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Learning is a social experience. It is not only about learning content but learning to deal with others”, so do we all realise.

Online learning is the future of education. Online learning is definitely on the rise and there need not be questions raised on the same. More students (with less choices) are adapting to blended learning – combines distance learning with traditional classroom methodology, due to the flexibility and ease of use in maintaining a balance on work-personal commitments.

Striking benefits of Online Learning:

a) Online learning is known about accessibility and inclusivity:

eLearning facilitates flexibility and removes the physical barriers that prevent many people from fulfilling academic or career ambitions

eLearning allows students to work from pretty much anywhere, at their comfort

b) Online learning ensures that all students receive the same level of education:

eLearning ensures that all children receive a first-class education, by treating all students equally regardless of merit and competence

A virtual learning center, which includes online lessons taught via video conferencing

c) Online learning is bringing an educational revolution – in the form of facilitating ‘a blended learning approach’:

Hybrid courses are now the new norm in educational institutions – schools, universities, and colleges. The trend is set to continue due to an ever more interconnected digital world and some major investment from big tech

Also, blended learning in higher education is producing higher academic achievement than exclusively face-to-face and online courses (as per the experts in the industry)

d) eLearning is a less expensive alternative to traditional class-room based learning

In the Education sector, things are dynamically changing and students are witnessing a revolutionary change and schools of tomorrow won’t look anything like the ones students have been so far and that go to today.

Realities of Online Learning: While eLearning creates plenty of opportunities, there are potential drawbacks too, to consider for:

The huge amount of choice is a real benefit for learners. Also, it leads to a greater imbalance and disparity in the quality of teaching, online tools and resources, student support

Accreditation for educational institutions is a sure way to check on its credibility and also essential for choosing long-term career options (Key employers only choose learners with accreditation online degree)

The impact of learning without regular direction is always a threat to students (although online learning offers flexibility)

A long break from formal traditional education, may also impose isolation on students, by spending long hours studying alone (Without the kind of personal attention that comes from more traditional forms of training, learners become demoralised and give up)

eLearning platforms should encourage connect with fellow students so as to share ideas and offer moral support, which is always a great area of concern (that is still not being addressed)

Social elements of the courses – such as participation of fellow students via chat-rooms, forums, and even regular meet-ups, team building exercises, creates a real sense of community among the students

The Human Impact of Traditional Learning is lost in Virtual Learning:

Building a real-life network with fellow students and tutors is an essential part of online learning, thus creating a real sense of community among the students, as it is also the guiding factor to differentiate between success and failure.

Reciprocation in the form of either a thank you or congratulations from a human via Skype, Google Meets when a student passes an assignment or an assessment, in the form of human recognition, is always an encouragement to students. This makes students self-worthy than computers recognizing our efforts and validating them, which is the missing part and hence a flaw in Virtual learning platforms.

The Future of Learning:

For a long time survival, with the on-going CORONAvirus pandemic, blended learning will play a dominant role. Online learning is not just here to stay, it is set to become an integral part of the future – as students have the flexibility and institutions are encouraging more students to enroll as it is cost effective and keep up with consumer demand and changing technologies.

Schools, educational institutions in particular, have no choice than to integrate Online Teaching (facilitating online learning to its students) as a methodology. To further enhance, some institutions are integrating next-generation technologies like augmented reality, artificial intelligence and virtual reality to experience VR-based lessons, virtual experiments and VR products.

For example, a project can include a VR game where a forensic science student can investigate a virtual crime scene and analyze the evidence they find.Such technological advancements undoubtedly will lead to wilder forms of speculation, but it’s important to note that schools and big tech firms are focusing on integration rather than wholesale replacement.

In the real world, ‘real-life’ teachers will still play a pivotal role in educating the next generation of students. In fact, they are absolutely crucial and essential.

Teachers play a really influential role with VR just being an engaging tool, which will cut short the course duration of 30-40 mins to 3-4 mins.

