Free Enrollment

Dear Friends,

It has been exactly two years since we launched “Urdu at Home”. Our main purpose to develop such a comprehensive website was to empower parents and Urdu teachers by giving them a tool that is easy to use at home and in schools. I am glad that we have been able to achieve that purpose with success. Over 5000 students are currently using our program in 21 schools across the globe. In addition to schools hundred of parents have used our program to tutor their children in the “Urdu subject” from the comfort of their homes.

These numbers might not sound a lot especially in a day and age where social networking websites boosts millions of members. However, since our website is a paid service a lot of credit goes to schools and parents for investing in something they really believe in.

In the last two years, I have learned something really important; success of an initiative can't always be measured by the amount of revenue that it generates. In strictly financial terms, our e-learning firm might not even be considered a successful venture but the amount of positive feedback we receive from parents and school teachers in different parts of the world more than offsets the (lack of) financial gains of our initiative. When we launched our Urdu subject tutoring website, there were hardly any websites that offered an organized curriculum that taught Urdu subject from scratch and used voice, interactivity and animations to describe important concepts in granular details (curriculum now covers 5 stages.)

I have received hundred's of emails and messages that are filled with appreciation and encouragement from parents and teachers living in different parts of the world. The feeling of satisfaction and gratitude coming out of these emails can only be experienced and is difficult for me to put into words.

We are often asked (especially by visitors from Pakistan/India) to make our service free since everyone can't afford to pay a monthly membership fee. From the very beginning, it has been our goal to make our service free if we are able to afford the expenses that comes with managing and running our “content loaded” website. Today, I am glad to announce that that we have taken the first significant step toward achieving that goal. We have started offering free enrollment program for our foundational stage. This free enrollment program will allow our members to use our service at home or in schools for no charge. 

We request all our visitors to take advantage of this “Free Enrollment” opportunity and also inform their friends and family members where-ever they are located via social media or emails.

Respects,

Syed H. Abbas

CEO – Urdu at Home

Partnering with India! It makes sense.

Like so many expatriates, I cross my fingers whenever a new delegation goes to India (or vice Versa) to talk about resolving issues that are 60 plus years old. When it looks like things might change for good something always happen either by design or coincidence (take your pick). A large section of the population in Pakistan is frankly sick of it. Right from the creation of Pakistan, the ruling elite consisting of Jagirdars/Waderas/Pirs AKA politicians never let the education system flourish. The message of the “SECULAR” founder of the country was deliberately buried under a misguided nationalist narrative made up of part facts, part fiction and some outright lies.

It is now time for the sanity to prevail. The need of the hour is to reset the button on our relationship with India (Its common sense 101). Enough of the scare tactics. Media needs to take a lead by aggressively questioning the real motives (and in some cases loyalties) of all those who favor the status co. Let's call it quits on the failed experiment of pursuing misguided policies (for the past 60 years) that have made the country less safe, more isolated and closer to disintegration. Let's start with a new experiment where we can test new sets of policies that ONLY focus on building partnerships across several sectors including education, science & technology, arts, tourism etc with India. Let's try them for the next 20 years and see how that works out. If China can find a way to conduct billions of dollars of business in spite of their disputes, so can we.

Like Pakistan, India has its fair share of problems relating to corruption, but at the same time, there has been a serious effort to built high quality educational institutions across the country which has started to really pay off especially for the underprivileged and lower middle class families. I am willing to bet, if we remove any preconditions, freeze the contentious issues for 10 years and just focus on building various partnerships all these issues will disappear before our eyes. If people are able to move more freely across the border than the whole argument of mine vs yours will not even matter anymore. Both Pakistan and India has a lot to offer each other if we could just focus on building alliances and partnerships rather than missiles and nuclear bombs.

There is no dearth of talent in Pakistan and I can personally vouch for that. The young generation is ready to take their destiny in their own hands. All they need is an environment to succeed, and an opportunity to learn and show their talents. They just need the government to do their job and take their hands of them - literally. If the government really want to play Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, please look for all the ill-gotten wealth that has been accumulated for the past 60 years and the people will cheer and support them all the way to the court house and beyond.

