DELHI Two dinosaurs move in front of the class while the student presents. The scary lizards, though, are virtual characters on the mobile phone screen.
The students of the Indian school present videos from their smartphones that they have made with a Finnish application.
The educational institution located near Delhi in the city of Ghaziabad is called Indirapuram Public School.
Opinahjo is one of the first schools in India to use the augmented reality mobile application developed by 3DBear from Helsinki.
With the help of the application, you can, for example, attach three-dimensional images and texts produced on a computer to videos shot with a standard mobile phone.
– You can see things that you might never see in real life. We students learn better when we see things in practice, praises the eighth grader Nilesh Munshi.
A seventh grader Aarjav Jain nods next to him. He says that 3DBear’s program makes learning easier because it allows you to model and visualize a wide variety of things. Jain bluntly says that when he grows up, he plans to become an aeronautical scientist.
Augmented reality offers opportunities
Pupils use the Finnish app to do their homework. They can present, for example, an animal, a three-dimensional shape or even one of the UN’s sustainable development goals using an application.
– They create a scene at home and share it with the teachers. This has given the students a lot of freedom, says the science teacher Anupam Sharma.
A seventh grader Saisanjana Patro says that he has used the application to make videos that three-dimensionally model, for example, the nervous system, the digestive system, the heart and the operation of the periscope.
Sharma says that he found the Finnish app online and learned to use it with the help of YouTube videos.
He later contacted a 3DBear representative to clarify issues related to the app. Through that, he became one of the company’s ambassadors who, among other things, train teachers from different countries to use the Finnish company’s application.
The Finnish company is looking for users and partners
3DBear arrived on the Indian market last fall as one of the first Finnish educational technology companies.
The Finnish application has gained visibility because 3DBear’s investors include the large Indian media company The Times Group. It publishes, among other things, the widely circulated, English-language newspaper The Times of India.
CEO of 3DBear Jussi Kajala says over the phone that the demand for virtual learning environments is growing.
Kajala estimates that 3DBear is already used in teaching in about a hundred Indian schools. The company now has 100,000 unique users in India.
Most use the Finnish app for free. Some schools and individual users have acquired a paid additional service.
– Our purpose is to make the application available to as many people as possible and show what possibilities this tool offers. That’s why we haven’t tried to make money now, says Kajala.
According to him, this summer the company will focus on marketing its application on The Times Group’s channels and with the help of Indian social media influencers.
According to Kajala, 3DBear’s earning model in India is not based on direct user fees, but on the fact that the company enters into cooperation agreements with local educational technology companies.
3DBear is negotiating a partnership with several Indian companies. The group includes, among others, the market leader Byju’s.
Kajala says that if 3DBear succeeds in closing the deal, the company will become an augmented reality technology supplier for a major Indian educational technology company.
The pandemic made educational technology commonplace
In India, the educational technology sector grew explosively during the corona pandemic.
There was a great demand for applications and services that support distance learning when schools had stopped face-to-face teaching to combat the spread of the disease. Billions of euros worth of funding flowed into the industry from investors.
Bangalore-based Byju’s grew into the world’s largest educational technology company, and a few of its competitors became so-called unicorns, i.e. companies worth more than a billion dollars. New Indian startup companies sprung up like mushrooms in the rain.
Little children are taught to read, online courses teaching English and mathematics are sold to elementary school students, and coaching courses are sold to those aspiring to university.
The background of the boom is also the improvement of internet connections outside the big cities and the proliferation of smart devices, says the consultant and journalist Rajneesh De.
The largest Indian companies already expanded abroad. They operate, for example, in Brazil, Mexico, the Middle East and Africa, says De.
This spring, Indian educational institutions returned to face-to-face teaching as the pandemic subsided. Since then, many educational technology companies have had to lay off employees and change their operations.
Investors’ enthusiasm has cooled and the media is talking about the bursting of a bubble.
The importance of the hybrid model is increasing in teaching
India’s largest educational technology companies, such as Byju’s, Unacademy and Vedantu, are not only investing in online services, but have started to establish local education centers in Indian cities.
De estimates that a hybrid model combining face-to-face and online education is part of the future of education in India. The role of educational technology companies in this model depends on how effectively they are able to complement the formal education offered by educational institutions.
Online courses for schoolchildren sold by IT companies cost tens of euros or more. You can spend more than a thousand euros on preparatory courses for university entrance exams.
– Using applications is still quite expensive for individual students. Many Indians cannot afford them, says De.
Inexpensive learning games could be successful
Despite the slowdown in business, the Indian educational technology market offers opportunities for Finnish companies.
India, with a population of around 1.4 billion, had a total of around 250 million schoolchildren and students in 2018, according to statistics website Statista. So the potential market is huge.
There would be a demand for learning applications based on gamification, estimates the science and education advisor of the Finnish embassy in Delhi Mika Tirronen. He emphasizes that the product must be affordable in order for it to succeed in India.
– A few ten euros a year starts to be an amount that, when you go over it, you already move into the slightly upper-class segments. A basic Indian will not easily pay more, says Tirronen.
Helsinki-based 3DBear is now attracting new Indian schools to use its learning application.
Former maths teacher of Indirapuram Public School Shalini Chauhan at the time of ‘s visit, was transferring to another school near Delhi as a principal.
Chauhan says that he plans to use 3DBear in his new school.
– Children would surely love to see a lion in front of them in the classroom when I ask them to use 3DBear. It would be a different experience for them, thinks Chauhan.