Foundation Projects

Shikkhok.com

Shikkhok

The Shikkhok.com project aimed to provide free online education and high-quality courses in Bengali language to rural and disadvantaged students in Bangladesh and India. The Shikkhok.com platform brought together educators and researchers from all over the world to create free-of-cost content in Bengali language on both basic and advanced topics, to develop a model for ultra-low-cost online education for students in the developing world and to serve as an open, free, and cheaper alternative to traditional educational institutions.

Besides the online based dissemination scheme, Shikkhok.com has developed innovative methods to reach rural students with no access to the Internet. Shikkhok's rural village Bazaar-based supply method involved releasing the course material to mobile phone shops, where rural students can load the streamlined and short videos on their low-end mobile phones. In addition, Shikkhok.com has developed a Raspberry Pi-based (credit card size computer) kit which was then loaded with course lecture videos and given to rural schools without internet access. Shikkhok.com has demonstrated that successful Massive Online Open Course system (MOOC)s could be developed at ultra-low cost.

An image showing the Shikkhok.com website home page.

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