e-TeachMe

Main interface

Inspiration

In this Covid19 Emergency situation, students from all over the Europe are following online lectures, facing problems with Internet connection and difficulties in concentraction. In addiction schools have reduced the number of hours dedicated to each subject. Students needs to do homework at home, sometimes with the help of parents that are in smartworking as well, but not everyone can be supported and followed by someone.

Our targets are primary and first grade secondary schools students and with different needs: 1) the need to rework the concepts seen during lectures 2) having "after school" assistance, equal to the school rehearsals and always updated in the teaching methods provided today 3) providing a tool for student with dyslexia and other learning disabilities

Of course, note that our platform doesn't aim to replace the teacher: it's a support for after school activities.

What it does:

e-TEACHME is an innovative learning platform that encourages students to deepen the topics learnt during lectures and focus on their lacks. Through the use of a powerful artificial intelligence (AI) engine, students can ask directly to e-TEACHME which arguments or topics need to be revised. The platform, entirely designed to be used by students and kids, is a useful tool for reviewing key concepts and theory, and deepening one's knowledge through examples and guided exercises.

It has different school subjects (Maths, Sciences, History, Geography...) and tools to solve practical exercises.

How We built it:

It is a web single-page application (SPA) developed in React JS. Backend Services are written in JavaScript and Phython and provide an interface with a Dialogflow and other AI Features. On Dialogflow, we organised entities and intents in a way that allows us to dynamically fill contents in our AI Knowledge Database. AI lets students to interact with the platform as they are in the classroom in front of teachers, so they can ask questions like: "what are decimal fractions?"; the platform provides definition as explained in the schoolbooks and, through multimedia and dynamic examples, shows to students how to put in place what they have just learnt.

Ater the question, the request is sent to the server where is manipulated and all references and information about the single student are lost to guarantee anonymity. Then the search engine (Dialogflow) is called which returns the entity subject of the request; the entity is used as an input for another function that catches the information about the requested topic from the Knowledge Database.

Finally the information goes back to the student and rendered in the Webpage.

Challenges We ran into:

Legal issues since we have underage / minor kids as users: we have faced questions about that. Regarding Italian students, they already have a school email account to access their google tool (such as classroom). This platform will require an access code directly given by schoolbook publishers once students have bought the book. This code will give them the access to the contents (on publishers' website that incapsulates our Search engine) related to that purchased book. All the information that pass through our servers are anonymous and encripted. Other information on publishers website are their own matter, but since they already provide some extra contents on their website for students, legal issues are already taken into consideration by them.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of:

During this hackathon we created a Demo to show to the evaluators the general idea of the platform. Of course our added value is in the backend, not visible and seen from the demo. We designed the Business Model that is feasible and consistent: we covered all the elements to desing our customers, our value proposition, our needed partnerships, costs and activities. Our Business Model is expected to sell our engine search tool to Schoolbook Publishers: they can sell the book as before, offering a PDF file and a unique code to allow students to directly have access to online contents on e-TeachMe.

We think that after this emergency situation, families may have economical problems due to the consequences that this crisis will cause and we cannot encumber on families.

What We learned:

Not all children learn in the same way and at the same time: they need different tools and methods. In addition, Z-generation students require new methodologies because they were born and grew up in a digital world. This tool aims to offer an intuitive and quick learning tool.

Since the trend is the creation of a one-to-one Laptop-Student relationship - USA students that everyday use Chromebooks at schools are an example - our platform will help schools and students to put into practice this kind of behaviour and will be usable using laptops.

What's next for e-TeachMe:

First step will be the deployment of the entire application, ensuring all the functionalities available and ready to be used. Schoolbook Publishers will purchase our AI Search Engine and include it in their own website. They will upload all the contents through a specific and designed tool provided by us. We will ensure to them maintanance, reliability and support services.