The potential of revolutionary information communication technologies (ICT) in dramatically improving learning outcomes in school education is receiving insufficient attention in Indian education. That’s a lacuna which the Chennai-based EZ Vidya Pvt. Ltd (annual turnover: Rs.4 crore) is determined to fill by providing technology driven teaching-learning content and pedagogy to schools. Promoted in May 2001 with the mission to “let the child blossom”, EZ Vidya has itself blossomed into a multi-products and services company providing ICT-driven curriculums, teacher training, and institutional transformation solutions to schools, and implementing the education-related CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiatives of business enterprises.
“We believe that every child has high capability and our objective is to help bring out the dormant potential of children. We believe that if we make their learning experience easy and enjoyable, learning outcomes will automatically improve. Therefore we use ICT to make classroom lessons enjoyable by stimulating latent critical thinking and problem solving skills of students,” says Chitra Ravi, the founder chief executive of EZ Vidya. An English postgrad of Madras University and IGNOU, Ravi worked with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC) for over a year and then joined the family real estate business before she became aware that education was her true calling.
Ravi started EZ Vidya as a computer training centre in 1998, but her plans changed after she signed up for a course on integrating technology with learning in the US in 1999, and was converted to the cause of employing ICT to improve learning outcomes in schools. She began developing multimedia content for computer science courses in schools and in 2001 transformed her training centre into a learning solutions company.
Today EZ Vidya’s learning solutions, born out of 98,000 hours of extensive research in education pedagogy, are being implemented in 200 schools countrywide benefiting an estimated 100,000 students. The company’s flagship product Chrysalis, launched in 2007, is a unique computer sciences curriculum for class I-X students, designed to make them “IT capable rather than just IT literate”, enhance thinking skills, and enable experiential learning. Moreover to train teachers in contemporary ICT skills, EZ Vidya has developed a teacher empowerment programme (TEP) for schools and corporates involved with education and has thus far trained 3,000 teachers.
Looking ahead, Ravi plans to roll out the Chrysalis brand countrywide. “Chrysalis has received excellent response from schools and we now plan to develop multimedia content and curriculum for other subjects. Moreover, over the years we have developed the capability to design customised content and curriculum for educational institutions as well as corporates. We plan to intervene wherever our skills are required,” says Ravi.
Wind in your sails!
Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)