As the COVID-19 Pandemic began to show its ramifications across geographical and sociological lines, they said- “it’s a new world order in the making,” where the virtual realm will take over the physical, and remote connect will determine the regime of many a manual activity. Education – while a significant number of areas in the domain have already begun migrating to virtual – is one big transformational segment, or so it appears.
Bengaluru – the de facto design hub of the IT and ITES world – has sprung yet another education design, with machine intelligence and smart connected device major Cybernetyx bringing to the fore what it calls Kneura and claims the world’s first Integrated virtual classroom platform.
SIAsia delves into knowing and presenting what it is…
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Thanks to the pandemic situation- it’s a whole big paradigm shift worldwide, where a new world order is set to define and determine the human existence and experience. Education segment, already under some form of transformation in certain areas and levels took to further digital strides into virtual learning environment to be able to continue their teaching processes beyond the barriers of physical location, time and/or device.However, among the many ‘make shift’ arrangements to implement virtual teaching, a major missing feature is an integrated solution that could enable an ‘easy transition’ to truly definable and experiential virtual learning environment.
Cometh Cybernetyx, Cometh Kneura – the New Level
Cybernetyx – who had been making some real credible ‘cyber’ waves in the learning domain – has come out with what it called the Kneura integrated virtual classroom platform- particularly aimed at powering the teaching dynamics in the COVID-restricted world of education.
Claimed to be first of its kind in the world, the Kneura Platform, according to the promoters, brings to place the blended learning - a combination of traditional face-to- face (F2F) and online learning, and provides powerful tools for administrators and educators to perform multiple tasks with ease and effect.
“Currently, much of the traditional and digital classroom set-ups are either done manually or bound to physical barriers like person, location and time, or dependent on different tools to achieve individual tasks,” says Ramya Chatterjee, Chief Executive Officer of Cybernetyx. “Kneura, in contrast, provides all these features in an integrated fashion- something nobody has done yet.”
“The key differentiator between existing F2F model and Kneura Virtual Classroom is the place of instruction, which is not restricted to any particular physical location,” he explains. Apart from instruction, the platform enables a whole big chunk of functionalities.
Asserts the Cybernetyx Chief: “While there are various sets of tools like LMS, assessment, performance management, video-conferencing, and messaging tools currently used by many institutions for blended learning, the critical component of integrated platform hasn’t been there. Kneura is bringing that.”
Launch Expedited to Tide Over COVID-19 ImpactThe Kneura platform – developed essentially at Bengaluru office of Cybernetyx, had been in the making for over 18 months, and was actually intended for Q3 end of CY 2020 launch. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic suddenly breaking out and – as part of its global disruption – severely affecting the education segment, Cybernetyx decided to expedite the launch and increase the benefits of the programme in the larger interest of the users.
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“We believe the timing is perfect, as there has been the tremendous response for the offering,” said Ramya Chatterjee. “Also, now we know that we need to live with COVID-19 for a foreseeable future, we hope Kneura to contribute and redefine the ‘New Normal’- even as we evolve it further and further.”How Does Kneura Platform Unfold
The first initiation of the Kneura functionality begins from the institution where designated administrators will board the institution onto the Kneura platform. They add resources like teachers and students; map them to the classes; create syllabus and allocate to the class. Further, they will have the access rights to monitor the performance of students, class or the institute as a whole. They can even manage as and when required institute-wide or class-level announcements from their logins.
Every teacher by his/her login credentials will have access to all the classes assigned to him/her. The lessons created for that class are made available, and by clicking on the lesson the teacher can open the teaching canvas, which is actually a collaborative canvas that can be accessed by the students as well.
“This is the critical connect,” asserts Ramya. “From the teaching canvas the teacher has accessed, he/she will have the flexibility to “Go Live” to enable video, and audio virtual teaching.”
What Does the Kneura Require for Deployment?
The Kneura virtual platform is device agnostic, and therefore can work on any device such as laptop, desktop, tablet, mobile handset, or even the conventional television on the student and the teacher’s side, while on the institution side, it can work with any digital classroom device like projectors, whiteboards and interactive flat panels.
This is the area where the Kneura has its business model unfolding in the form of software only or both hardware and software together. Given the fact that most digital classroom set-ups already have the hardware with them, the Cybernetyx offers flexibility of enabling Kneura platform on the institutions’ existing architecture. In such cases, the Kneura is offered on paid-licence for per-student, per-time unit basis.
For institutions wanting the Kneura platform along with its dedicated hardware architecture, the promoters package the Kneura licence FREE along with the Cybernetyx Smart Connected Devices like:
EyeRIS Pro – a surface-independent wireless touch interactive teaching device that can convert any flat surface (such as a wall or dry-erase whiteboard) into Touch-enabled Digital Whiteboard
Galileo One – a clip-on, wireless interactive device that can turn any flat TV or display into a full-blown touch-interactive smart display
Quriosity – an integrated Interactive Flat Panel
“We have also recently launched dedicated Galileo Teach and Galileo Learn respectively for teacher and the student side deployment,” the Cybernetyx chief details further. These tools come with three essential components:
- EyeRISinteractive sensor – which converts a normal TV into touch screen
- Built-in Android processor – which enables any TV to be a standalone Android device with Wi-Fi enablement, wireless collaboration
- Interactive teaching software suite which connects Kneuravirtual classroom platform
The Bandwidth for Kneura Deployment
Kneura is a virtual, cloud-based platform, and therefore needs (seamless) Internet connectivity for a good performance, if not an enriching experience both at the provider, and the user level. That brings into question the Internet bandwidth in countries like India. How about that compatibility with Kneura?
“We were pretty conscious while developing this platform,” informs Ramya Chatterjee, “which is why we tried and developed this workable for lowest possible bandwidths.”
According to him, the lowest subscription model with only collaborative whiteboard and audio conferencing needs just 20-50 kbps connection for a session. If one needs a multimedia content and video-conferencing, then it takes 0.5 mbps.
“Even if one goes for the third option of collaborative whiteboard + multimedia + VC + screen sharing, still it takes only 1.0 mbps capacity,” he explains. “With such low bandwidth compatibility, there is no reason why it cannot work even in the poorest connectivity environment.”
That should certainly make it workable. How about the takers then?
Asserts Ramya: “We have done some very aggressive marketing & GTM initiatives with several institutions in India and worldwide. The response has been tremendous so far with thousands of delighted subscribers already using the platform happily & user base is multiplying at an exponential rate on daily basis, and that’s the winning.”
| One of the world’s leading developers of perpetual AI device solutions and platforms, with offices in Germany (Hannover), and India (Bengaluru and Noida), Cybernetyx enjoys the distinction of transforming over 15 million users globally through its interactive teaching solutions. The company has its corporate and R&D establishment in Bengaluru with sales and marketing division panning out from Noida. |
For institutions looking for effective ways of getting their academic processes back on rails more productively and safely than ever – in tune with the COVID-19 times – perhaps the best way is to adopt the unified blended learning platform like Kneura.
For more details, write to hello@kneura.com or visit www.kneura.com