While there will always be a place for traditional, classroom-based teaching, even classrooms are becoming increasingly more integrated with online learning. Also, while it’s almost impossible to predict what directions technology will take the next level of teaching to, online learning is now set to become a major part of learning institutions all around the world.

At mPowerO, we help our clients maximize on eLearning capabilities to effectively reach their educational and business goals with fully-managed support.

If you would like to understand how we can help you get started with digital learning mail us at [email protected]

Contact us for a follow-up meeting and/or demo session.

Whether you publish academic text books, Test preparation books, Children books a newsletter or a journal, you may pose the same question that a majority of publishers have; how do I decide which digital publishing platform best suits my publication plans? With a range of options, from custom designers to self-service platforms, choosing the right one might look like a minefield.

Some platforms are built for wide use, while others are designed for the benefit of specific industry verticals. Some platforms are intended for self-publishing, while others need continuous support from an external team. Some platforms charge a recurring monthly payment, while others charge a one-time license fee.

Ahead of contemplating an ideal digital publishing platform, you need to know all the necessary details to ensure that you pick the right one.

Here are the key and most common considerations for selecting digital publishing platform for your business: #1. Build vs Buy Dilemma: Open-source CMS, such as WordPress, generally offer basic system features complimentary, and charge an incremental cost for additional plug-ins, thus making an affordable choice for professional publishers. However, this is more suitable for publishers having good internal technical capability to build and support the platform, besides the luxury of time to customize it to the business needs.

Alternatively, you may go for an off-the-shelf publishing platform that offers most ready-to-use features, which can be quickly configured for your business needs at minimum time-to-market.

While the systems are quite configurable, any customization beyond the functionality/features supported can become an expensive and time-consuming affair.

#2. Support for Interactive Content: Does the platform enable you to add interactive features like videos, pop-up media, animations, etc. to build user engagement? It’s not necessary to have these features enabled upfront in the platform, but the platform should be open and flexible enough to be able to support such plug-ins, on need basis.

# 3. HTML5 compatibility: Web publications built with the support of HTML5 do away with the need to download any app or an extension for content access. This makes it easy to access content; this is why your Publishing platform should be compatible with HTML5 to ensure that your readers can gain access to your content directly through their browsers.

#4. Multi-platform Support & Optimization: Make sure that your publishing platform is compatible with the various OS, Device and Browsers; and at the same time, possesses capability to distribute content through various digital and social media channels for users’ consumption

#5. Cost of Ownership: This is a topic we got to get to, sooner or later. The cheapest publishing platform available today could cost your reputation in the long run. And this doesn’t necessarily mean that you always get more, when you pay more! It’s important to understand the overall cost of ownership of publishing platform – the one-time costs, recurring costs, maintenance & support costs, customization costs, plug-ins/interface costs, annual costs, price escalation costs, migration and life cycle costs, and all other hidden and displayed costs. Ideally, choose a platform that offers pricing scheme proportional to your business/transaction size and grows alongside as you reap the benefits of the platform.

#6. KISS is Today’s Norm: Keep it simple and silly (KISS) is today’s need for all businesses. Ease of us is must, even for the most flexible and powerful platforms. Publishers want their teams to focus on the core business, with less-brainer involved in leveraging the publishing platform. This simplicity is resultant of many factors such as – technology choice, user interface design, navigation process, speed and tool-set offered to the users.

#7. Measurement and Analytics: The platform should provide built-in capability in the form of content insights, traffic details, customer/user engagement details, by integrating and leveraging analytics from Google and other media/platforms.

When the entire world is embracing the digital wave, then why should the educational sector get left behind. Education is for all, and distance should never be a hindrance. In order to empower the educational sector and to benefit all its stakeholders (schools, colleges, training institutes, enterprises, publishers), mPowerO came into fruition.