Urdu at Home Website Upgraded!

In the middle of 2010, we made a promise to our members that we will start working on Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4. It took us more time than we initially expected but we were able to deliver them with great success last week. Now our educator plan proudly consists of Foundational Stage, Key Stage 1,
Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4.

We have completely redesigned our application engine and now all our printable resources are presented by topics. There are plenty of Urdu resources for all exam boards.  The redesigned “Lesson Center” has over 1000 ready to print worksheets spread over different Key stages. The navigation has
become very easy and downloading is extremely fast. The supplemental section has a large number of research related worksheets that will appeal to some of  the more advanced students in the class.

Our interactive/animated voice enabled application “E-Shagird” now has even more resources including Games, Dialogues, Stories, Quizzes, Vocabulary, Grammar, Reading, Listening etc. The students will be completely engaged during the class and the Urdu teachers can finally take a sigh of relief.  

There are some websites that offer  resources consisting of Power Point presentations and You Tube videos. I am sure they do have some value but what we offer is a complete system of teaching that is specially designed for Urdu teachers and students to build Urdu literacy. In addition to the Topics suggested by the leading exam board, we cover a lot of additional teaching material that is critical for developing Urdu literacy skills.

In the end, my sincere advise to all Urdu teachers; please do the necessary research and ask plenty of
questions before spending money on resources.

Respects,

Syed Abbas

The Last One Year

Last week (on the first of December), I was up very early in the morning as I had to finish reviewing some worksheets for Key Stage 3. I was so engrossed in my work that I didn't notice my 9 year old daughter sneak-up behind me. Only, when she put her arms around me and started singing “Happy Birthday to you my dear Baba” that I realized she was there. Apparently, she had been up long before me wrapping my gift that she had made herself. I was feeling pretty exhausted, but her little Happy Birthday song took away all my tiredness. Anyone who has a little princess at home know they are made of something really special.

Now back to my Blog!

The year 2010 is coming to an end in about 3 weeks from today. It has turned out to be quite an eventful year for us since the launch of our website www.Urduathome.com on the 11th of January 2010. It took us about 6 months to get settled down and hone our message for our potential customers. But, after the summer vacations, we started getting a steady stream of members that included a number of schools from UK, Middle East and believe it or not even Pakistan. At present, we have 7 schools in UK who are using our website. (Moseley School, Jack Hunt School, Stretford High School, WakeField City High school, Hodge Hill Girls School, Thomas Decan Academy and Allerton Grange School). A lot more have shown willingness to embrace our website and will be joining soon.

 
What we offer:
 
What we offer is a “LTS” (Language Teaching System) that includes a number of Urdu teaching tools that are build to support and supplement AQA and Edexcel exam board's Urdu assessment plan. Our LTS is flexible and as we are moving forward we are adding more functionality to it. It includes several powerful sections and each one of them consists of number of helpful teaching tools especially designed for Urdu teachers. These tools include interactive/animated (game based) exercises including reading and writing exercises, research activities, puzzles, crosswords, themes, role-playing exercises, sample tests and a lot more stuff. As part of our LTS, we have build an interactive application called E-Shagird that is extremely useful to both Urdu teachers and students. Teachers who are currently using this application are finding it very beneficial.


When we were developing our LTS, we had a choice to create Urdu teaching tools only for the GCSE students, but we made a decision to do it the right way and started from the foundational stage. We knew that Urdu is not taught at the foundational level or even at KS 1 or KS 2 (yet) but we believe in next few years, Urdu will be introduced in earlier stages as well and we want to be prepared for that ahead of time. Numerous research studies have shown that once students cross a certain age limit no amount of good teaching tools will help them develop an interest in a particular language.


