Interactive education tool ‘Candela’ to debut at Colombo Book Fair

Candela, an innovative new interactive education tool, is to be launched at the Colombo International Book Fair at the BMICH next week. This is a product that is available in the form of a CD, which can be simply loaded on to any computer to provide children with a learning experience, and can be used as a tool by tutors whilst giving parents the opportunity to track their child’s performance.

The initial products that are to be launched include grade six and grade eight science in Sinhala. Grade seven is scheduled to be launched in late 2012. Trilingual versions of all three grades are due to be launched in 2013. These products are entirely based on the Education Ministry’s officially published curriculum for science.

Candela Learning Technologies (Pvt) Ltd. is a learner-centric education solutions provider on a mission to provide Sri Lankan students and teachers with cost effective learning and teaching tools that make the process of learning science more engaging and fun.

Candela has used cutting edge technology to develop e-learning content that will use video, audio, animations, and interactive elements. Audio, video and animations help describe scientific concepts in a manner that maximises student engagement and knowledge absorption, as well as teacher effectiveness.

Interactive exercises help test the student’s understanding of a concept. Assessments and exercises, an integral part of the process of instruction, are interactively and interdependently woven into the content delivery stage, rather than simply tacked on as a test at the end of the process.

The product will be initially available at the Book Fair and subsequently at bookstores. There will be a live demonstration of Candela e-learning content at stall G 279 in Hall G at the 2012 International Book Fair, held at BMICH Sirimavo Bandaranaike Memorial Exhibition Center from 18-26 September. Candela’s ‘e-textbooks’ help children study smarter, not longer.

Candela helps build intrinsic motivation in students to learn the material by creating an environment that stimulates and compels students to learn because learning itself has become inherently fun and enjoyable.

Given that every student learns in a different way, this idea, that students have different learning needs, is one of the cornerstones of our e-textbooks. A key step towards making learning intrinsically motivating is to develop an instruction process that is flexible enough to match the way each child learns.

Children also learn at different paces – slow, medium, fast and all the variations in between. Traditional textbooks are used to deliver lessons that are based on fixed units of time. However, given that each student in a class absorbs the material in different ways and speeds, the resultant learning is variable, that is, fixed time but variable levels of learning.

Candela’s focus with this product is to allow the time to vary from child to child and as a result allow more thorough learning. Rather than a fixed time to learn with variable results student by student, the amount of time to learn can vary, but the resulting learning can be much more consistent.

Students don’t have to waste time with subjects they have mastered, they can simply take the modules with which they difficulties. Our content provides convenience for a student to fit the course into his or her schedule at the time and place that is most desirable. If offers greater flexibility in the pace and path of learning.

Candela’s content will make it more accessible, convenient and simple for students to learn in ways that are more engaging to them. Our end goal is to make our educational content an integral part to the learning and teaching process and as engaging as the best video game, thus supporting parents in accelerating student achievement and igniting students’ natural curiosity.

Teachers too can use the content as a tool to increase the effectiveness of their classes. They can spend much more of their time moving from student to student, helping individuals with individual problems. Our content will allow more personalised attention from a teacher so that we can do something counter intuitive in education – increase the number of students per teacher while simultaneously increasing the quality of the learning. Our content will help teachers oversee the work of more students while giving more individual attention to them.