What is mPowerO?

mPowerO, a cloud-based eLearning platform, which caters to stakeholders of the educational industry. From providing learning management solution to educational institutes, skill development to enterprises to promoting digital content for publishers and supporting the growth of digital publishing – mPowerO is curated to improve continuity in learning.

Developed by SkillPro and earlier known as iShiksha, mPowerO is an end-to-end Digital Solution 2.0. mPowerO for Publishers is an online platform, which enables publishers effective digital transformation. mPowerO offers 100% brandable native application and a web solution for browsers. Moreover, it is a SaaS solution, where you have an entire team having your back with app updates, security, new features, 24*7 support and many more.

For using mPowerO, you don’t need to be tech-savvy or tech skills to use mPowerO, as a person with minimalistic smartphone knowledge can go Live in a day. Just add some content to your mPowerO app, which can be uploaded, created or pulled in from any other sources. You can customise it and launch your fully branded app from anywhere at any time. While you focus on your readers and content, we empower you with technology to go digital.

Now, you can monetize your digital content by leveraging easy distribution, expanding customer base and securely distributing digital content across the globe.

Why mPowerO is different from other Digital Publishing Providers?

Brand-integrable Platform We offer a platform, which you can sell as your own. Add your brand name, customise as per your requirement and sell the mobile application as the new book. You can deliver lesson content (Pdfs, ePubs, Video, audio, interactive content with HTML5, tests) and configure to your own pedagogy.

Customised Solution Every publisher is different, and we appreciate if you think out of the box. You might need a special solution, and we are ready to push our solution to the limit. Our experts will guide you, help you so that our Digital Publishing solution fits perfectly with your needs and integrates perfectly as per your device.

Digital Delivery In Various Format mPowerO is a mobile-first cost-effective SaaS solution, which supports interactive multimedia-rich content – e-pub, pdf, html5, videos etc and can be accessed through any digital platform (mobile, laptop, tablet, computer). We strongly believe that we are now in a mobile generation, and most readers consume content mostly on mobile devices. So, it is of utmost that your content looks and reads perfectly on any device size and orientation. So, create, publish and distribute multimedia-rich content in any format and share without geographical restrictions.

Distribution Model mPowerO’s main aim is to empower Publishers to have seamless cost-effective secured digital content delivery, with ease of use and monetize the digital content with easy distribution, without any geographical constraint. Thus, with mPowerO’s Digital Publishing solution, you can leverage your existing sales team and channels and distribution for B2B, B2B2C, and B2C sales models.

Secured mPowerO is a completely secured SaaS solution. You can have Digital rights management (DRM) tools or technological protection measures (TPM) for online and offline creation and distribution of digital content. This will restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works and nullify the chances of piracy.

Deployment As mPowerO is a mobile-first cloud-based solution, deployment of the solution can happen in less than a week’s time. You can curate, digitize your content and start operating from anywhere at any time and you won’t even need any extra hardware cost or maintenance IT overheads. We are blessed with an amazing Customer Success team, who are constantly appreciated and well received by our clients. Our team effort is the key to the success. Not only our client-facing team members take the effort to solve the problems, but our entire team huddles up to solve the challenges and questions.

Competitive Pricing mPowerO is the leading Digital Publishing solution to Publishers, loaded with cutting edge features that would help any publisher compete with the biggest brands. From various convertors to simple UI/UX design supports publishers to easily upload, curate, distribute secured content and get real-time analytics and insights on readers for better content creation. And don’t worry about the payment as you can pay us when you earn. We bet you won’t get such an option anywhere.

The growth of digital communication technologies has stirred things up. While many believe traditional print agencies are the best and most effective ways, it is far more productive to focus on new ways that have been creating an effective impact due to the rise of digital. In an era when digital technology is claiming its mark, digital publishing is the shift that stands as the smartest opportunity to create new recurring revenue streams.