Our team spent countless hours preparing a large quantity of interactive/animated lessons as well as a number of worksheets focusing on student's reading and writing skills right from foundational stage. We have also added a large number of GCSE themes based interactive lessons and worksheets in our KS 3 and KS 4 plan that is coming out next month.


Other Products:

Some Urdu teachers might be surprised to know that we have even designed and developed other amazing Urdu teaching tools including 6 different types of colorful bi-lingual Urdu vocabulary Flash Cards with matching Interactive/animated CDs. A number of schools in UK are already using them they might not know it is our product that we have been selling for the past 4 years in different countries through online stores. These are currently available in North America from www.Desistore.com and in UK from http://www.urduresources.com/.


Global yet Local:

We have often been asked a question, “Your company is based in USA, how can you understand the needs of the Urdu teachers or students in UK, Middle East or other geographical locations.” The short answer is, this is the age of globalization and geographic boundaries are the thing of the past. But the long answer is that our team conducted exhaustive research of the AQA and Edexcel exam boards website and learnt about Urdu assessment for GCSE students and sample tests of the past year. We also sought guidance from experienced Urdu teachers teaching GCSE students.


Back Bone of Urdu Language:

It is my hope that after looking at our program many more talented individuals will come forward and develop new and improved tools for teaching Urdu based on modern technology. I have often said, Urdu teachers are the backbone of Urdu and companies like ours has only one job – make sure the backbone is continuously supplied with quality nutrients i.e. High quality Urdu teaching content.


Our History:

We have been developing tools to teach and learn Urdu for over 5 years now and www.Urduathome.com is our third website in the series and the most improved one so far. Our first website was called www.pakxpats.com that offered reading and writing worksheets to Urdu teachers and parents. It was launched in late 2005. Our next website was called www.Urduforkids.com. It was an interactive website with flash based games to teach Urdu to young expatriate children and was launched in 2007.


Building Urdu Societies and Associations:


We are working hard to make Urdu language popular everywhere using our website and Face Book Page “Urdu at Home”. If Urdu becomes more popular in other countries it can create more higher paying Jobs for Urdu teachers which in turn will improve the quality of Urdu teaching. One way to do that is to build networks between Urdu societies in UK, North America, Pakistan, India and other regions. I am in touch with few Urdu societies in USA and can assist in building a strong connection with Urdu societies elsewhere.


Social Responsibility:

Urdu at Home works very closely with “The Citizen's Foundation – USA”. TCF is the biggest non profit in Pakistan that runs over 660 schools mostly for girls in remote areas. My association with TCF-USA goes a few years back and now we have become one of their select few community partners. (http://www.tcfusa.org/urdu-at-home-2)



A look at the future:

Currently, educational institutions in in four different countries are using our teaching tools in their classes. This is just a beginning and we still have along way to go. My long term vision is to have a completely automated system in place which tests different Urdu language skills of individual students and link them with their respective teachers.

We have also setup a separate team to build content for other South Asian languages. With everyone's prayers and well wishes, we will be able to bring them online sometimes middle of next year.



Respects,

Syed Abbas

Diet Urdu

One of my favorite characters of all time is Mirza Ghalib. He is the greatest poet of Urdu language but I like him more because of the amazing sense of humor that he possessed, as evident from his letters. If you read his letters you will realize, we don't speak or write the same language any more. We have replaced and given up so many of the beautiful and wonderful words that used to represent respect, politeness and love. When you read the words in Mirza Ghalib's letters you get a strange buzz; I get the same buzz when I drink a "chilled coke in a glass bottle". I am sure some of you know what I am talking about :-).

Going by the same analogy, what most of us speak and write these days is “Diet Urdu”. Like “Diet Coke” there is no taste or flavor to it (Sorry diet coke lovers, but that is true). So many of the beautiful words in Urdu language have been replaced, while a lot more have simply been kicked out of our day to day conversation in the name of changing times.

By taking out the gems from Urdu language, we have also become some what less polite and respectful towards others. After all, we show our respect and politeness with words and if you take out the words which best represent those feelings, it does affects your level of intimacy with others. Some might even argue
that It has even affected the fabric of our society in general especially our relationships with our elders including our parents and Grand parents.


