But if the review schedule of Anki is not followed religiously, The cards start to leech and very soon there would be thousands of due cards.

This demotivates many Anki users and stops them from using Anki altogether.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Teaching chess to kids #education #chess

Mon, 09 May 2022 13:38:00 +0000

Unless kids have access to parents who are passionate about chess or someone to tutor them systematically they would miss their chance to learn, play and enjoy chess properly.

Chess offers high returns in the form of second-order thinking ( /problems/263 ) for very little investment, Which is important than ever before since limited-attention content is harassing impressionable minds.

I feel there's a large need-gap for solutions to teach chess to children.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

New skills from short projects for organizations #skills #education

Fri, 19 Feb 2021 09:01:00 +0000

Hi all, since some weeks ago I have been diving in a new industry and learning new skills/knowledge. I have been creating small projects to showcase these skills. In the near future I would like to create a startup in the industry I am diving into. Before doing that, it would be great to have experience with organizations where I could help with my new skills/knowledge. In my view this would be a win-win. I would get to gain experience and use my new skills (before getting paid gigs and to build a portfolio), while organizations can benefit from the help in an area where they lack experience or time for.

Think about it as a very short project based internship. For a day-week max. For example, a small organization who wants help with their website and could use even basic knowledge of web development. You as a starting web developer or student, could help for two days In which organizations can benefit from someone helping them with their social media usage or web development.

Do you know of such platform? I would definitely be interested in trying it.

4 points posted by Toufic_e

Self-hosted online course distribution platform #tutorship #education

Sat, 23 Oct 2021 16:45:00 +0000

EdTech startups at scale serve the interests of neither the educated nor the educator but themselves.

As an alternative tutors need to host the course on their own platform, Which is easier said than done for educators who are not coders themselves.

There is a need-gap for platform which can enable the tutors distribute courses under their own infrastructure (incl. easy deployment to cloud). Such a platform should include video content distribution, chat, course work submission, assessment, certification etc.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Finding qualified tutor near home #education #tutorship

Tue, 28 Sep 2021 14:58:00 +0000

Last time, I've talked with another user about an idea of a free problem solver ( /problems/291 ) and it turned out that this idea would cause more harm than good for a lot of students. Instead, I focused on the need of providing better education for everyone (like students from all grades and also family members who want to educate their children but don't have time to do so).

There is a need for an app which can help people find a qualified tutor near their home and help them understand the topic easily and students will feel more confident and prepared before taking whatever exam they are going to take. Moreover, tutors can make extra money by helping students to understand topics better.

Feedback is appreciated!

3 points posted by rgm48

I have a hard time piecing code together #programming #education

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 21:46:00 +0000

I have a hard time figuring out what i need to know to build and piece together code knowing syntax is not enough to learn programming. I know basic javasript syntax but I have a hard time which syntax connects with what.

How do you approach a javascript problem? For this, I quit learning programming, and I would like to try again. I burned out on tutorial hell. One day, I hope to become a proficient programmer.

and now another course or list of syntax wont help. thank you!

3 points posted by anoncookies

Learning to make music as an adult #music #education

Tue, 29 Mar 2022 21:53:00 +0000

Hi all!

I've been interesting in learning to play and produce music as an adult, and been feeling quite intimidated by the concepts of music theory and all the things that need to be remembered. I've been finding that many of the online resources seem overly complicated and tedious to follow.

1 points posted by thisisseb

Comparing the value of online course certificate #MOOC #education

Fri, 01 May 2020 13:29:00 +0000

There is no shortage of online courses, first there were the likes of Coursera, Udacity and now every University have their own Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) or have partnerships with online education companies to provide their course.

All of them claim that their certificate is valuable with the employers, but how can be we sure of it? There is no clear way to know which certificates, from which MOOC providers are valuable and which companies accept such certificates.

It could be very useful if there was an online portal, which compares and rates these online course certificates based upon the quality of education and actual number of people who got employed because of the certificate.

5 points posted by Tina Ray

Realtime accent changer without changing voice #language #education

Fri, 30 Aug 2019 16:02:00 +0000

Learning and speaking a foreign language is easier when compared to mastering the accent of a native speaker. Many, who have thought to have mastery of a foreign language have found that the native speaker of that language don't understand them due to the accent.

Accent is the manner of pronunciation peculiar to a particular individual, location or nation. Mastering the accent of the native speaker, reduces the friction in the communication between a native and non-native speaker of the same language.

There are numerous intuitive ways to learn foreign languages now a days, including mobile apps; but none I know of provides the native accent of a word or sentence in my own voice. I feel learning a language with native accent in our own voice would offer much more complete experience.

Hence, there is a need gap for a service which takes in our voice and plays back audio of a word or sentence in a language and accent of our choosing. Please do share your experiences on this problem and possible solutions.

5 points posted by Abishek Muthian

History based education for everything #education #history

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 17:16:00 +0000

When I learn new concepts, focusing on the history behind the concept i.e. why there was a need for it, what problem it solved, what was the earlier iterations of it helps me to understand that concept in a much more intuitive way.

e.g.

Exploring how Pi was calculated 2000 years ago by Archimedes using n-gon and How the method was continued until Newton changed the landscape in 17th century by introducing his formula derived from geometric construction gives us greater understanding of geometry, arithmetic progression, calculus etc.[1]
How the usage of binary in the form of punch cards in Jacquard loom for repeating patterns in textiles; gives us the foundation of modern computing[2].

Wikipedia's history section does a decent job, but how about an in-depth, intuitive mechanism to learn concepts using its history?

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Teach me vocabulary without spending extra time #language #education

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 17:37:00 +0000

I'm trying to improve my vocabulary to sound sophisticated when I speak and write emails. There are several tools which helps me to learn a new word every day, but since it's out of context I usually forget most of them.