Access to new potential clients In the span of the last five years, there has been widespread adoption of smartphones. Nowadays, information is available online, instead of newsstands. With further digital evolution, this trend is going to escalate more. Thus, readers are also changing their mindset. They are shifting from conventional areas to reading online. With print publishing, your reader or audience is limited. Moreover, the reach is also determined by the production and shipping cost. However, digital publishing enables you to an audience, which is virtually unlimited. Local content can reach people from anywhere in the world, and national publications can expand across geographies. And this is possible at a much lower cost, thanks to digital publishing.

Know more about readers The more you know about your readers, the expectations of your audience, the more you get a profound idea about your content. While print publication limits your information-gathering capabilities to only demographic information, digital publishing gives you easy access to valuable information like age, content popularity, demographic information, download history and many more. Digital publishing will enable you towards creating a tailor-made content and reach more and more audience effectively.

Digital publishing enhances the engagement rate of the audience, thereby expanding the reach of the audience.

Flexible content enhancement choices With print, the type of content remains limited to only photos and texts. However, digital publishing heightens the variety of content and helps you to play around and get creative as much as you want. From incorporating a video to adding interactive polls or even providing more insights about particular words or phrases – you can do it all. Digital publishing enhances the engagement rate of the audience, thereby expanding the reach of the audience.

Vast distribution choices With digital publishing of content, the mode of distribution increased by two-folds. The content can be distributed through computers, laptops and even mobile devices. Format your content as per your need and share it with your audience. So, your readers can access your content from anywhere with any device. Digital publishing in the form of apps is effective too. Apps are an even more direct way for readers to access your publication from anywhere at any time. Use the application to generate interest in creative ways to keep your readers coming back and keep piracy at bay.

So, don’t wait and start enjoying the benefits of digital publishing and monetize your content. If you’re not sure how to get started and what to do, don’t worry. We are here to help you.

One learning from the lockdown is that teachers struggled during the initial days to adapt to a paradigm shift in teaching – virtual classrooms, preparation and uploading of learning resources in digital formats, and structuring learning material for synchronous and asynchronous learning. Added to this workload is the task of having to review homework and correct quizzes and tests administered.

In today’s day and age, technology is indispensable. Since e-learning is here to stay, it is important to adopt a LMS that is ‘teacher-friendly’. The LMS should not only solve pressing problems but also automate tasks, support interactive, experiential and inquiry-led learning. The adoption of technology in education helps teachers to direct their time and energy more effectively on teaching and benefiting students.

Here are the reasons why mPowerO is the best solution for teachers – mPowerO LMS has been developed by educators, for educators, addressing e-learning, communication and engagement functions in a highly secure manner.

Intuitive And Easy To Use Since more than 90% of e-learning is happening on smartphones, mPowerO has been developed specifically for a mobile-first experience, with an easy-to-use, visual interface (UI) and user experience (UX). It is the most user-friendly, mobile-first learning management system available in the market today. It empowers teachers to digitally deliver the highest level of teaching and ensure students learn without any complexities.

If you know how to operate a smartphone, then you will definitely know how to use mPowerO!

Organised Lesson Planning Every school has its own philosophy and pedagogy. As e-learning becomes an integral part of the ‘new normal’, it is important that educational institutes ‘blend’ e-learning and digital tools into their teaching pedagogies and learning methodologies.

mPowerO enables teachers to develop and curate lesson plans in line with the school’s teaching methodology. Teachers can create, upload and edit content in digital forms using their own learning material, that of academic publishers or any third-party content, and in different formats – ebooks, presentations, interactive HTML5 content, video links, etc.

Lessons, once structured in mPowerO, become a lifetime learning resource and remain available for anytime, anywhere access.

Discussion Platform Doubt clearing sessions will become easier with mPowerO. Apart from face-to-face communication, the two-way communication feature on mPowerO allows for teacher-to-student interaction as well as peer-to-peer communication. Students who need clarification can write to the teacher, who can choose whether to address this matter collectively or individually. Moreover, teachers can guide the students in video form, text form or any other form that they want to. This will not only benefit the teachers for better engagement and doubt clearing but will also help the students to refer to the same as many times as they wish.