Maybe I am being nostalgic, but some of us do remember different choice of words used by our parents when speaking to their parents and grandparents and vice versa. Some people might say that the times have changed, but I'd say to them, its not the time but the words that have changed. Bring back those words and we will get our time back.


Respects,

Syed H. Abbas

Teaching Urdu with ICT (Information and Communication Technologies)

Few weeks back, I had a very long conversation with a good friend of mine who teaches Urdu in a school in UK. He is extremely passionate about teaching the Urdu language and we always end up having long discussions about its future in different parts of the world.


I had asked him to gather feedback about our website from different schools in UK where Urdu is currently taught as a regular class. Based on his feedback, an overwhelming majority of the Urdu teachers and parents liked the quality of our program, our teaching methodology and the topics that we have covered on our website. They were also very happy to see Urdu being finally taught using ICT. However, we were surprised to find out that a number of teachers are still not comfortable with the idea of using technology to teach Urdu language.


We all know that there is a dearth of good quality Urdu teaching resources and the overall standards have fallen to their lowest level. Copyright violations is an acceptable norm even among some of the leading schools. Absolutely no investment is made to modernize the language and it is usefulness is often debated. Ask any Urdu teacher about the Urdu literacy standards and he/she will tell you that things have gone so bad that most 5th graders are not able to to read few sentences of Urdu correctly. Those of us who are seriously attempting to improve the system by introducing technology receive no support from the schools, government and in some cases even concerned parents. In addition, the publishing houses see us as a threat to their current monopoly over the education system. But it is not too late! For starters, any effort to modernize Urdu teaching methods should be encouraged, appreciated and financially supported. As Urdu teachers and parents, we should at the very least try the new technologies that are coming out to teach Urdu language.



It's about time, schools across Pakistan, India and UK should analyze the reasons behind students' lack of interest in Urdu and why the failure rate has increased alarmingly. The answer is simple! It's all due to the decades old methods of teaching Urdu as well as our inability to embrace technology. Our current generation of students want their learning experience to be interesting and interactive.



Based on the customer reviews and the appreciation we have received, we can confidently say that after enrolling in our program no Urdu teacher will again complain about not having access to modern Urdu resources. Our program is based on the MFL (Modern Foreign Language) standards established in UK and is very easy to use. It is the only online Urdu program which fully supports and implements ICT model. Our program is ideal for private schools, public schools and those parents who are teaching their kids Urdu at home. Some of the leading schools in Pakistan and UK are currently using our program. Our intention is not to replace the Urdu books taught that are taught in schools (although we really need to look into it's overall content). We really want to help and support the Urdu teachers who are increasingly finding it difficult to connect with their students by using technology.



We offer a complete Urdu teaching program that follows a step by step teaching methodology. Our program has two parts; The first part incorporates interactive lessons and exercises for different levels with animations. The second part includes a large number of pre - designed worksheets starting from Pre - K to higher classes. Our program is well defined and carefully planned with the sole focus on building and improving all major Urdu concepts and skills. There is no religious or political content that is not related to Urdu in our program.



So our message to Urdu teachers and parents all over the world is this: “Our Online Program is ideal for your students and children.” There are hundred's of resources on our website (www.Urduathome.com) that will make your teaching life so much easier and will also help improve children's / students productivity and retention. Our lesson planners are adding new content regularly. We deeply care about our members and always welcome their feedback. Last count, we have members from over 10 countries and still counting.




Respects,

Syed Abbas

A TCF Fund Raiser with Ethan Casey (Author and Journalist)

Dear Friends,


Last week, I attended the TCF (The Citizen's Foundation) Fund raiser that was held in Silicon Valley where "Urdu at Home" was one of the sponsors. The event was very well organized by TCF staff. They were very well supported by the volunteer's from PACC (Pakistani American Culture Center) led by Mr. Farrukh Shah Khan (President PACC). I was lucky enough to share the table with Mr. Ethan Casey who has covered different parts of the world as a journalist for leading publications and has also written two amazing books on Pakistan "Alive and well in Pakistan" and "A Pakistan Road Trip". I would recommend every one to to buy both copies - ideally via TCF USA website as 20% of the proceeds would go to TCF schools.

