A Treasure Trove of “Urdu Lesson Plans”

Our Urdu language program is growing at a good pace and we are looking forward to higher growth rate for the rest of the year as more people become aware of http://www.urduathome.com/. The superior quality of our “E-Shagird” interactive application and a treasure trove of “Urdu Lesson Plans” for different age groups is making our program a household name.

We absolutely love to have a conversation with our audience as it helps us in developing key educational services that our members need. We are also very flexible and make adjustments to our program based on the feedback that we receive. Our approach of carefully aligning ourselves with the needs and requirements of our current and potential members is helping us evolve into an e-learning company that is recognized for its high quality educational content and customer service.
So far, we have got members from 8 countries and more are expected to come as the word spread around. Our members have also been amazingly helpful in supporting us. One of our members writes a monthly blog called “Moms for Urdu” which is followed by quite a few people. Another one took time to capture a video of her 2 year old son learning Urdu on a laptop and shared that with her friends and family. Yet another member sent our flyer to all her friends on face book. There are plenty of examples like these and we really appreciate it.

The actions of our members are not random acts but a part of a much bigger trend. Parents are now demanding Urdu like any other language should be taught in a way that meets the standards of this century. For almost two decades Urdu as a subject has been considered a symbol of backwardness (I have discussed the reasons in my earlier blogs). The results and grades of the students in the last twenty years are a testament to that mistake. But there are tangible signs that a large number of schools are now recognizing the urgency of the situation and have started to inject funds and resources to teach Urdu language that it so much deserves.

We are increasingly noticing Urdu teachers playing an active role in demanding access to quality resources for their students. They are at the forefront of this fight for teaching Urdu using latest technology and are convincing their schools to start investing in specialized Urdu resources such as ours. As we are giving free demos of our program to schools, we see a huge sigh of relief from everyone in Urdu teaching community. They are finally seeing some help in an area which has been neglected for so long. With our resources they are now armed with the 21st century learning content and the time of spending endless number of hours preparing worksheets and lesson plans is now finally over.

In the first four months of this year, we have signed up quite a few schools around the world and last week we signed our first private school in Karachi, Pakistan. When our representative went to give the demo of our Urdu resources, all the Urdu teachers were unanimous in their praise of our program. Each one of them recounted the countless number of hours and nights they had to spent thinking, designing and creating lessons plans and worksheets using valuable time and resources and now everything was ready for them to print with a simple click of a button.



Apart from teachers, we continue to hear from a large number of parents regarding how working on our Urdu language interactive application “e-Shagird” has cut the TV and Video Game time of their children. Not only it has vastly improved their vocabulary but has also instilled in them the love of Urdu language. It is available to them 24/7 from the comfort of their homes and provides a great fun and learning experience as well. The application acts a home tutor for the students minus the heavy load on wallet for parents. Not only it helps the children to learn what is there in their grade level but also allows them to jump ahead and learn advance level topics as well.

We haven’t forgotten our social responsibility as well. The core reason for Pakistan’s lack of substantial progress is the lack of literacy among the general population. Education should never be a privilege but a right for boy and girl in Pakistan. Lack of literacy is the prime reason why so many of our innocent young children fall prey to less productive activities in life. In order to tackle this menace, we have been collaborating with TCF (The Citizen’s Foundation) in finding ways to implement e-learning initiative in TCF schools across Pakistan. We are also sponsoring their May 28th Fund raising event in Silicon Valley, California USA.

It has been both a humbling and satisfying experience for us so far. With the support of our friends, concerned parents and teachers, we hope to one day improve the literacy rate in Pakistan as well as instill the same love for Urdu that we once had. It is also our hope that parents and teachers will continue to act proactively and demand access to the cutting edge Urdu resources to further improve and develop children’s language skills. This much, we owe it to our next generation!



Respects

Syed Abbas



CEO- Urdu at Home