Real-Time Analytics mPowerO lets the teachers gauge the learning progress and performance outcomes of individual students, enabling them to identify their specific problem areas and take timely corrective action to help rectify their mistakes more effectively. Moreover, teachers can intimate parents through the LMS and thus collaborate with parents.

Auto-Correct Tests And Assessments Manual corrections are tedious, time consuming and an additional strain on teachers given their extra workloads. Getting digital assessments, correcting them manually and sharing digital feedback is not only a long process but also not user friendly. mPowerO has an auto-correct feature facilitating automated tests or examinations with the results immediately visible to students.

This pandemic has already created a lot of pressure on the teachers. In order to lessen a teacher’s workload without compromising on learning is important. This is where mPowerO not only helps the teachers to manage all the course content in a single place but also helps the teachers to focus more on teaching than battling technology issues.

The pandemic-lockdown has been a bane for many Government schools, which were ill-equipped with digital technologies to ensure continuity in learning, something that private schools were quickly adopted. With school campuses unlikely to open before October 2020, this has meant children in Government schools will have missed 6-7 months of education in their academic year. This has caused a large migration of children from Government schools to private schools.

Private Schools are leveraging technology through LMS and online learning platforms in the most cost-effective manner to:

Extend their reach beyond the classroom

Ensure better teaching methodologies

Provide enhanced learning

Provide enriched digital content for better mastery of concepts than taught in class

‘Flip’ the classroom from the school building to home atmosphere

Access learning progress

Personalise learning for improved outcomes

Private education is relatively expensive in India, but parents are willing to pay since ensuring quality education is most important.

India has one of the largest private education markets in the world. In the K-12 (kindergarten to 12th grade) segment there are almost 270 million children, 10 million teachers and 1.5 million schools. Unlike the other most developed markets in the world, Indian K-12 education is significantly privatized with parents opting for paid, private schools over free Government schools. And this huge shift of students is because of the better infrastructure and blended learning that the private education sector is providing. This pandemic has indeed widened the gap between private schools and Government schools. While private schools have harnessed the continuity of classes through online learning, most of the Government K-12 schools have been non-operational.

Even post the pandemic, eLearning and online education will continue in a blended model since the benefits of online learning have been widely understood and appreciated during the lockdown.

Earlier schools failed to control learning beyond classrooms other than projects and homework. But now, they have discovered the benefits of blended learning. Schools are leveraging LMS to offer personalised learning and extend their reach beyond the classroom to at-home learning. Moreover, well-designed eLearning solutions will also help schools to bring in alternate revenue streams through post-school tutorials and non-academic classes.

While this will positively heighten the academic outcomes but will further widen the gap between Government and private schools. The pandemic has opened the eyes of the Government and the newly renamed Ministry of Education, which is also considering policy changes to bring in more digitalisation in K-12 education. Moreover, NEP2020 also refers to online learning, and this is bound to gain acceptance and grow further.

The future calls for a pedagogical shift in education with blended learning as the next generation Education System!

Undoubtedly, strong education is a vital link to building a strong scientific workforce. Over the years, other subjects have taken precedence over science in the teaching curriculum.

How does CGR International School ignite scientific curiosity?

At CGR, science education begins at the elementary school. The school curriculum is tuned to better scientific approaches. Students are enlightened on how the great discoveries of the past came into being.

