Last year, on November 14, Imran Khan, a Sanskrit teacher from a small town called Alwar in Rajasthan, had every reason for a mention by the Prime Minister as he donated 52 educational apps to the HRD Ministry for free, contributing his part in Digital India and E-learning. His apps get an astonishing 30 lakh downloads and four crore screen views every day!
Praising his efforts, former HRD Minister Smriti Irani enthusiastically tweeted, "Imran Bhai has done a stupendous job. Dedicated his educational apps to d Nation on d 7th of November in Delhi."
A timid man with undying determination started developing educational android apps for the students after a close encounter with the, then, district collector of Alwar, Ashutosh AT Pednekar. Giving credits to Pednekar, Khan tells that it was him who was his inspiration and motivation for developing apps. "He saw my website gktalk.com and asked me to develop apps as the future lied in it," Khan told India Today.
A small look at the interview with Imran Khan:
Q. First of all, congratulations on being mentioned by the Prime Minister on such a big stage! How does it feel?
A. Shandaar! It feels great that my little initiative has been recognised by the government. I never had imagined while I was developing these apps that I would get praise from Modi ji and Smriti ji. I just initiated a small step in contributing, the little I could, to the education in my home state.
Q. You donated 52 apps to MHRD for free, what was the thought behind it?
A. See, I am a teacher and a teacher is a teacher, all he wants is to make the education system better. When I developed these apps, I got a good response from students in Rajasthan. It was my opportunity to contribute to Digital India and e-learning at the nation, so I did. Nothing would make me happier if students of this country get benefitted through my apps.
Q. How did you get the idea of developing educational android apps? Where it all started?
A. It started just with simple curiosity. My younger brother had left his Computer Science book at home which I started reading in my free time. This is where my knowledge on HTML developed and I designed my first website gktalk.com in 2005. When Pednekar ji saw the website, he encouraged me to develop apps. I had no clue what an app was but I continued learning and launched my first app in 2012 'NCERT Learn Science' - for Class 9 students which got great response from students in the state. This motivated me to create more apps, especially in Hindi as there are abundant already available apps in English.
Q. What's next?
A. I will continue working towards maintaining these apps as they require constant updation on the backend. Besides, I also plan to bring diverse e-learning platforms for facilitating self-study among students. Moreover, my biggest aim is to create a platform which boosts creativity among students and not just passive learning.
Tags: Imran Khan
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