What is the story behind edutube?

Videos have started to go viral. All of a sudden everyone is learning everything from YouTube. It brought to mind the educational system in Bangladesh – which is quite traditional, methodical, and vast here – as well as my schooldays – a mess of classes, coaching centres, private tutors, mock exams, and running after suggestions. If the whole system – parents, students and teachers – take an approach to share this content with each other, a lot of less privileged students can access this content, perform better, and get ahead in life. Thus, edutubebd.com started its journey with the tagline 'Learning gets better with sharing'.

What makes this portal unique? How big are your operations right now?

The most unique feature has to be the live class feature – teachers can take live classes straight from the website itself. Our content includes animations, simulations, interactive tests, colourful images, diagrams, and videos. We have teachers from top schools like BAF Shaheen College and Shaheed Bir Uttam Lt. Anwar Girls College taking lectures here. There are over 5,000 registered users – parents, students and teachers – who have uploaded around 10,000 unique contents, including questions, notes, suggestions, textbooks, presentations, solutions, etc. We are also involved with the Teaching Quality Improvement II project, and are getting guidance from the National Curriculum and Textbook Board to develop digital content on Physics, Chemistry and Bangladesh and Global Studies for teachers of classes 9 and 10.

How do you plan to monetise it?

Running such an initiative is expensive given the cost of marketing and maintaining a regular supply of quality content. However, our focus has never been to churn out videos regularly. What we want is to raise awareness that a bigger part of our society needs our help, and it is inexpensive to do so. Our plan for the future is to convert edutube into the biggest marketplace for the education sector. A teacher who teaches 20 students per batch and five batches per day can earn a similar amount by providing paid lectures and suggestions that get downloaded from all over Bangladesh. Students will also be able to enter into marketplace by providing services that will be launched in the second quarter of this year.  

Engineer-turned-writer, Shahriar Rahman is In-charge of the tech publication of The Daily Star