Science Projects

The school makes a difference to young students’ comprehension of and interest in science through conducting demonstrations on the topics and chapters of Physics and Chemistry. Teaching how science works by way of such-real world examples makes the children learn science concepts with fun. The very purpose of holding science demonstrations is to enable young students in understanding intricate and critical concepts of sciences with ease. Science Projects Science Exhibitions and Science Museums

Science exhibitions, Science Centers, and Science Museums are strong learning resources and help in bringing science to life. They foster the promotion of student interest, enhanced engagement in science learning, as well as complement school-based instruction. Science Quiz Programs

Engaging students’ interests in science quizzes and science programs would definitely spur talented participants’ interest in exploring science knowledge. Coupled with this, such lead to knowledge exchange in science among young students. Game-based learning

The integration of game-based learning can prove to be a viable strategy to enhance the science knowledge of students. This kind of learning method enables students learn science-specific concepts through participating in educational games. Science Seminars

Students gain understanding on the world of science through science-related activities such as Science Seminars. The participation of scientists and academic science communicators in science seminars inspire students in a big way, besides creating top level of learning and achievement, and positive impact on building interest in a science career.

Science Laboratory Demonstrations

Coronavirus originated in the Wuhan region of China and within a few months, it spread across the world like a wildfire. More than 3,017,989 people have been affected by COVID-19 on April 27, 2020, across the world and almost 207,724 have succumbed to death due to this. In March, 2020, the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 as pandemic and countries one after the other went under lockdown to curb down the contingency rate and save people from the virus. With Coronavirus pandemic expanding across the borders, each of us is stuck at home, as schools, colleges, offices, malls, etc are forced to stay locked down for the safety of the human race.

Educational institutions with their periodic curriculum have come to a standstill as schools are forced to remain closed and exams are being stalled, without clarity on the resuming dates. The biggest challenge faced by the schools, colleges, institutions and other educational organisations is “How to continue educating students in this lockdown, which is not going to end soon?” It is time for the educational institutes to welcome the digitalisation wave and embrace e-Learning as the major and only solution. e-Learning is not only effective for such a situation but will create ripples in the educational society in the near future.

Here are the 5 reasons why e-Learning is the best solution for institutions to combat Coronavirus crisis –

e-Learning is the best reinforcement to Educational institutions now and also in the future: e-Learning is an effective replacement for the classroom direct program, which comes with various benefits. The most important advantage of it is that learning can be enabled from anywhere at any time. Generally, e-Learning is of two types – 1. Self-Paced, at one’s own convenience 2. At real-time, with a teacher However, some e-Learning service providers are offering an appropriate blend of the above two, and institutions can undoubtedly benefit from it.

Digital scope creates a positive impact on e-Learning: The digital method of learning not only facilitates an organized way of learning and assessments but also discards the traditional methods of study, which is less interactive, space-specific and time taking. The digital scope of the e-Learning system involves various outside curriculum, interactive sessions, ease of learning from anywhere at any time and many more that are not part of conventional learning.

e-Learning provides greater access to multiple assets: Students can be given access to online repositories such as e-books, video tutorials etc., by school officials and teachers as per requirement. e-Learning also measures the level of understanding through online assessments, quizzes, etc. The entire curriculum, in the form of course modules, can be customized based on their present performance, helping them to improvise their future academic endeavours, without worrying about the school re-opening.

e-Learning facilitates enhanced monitoring and greater assessment capabilities: e-Learning solution gives the educational institutes an edge to create automated assessments with detailed performance analytics of individual students with either problem-solving or scenario-based questions by one click of a button. It also provides information on the progress of the courses completed, scores on assessments, etc, and allows teachers to take immediate prompt action and provide personalized attention to each student.

e-Learning solution defines the scope for advanced learning and assessment capabilities with Proctoring: The evolving market makes e-Learning an inevitable solution for the future educational society and the market price estimates over $100 billion. One of the areas, which is gaining the most significant impact is the virtual proctoring space. The proctoring service added in the e-Learning solution, allows teachers/test-takers to undertake exams, certifications, and assessments at their convenience, while still maintaining exam integrity.

eLearning is the best solution to Education Industry to combat during the COVID-19 pandemic

The best solution to combat during the Corona virus pandemic is Online Learning

Virtual Learning during the COVID-19 pandemic using a mobile app is the best solution for continuous learningSelf Paced learning for your Organizational needseLearning Mobile App

e-Learning solution is indeed the need of the hour and the future of the learning system.