Lenovo starts free one-on-one online education platform for students, teachers

The company has launched the online platform, SmarterEd, in collaboration with a non-profit organisation and has registration of volunteers to teach on the platform

The company has launched the online platform, SmarterEd, in collaboration with a non-profit organisation and has registration of volunteers to teach on the platform (REUTERS)

IT hardware company Lenovo on Monday started a free online education platform which allows students to get guidance from teachers on a one-on-one basis.

The company has launched the online platform, SmarterEd, in collaboration with a non-profit organisation and has registration of volunteers to teach on the platform.

"What we are doing has no commercial angle to it. Through SmarterEd, we want to show the way technology can be leveraged to address issues that the country is facing. Education is one thing which we can directly address through technology," Lenovo India CEO and managing director Rahul Agarwal said.

Most of the academic institutions have adopted technology to impart online education during the ongoing lockdown. Several education technology platform have also started free classes during the period.

Agarwal said the company partnered with non-profit organisation eVidyaloka as it has experience in getting volunteers who are interested in spreading education.

"We have started SmarterEd today. Now we will be enrolling volunteers who are interested in teaching. It is not necessary that teachers have degrees to teach. A volunteer can be any expert in a field who can explain the subject to the student," Agrawal said.

In the present form, SmarterEd allows students of Classes V to XII to choose their teachers, select the subject they would like to learn, and take out time to learn as per their convenience.

Agarwal said that SmarterEd has links to NCERT and State syllabus ebooks for the learners, and also offers a chat engine for seamless student-teacher communication. This platform supports multiple languages, including English, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, and Telugu.

"Our mission is to connect passionate and talented volunteers with rural and semi- urban students, to empower India through standards of schooling. We are glad to collaborate with Lenovo India to create this voluntary knowledge sharing platform - SmarterEd, and which can help facilitate seamless online learning experiences," eVidyaloka CEO Brinda Poornapragna said.