From Chicago to Kashmir, how these youth help valley students to study on 2G internet

Srinagar, Sep 22: Thousands of miles away from her home land, Iqra Altaf, a Chicago based Kashmiri mathematics scholar has been teaching students of her home land via online for free of cost.
Kashmiri students have suffered immensely for the last one year due to back-to-back lockdowns- first post abrogation of Article 370 and then COVID-19.
However, the 24-year-old Iqra is helping children of her home land by providing free classes for mathematics and physics subjects of class 11th and 12th.
“It pained me when I saw students in Kashmir have wasted so much of their time since last year. Then I decided to take online classes of Kashmiri students,” she said.
Iqra is a mathematics PhD scholar at University of Chicago. She is teaching students on ‘Wise App’ that works on low internet speed.
‘Wise App’, has been developed during COVID times by two friends from IIT-Bombay, Mubeen Masudi from Kashmir and Bilal Abidi from Lucknow. The App is a 2G-friendly video interface that allows students and teachers to cut through problems of scheduling, makes teaching and assessments over the Internet easier, and makes the experience as close to a real classroom as possible.
“More than 1000 teachers are using this App in Kashmir and can work on low internet speed. Thousands of students have been benefitted by it,” Masudi told news agency Kashmir Indepth News Service (KINS).
He said teachers and students across India are also using this App because it has no security threat. “Wise App, which works on 2G, enables teachers to schedule and conduct live classes without sharing meeting IDs and passwords. Additionally, it enables teachers to send and receive assignments, facilitate discussions, share material and receive automated attendance reports,” he said. He said it took them two months to make this App.
“The application is extremely simple to use. Anyone can just download the application from the play store and start using it right away,” he said.
Iqra is providing two classes in a week each for students of class 11th and 12th free of cost.
Faizan Ahmad, a class 12th student said his studies suffered badly due to COVID-19. “We are not able to attend tuitions because of COVID-19. But thank God, I am able to attend online classes of Iqra Ma’m from Chicago via ‘Wise App’ and that too on slow internet speed in Kashmir. So far scores of students like me have benefitted,” he said.