Bengaluru's edutubers are making a big splash online

Teaching through multimedia-rich, graphic-assisted YouTube videos. That’s the way Bengaluru’s new age tutors are making a difference, giving education a hitherto unexplored dimension.

Bengaluru-based YouTuber Roshni Mukherjee was one of the first to take this video route. To battle the perennial examination fear of students, she packed her productions with curriculum-based lessons, power point presentations and simple graphics.

Students loved this approach. Her whopping 50 million video views are proof enough. In all, Mukherjee has produced 4,864 videos, gaining 1.46 lakh subscribers for her channel, viewable at (https://www.youtube.com/user/ExamFearVideos).

She had left her corporate career to teach children online. But what provoked this decisive shift was this: The sad plight of her maid’s children failing in their examinations because their teachers barely came to class.

Taking up Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology to teach students of classes 6-12, Mukherjee had quickly mastered a way to make the uploaded videos interactive.

YouTube’s comments space was neatly tweaked as a forum to answer students’ questions and doubts.

Integrating neat images and graphics, she made the videos more engaging to a young audience. To simplify concepts, she explains, Science and Maths theories were co-related to real-life examples.

Mukherjee’s online success won her the #100Women Award in January 2016 from the President of India. The award was instituted by the ministry of women and child development in collaboration with Facebook.

Toy inventor, simple-science evangelist and teacher, Arvind Gupta is another avid YouTuber, with a subscriber base of 1.13 lakh and channel views of 49.6 million.

Students have a reason to get hooked to his videos: He creates simple toys out of trash and explains simple scientific experiments. Till date, he has produced 7,570 videos, viewable on his channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/ArvindGuptaToys).

Multi-language content is what sets Gupta apart. An IIT-Kanpur alumnus, Gupta had conceptualised the toy-based learning while participating in a science teaching programme in 1978.

He developed the idea of creating simple toys and educational experiments using locally available materials and things that are usually thrown as trash. Capturing all these on video, he found the perfect platform to reach a larger audience: YouTube.

In the same league as Mukherjee and Gupta is Omkar Bhagat, making it big on YouTube through his channel ‘The Curious Engineer.’ Mixing animated illustrations, edutainment models, fun facts and science experiments made simple, Bhagat has carved a niche online. His channel has already garnered 58,000 subscribers and counting.
DH News Service