EdVon: Teaches your kids concepts of STEM based education
Following the miser state of education in Pakistan, some revolutionary and innovative minds have taken steps to turn the impossibility of the modern ways of education into the possibility, with an extremely modern start up in the country.
This start up focused much upon the usability of education and is ambitious enough to make the bookish knowledge of the student’s practice. Now, though the old-aged stuff did not get revised, modern methods of teaching would their best to change the poor state of the education system, especially on the school level.
Muhammad Nabeel, a robotic fanatic, and a professional robotic engineer have found a startup “EdVon”. EdVon is the combination of “Education” and ” Revolution” exactly what the startup is about.
EdVon is a start up that focuses more on practice, considering that only theory is not as useful as the practical. But our theory based educational system entrusts degree only, but the confidence and practice is not the product of this old fashioned education system.
Different concepts of STEM ( Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics ) based education; programming, Internet of Things (IoT), mechanical design, electronics and such other concepts are the target of the EdVon start up.
Muhammad Nabeel, is the Co-Founder and CEO at EdVon, he holds Bachelors in Electronics Engineering from NED University and a Masters from Korea University of Technology and Education.
How the start up came to existence:
According to Huzaifa Sheikh, Nabeel’s younger brother; when Nabeel came back to Pakistan after Masters, he started teaching simple concepts of robotics to his school going cousin and found him grasping quickly. Above all, he started developing his own projects.
Nabeel’s passion for teaching robotics urged him to enhance the circle of his teachings, so he started teaching some more people and found the same results. He found that school children are more than ready to indulge in programming and robotics.
This all resulted in the launch of his very own robotics academy that later augmented to EdVon following Nabeel’s discussion with Huzaifa.
Huzaifa is the co-founder of EdVon, he has done his BS in Computer Science from IBA and is a software developer at EdVon.
Faiza, the Younger sister of the innovators, is the marketing head of EdVon. While Obaid Naqi, Electronics Engineer is the current CEO of the start up?
Nabeel said,
“Normally when students are admitted to a university, they do not have any technical skills, nor a mindset of learning by doing,” adding that,
“All they have been taught is how to memorize and get good grades, which really kills their creativity.”
Brief intro of EdVon:
EdVon is a combination of “Education” and “Revolution”, exactly what the startup is all about. It aims at changing the system of education to make it interesting and easy to grasp.
The startup develops educational robots for some specific age groups and till now 8 models of robots have been developed including, obstacle detection robot, line following robot, maze the following robot, soccer playing robot, drone, pick and place robot, android control robot, and ball potting robot.
The main objective of these robots is teaching different concepts of STEM based education. All the robots are designed locally, manufactured in Pakistan and anyone can order any version of the robots, through their website. For other models, you will have to stay tuned to their website and Facebook page.
“Parents should buy the educational robots because it is as cheap as toys and helps their kids to learn different STEM based robotics concepts,” says Huzaifa.
Educational Initiatives:
They have designed the courses that they teach to help students digest the information easily and go to the right direction. They have developed standard course curriculum for schools, to enable the students to learn the basic concepts of programming, mechanical design, IoT, and electronics.
Courses
To let the students grab the concept easy and understand the practical implementation of knowledge they balance theory and practice. All their students own laptops and more practical work is done in class. EdVon: Makes your kids learn concepts of STEM based education.
On weekends, they run regular courses for school kids. The courses consist of three levels: Beginner, Medium and Advanced. They also offer a 12-month course for homeschooled kids ( ages 9 to 16 ). The course costs 3000 Rs per month.
Associations:
They are associated with different organizations to conduct their CSR by developing Robotics Lab in under privileged schools run by NGOs. They also worked with schools like Merit n Merit, Al Hadi, DA Public School, Pak-Turk, City School PAF Chapter, Generation’s School, Aghaz School, Beacon Light Academy, and others.
Huzaifa says,
“We even got the funding from IEEE RAS to establish robotics lab in an under the privileged school, followed by a funding of establishing robotics lab in more than 100 schools depending on the research and outcomes of the school,”.
Robotics Competitions:
EdVon organized numerous events in universities to encourage other students to learn more technical skills and ‘All Karachi School Level Robotics Competition’ at NED University attracted more than 350 students from all over Karachi, and a similar result was the outcome of school -level robotics competition at Habib University.
“Young Women Empowerment Robotics Camp (YWERC’17)” is another organization of EdVon.
They also amazing feed from the students and parents for teaching 8th-grade students developing their own games. The startup is quite amazing but not the first of its kind in Pakistan.
A number of talented Pakistanis have started such start ups, out of the frustration they found in education system of Pakistan. RoboMinors and Stemmers are the examples of such innovative startups.