I was wondering that it would be nice if I can learn better vocabulary while doing routine tasks like browsing the web, but most of the web articles use dumbed-down vocabulary for the benefit of general audience and so I'm not learning any new words.

Have any of you faced this situation? How can this be solved?

3 points posted by Jonas

Offline programming course for prisoners #education #prison

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 17:48:00 +0000

I have a friend in prison to whom I am sending educational materials, I figured that learning programming could be very useful and so I searched for materials which could teach prominent programming languages without access to a computer but couldn't find anything noteworthy.

I understand that a programming language doesn't make much sense without access to a computer, but decades earlier when there were limited access to the computers people still learnt programming through books.

There is a very high population of incarcerated people in my country, I think an offline equivalent of MOOC for programming via paper medium would be very useful to the inmates anywhere in the world.

I saw other remote education related problems on this platform and So, I was motivated to post this. 3 points posted by Jonas

Remote education for underprivileged #education #poverty

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 13:54:00 +0000

COVID-19 pandemic has put the world into lockdown and the children are forced to get their education through Internet - especially via video conferencing often using smartphones, radio, television and texting.

Unfortunately, even feature phones let alone smartphones are beyond the reach of many, resulting in the lack of means to get educated in the marginalised communities where education is the only way for the next generation to escape the poverty. There are several reports of children committing suicide after being distraught from not being able to afford a smartphone[1][2][3].

Pew Research centre's 2019 report says,

Across the 11 emerging economies surveyed as part of this report, up to one-in-five people do not own or even share a mobile phone.

Lack of smartphone or other electronic device is not the only problem, lack of proper electricity, cellular and Internet connectivity inhibits the underprivileged from receiving remote education.

What we can we come up with under such conditions to deliver remote education to the underprivileged? Note that several governments are trying to crack this problem as well, so any solution to fill this need gap could be a viable international social good startup idea.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Cheat sheet for everything in same design format #education #cribsheet

Fri, 08 May 2020 13:41:00 +0000

Students and professionals of different domains use cheat sheets for remembering what they learnt at a quick glance from web, written or printed notes. Some even refer to cheat sheets to find the information at a faster rate without having to go through the full documentation.

There are cheat sheets possibly for everything from cooking to medical education. Here's a collection of cheat sheets for different programming languages.

But since cheat sheets are made by different individuals, each cheat sheet has different design format. Different colors, arrangements of columns, fonts and text sizes makes the cheat sheets disjointed.

If there is a platform which builds and curates cheat sheets in a single format i.e. like Wikipedia for cheat sheet, it would make cheat sheets more accessible, seamless and mainstream.

3 points posted by Yogesh Basu

Finding which college course help reach ambition #college #education

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 17:03:00 +0000

There are plenty of resources for finding universities, colleges and their ranking; but I'm yet to come across one which can simply tell me which course should I take based on my current skills, financial capacity and at which university to reach my ambition.

Say, if my ambition is to be an astronaut, may be I need not waste 4 years on Engineering; perhaps I can take 2 years course on Physics, Math, take up the pilot training program and apply to NASA (or) May be new space ventures such as SpaceX, Blue Origin would have Astronaut training program themselves and I should focus my education according to it.

A education/career advising web service or app should be able to give me this advise after getting the necessary inputs from me such as education, skills, grades, financial situation etc. based on up-to date information on the field of education, career, global economy, emerging technologies etc.

3 points posted by Tina Ray

An off-screen alternative to digital quiz #education #kids

Wed, 09 Sep 2020 03:34:00 +0000

Many kids are being exposed to screen more than the daily ideal limit due to being required to finish their homework and submissions. A service that can generate offline printable playful quiz/homework forms for google classroom and other services might be useful. You print it, give it your kids for filling and then you scan/capture it to submit it back. 2 points posted by John_Doe

Free problem solver #education #solver

Tue, 07 Sep 2021 17:30:00 +0000

There are many homework solvers like Chegg, CourseHero, SolutionInn, etc. which offer similar services but their prices are quite high for someone living in a third world country like Mexico. We have a WhatsApp group in which we are a lot of people solving homework problems yet only one of them has a Chegg subscription and it's awful that everyone asks her the answers because nobody (but her) can afford a Chegg subscription.

This affects students who need their homework solutions ASAP and those with Chegg subscriptions who don't want to be bothered by people (who don't have those) asking them to give their answers.

1 points posted by rgm48

Low quality language learning resources #language #education

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 07:13:00 +0000

It's very time-consuming for me to search for language-learning resources.

And when I do find one, it turned out to be a low quality and half-baked content. It's demoralizing.

Most sites that are listing resources are filled with affiliate links and advertisements. Some aren't even genuine.

It's difficult to learn a language seriously when there is no syllabus or even a guide to help me chart my way in learning a language.

1 points posted by yusuf

Open collection of learning resources by topics #learning #education

Fri, 23 Oct 2020 20:39:00 +0000

I often want to learn about some topic, from very broad (like "C# programming") to very specific (like "Source Generators in C#"). There are lots of resources about any topic (blog posts, articles, videos, courses, books, etc.) and some are good, some bad. On Google, you get results sorted by some algorithm and they may not necessary be the best for learning or suitable for your level of knowledge (e.g., beginner/advanced). Search results are just not very well curated.

I imagine there should be a site where anyone could register links to such learning resources, organize them by topics and rate them, so the best resources for the topic are selected by the community.

I know that for programming topics, there are pages on GitHub like Awesome .NET or Awesome Flutter where people create curated lists of resources about some programming language. However, I believe this should be more unified and accessible also to other areas than programming. It should be similarly open for contributions like GitHub Pull Requests but not so complex.

1 points posted by janjones