“Ma’am, how can we solve problems at home on our own when we don’t have any help?”

That was what Bharti, one of my students at Anukulan, an NGO through which I used to take Maths classes for grade 10 underprivileged students, asked me. She asked me that right after I was asking whether they had solved the questions I had assigned for them as homework. This instance helped me understand that what my students needed were not just regular math classes but rather constant assistance.

This was how the idea for Edubuddy came up. It wasn’t just about helping my students, it was about helping every student who went through the problem of lacking help. The first step in building this website would be mapping out a rough draft of its tools. In order to do that, I decided to consult my students. The tools that were decided on were the doubt solver and the chapter summariser. Once this was done, I started to code. My brother’s friend suggested I code using the Streamlit library available for Python.

Gradually, the website started to take shape. I showed it to my students who seemed satisfied with its easy to use user interface and the features we had collectively decided on. On the day I showed the website to them, I was supposed to take a short quiz on the topics I had covered so far with them. That was what inspired the test generator in Edubuddy. The one thing my students appreciated the most was the integration of AI in the website. They said that helped them immensely.

Managing my studies while coding was one of the challenges I faced but the thought of helping my students out was what kept me going. Watching them use the website was one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever experienced.

However I still doubted the accessibility of Edubuddy which led me to research more into the topic. This was the basis for my research paper titled ‘Bridging the EdTech Divide: A Review of AI-Powered Tools for Underserved Learners in India’. In my paper, I also assessed Edubuddy and how including certain features like multi-language accessibility and personalized learning would make it a lot more accessible than it already is. This gave me a future vision for Edubuddy.

I never imagined such a small idea of mine could morph into something so big and meaningful. Since this was my first project, it gave me a lot of experience in developing a website. EduBuddy is still growing, but what began as a simple response to a student’s question has transformed into a vision for equitable learning. If a single idea, born out of one classroom conversation, can touch lives, then I truly believe innovation in education has limitless potential.