Before I elaborate, I would like to add that if there is one NGO who you can think of giving your donation , Zakat or any other means of support to, it should be TCF. They have over 650 schools in Pakistan, most in remote areas. They have 92000 students enrolled in their schools of which 50% are girls. Moreover, 100% of their staff are women. So this year instead of giving your hard earned money to other institutions consider donating it to an NGO that is actually changing people's lives, one student at a time.

Now, back to the event. The event started with a key note speech from Ethan Casey who passionately described his journey through several cities across Pakistan. He encouraged all of us Pakistanis living abroad to continue to believe in the spirit of Pakistan and work towards rebuilding its image.

The speech was followed by a short documentary on TCF's goal of improving education and literacy in Pakistan. The documentary touched everyone's heart and most people in the crowed donated generously. The documentary was followed by an introduction of the sponsors. Urdu at Home's message of "Spreading Literacy via Technology" was very well received and applauded. Our table was visited by a lot of people and they were greatly impressed by our program.

As mentioned earlier, I shared a table with Mr. Ethan Casey and we hit it off immediately. To my surprise, he is currently enrolled in an Urdu language learning class and was extremely happy to hear about our website. He was very impressed by our efforts to improve Literacy in Pakistan using technology without any government or private sector support.

There were several entertaining performances which were very refreshing. The event ended around midnight. I came back with a renewed commitment to the cause of improving literacy in Pakistan. In these times of doom and gloom when we feel the mere existence of Pakistan is at stake, TCF showed that there is still light at the end of the tunnel for hundred of thousands' of deserving students. If each one of us decide to help just ONE student, we can still make Pakistan a promised land for our next generation.

Respects
Syed H. Abbas

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

Your children have the RIGHT to learn Urdu!

Do you think its time to scratch the old tag of “ABCD” for children born and raised in USA? What does it mean to be an American Born Desi these days anyway? Can we now say that our kids are no longer CONFUSED any more? There was a time when children born in USA having Pakistani or Indian parents were automatically tagged as ABCD. But my experience in living here for more than a decade tells me that it was not the kids but the parents who got a little confused along the way. Back than, the cultural and community support system was not as developed (as we see now) and following the ethnic, cultural and social values was a much bigger challenge.

For most parents, it was a big challange to teach their young children Urdu and the good quality resources were also not easily available. But, there were some parents who accepted the challenge; they tried very hard and made sure that their children understand and appreciate their roots and cultural. They took their children to Independence Day celebrations, EID celebrations, weekly Urdu classes etc. They also established rules that when at home speak and answer only in Urdu. It was really tough but they stick with it because they understood the value of what was at stake. Their hard work paid off and when the children grew up they appreciated the sacrifices made by their parents.

The same challenges that parents faced a decade earlier are still there but so are the opportunities to deal with them. With the advent of technology, we have the resources on our finger tips and the old excuses don’t hold any more weight. If we do not provide our children access to the resources that they need to stay connected with their roots we as parents are the ones who will be held responsible. When our children grow up without good understanding of their language and culture they will (rest assured of that) blame their parents and we have seen this happening already. When that time comes, you will not be in no position to tell your children why they couldn’t make an extra effort because it will be too late by than.

We have to constantly remind ourselves, when we loose our culture, we loose our identity. You can never change the color of your skin or your heritage, accept it! So be proud of your roots and make sure you children are well aware of it as well. Don’t treat Urdu language as something they will pick up here and there. It doesn’t work like that and in your heart you know it as well. Give them access to the professional resources and spend time with them. Trust me it’s worth it!

Happy Learning!