A finalist in this year’s edition of the annual Safaricom Appwiz Challenge currently in its second year, and one of the startups undergoing the three-month incubation period at Strathmore University, Ultipedia has introduced a fun way of learning.
Founded by three friends and former classmates at Maseno School, Ultipedia was developed in an aim to provide primary school pupils with a fun and interactive way of learning and doing revision, eliminating the boredom that may come when flipping through pages.
Speaking in an interview with JUUCHINI, Irving Amukasa, one of the co-founders said Ultipedia, coined from the words Ultimate and Encyclopedia, is an app for devices running on the Android platform and has been designed to work like a game.
“Ultipedia has been developed to provide primary schools with a fun way of doing revision. It is interactive and includes animations that helps users to be entertained when navigating,” said Amukasa.
The mobile app, just like the existing games students like playing on their mobile phones, features a score and levels capability to help track the progress of the user during the playing period.
“Ultipedia has questions from all the subjects offered in primary schools and they are available in a multiple choice format. Once the user provides an answer to the question asked, the app lets the user know if the answer is correct or wrong.”
Providing a voice capability when giving feedback to whether an answer is wrong or correct, the educational app is designed to provide additional notes to the user when an answer is wrong, explaining why it is wrong.
“Flipping through tonnes of pages to get answers when revising can be hard and time consuming, Ultipedia provides an interactive environment for revision and provides answers in real time, with a timer to help make it more interesting.”
Once Ultipedia is launched on the mobile phone, the user is given an option to select the mode they wish to play the game, either through the Fun Mode or the School Mode after which a list of subjects appear for selection.
With available list of questions being sourced from Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) past papers, this new app promises to help the large number of pupils sitting their final exams every year to adequately prepare.
“Our market is a peculiar one, and we would like to provide a mobile service that people in Kenya understand and enjoy. We are welcoming more feedback from Kenyans as we continue to improve the app,” said Amukasa.
Lead by Amukasa, the team of three, including Gideon Onduru an Android and Symbian developer and Malcom Asiyo is working to pitch their mobile app during this year’s demo day taking place on Friday 21st November 2014, and is geared for top prize winner of the Safaricom Appwiz challenge.
The mobile app is available for download as a pilot project to get more feedback from users, with plans to officially launch Ultipedia in January, 2015.
