When Leilah Talukdar and her US National Synchronized Swimming team went to Lima, Peru to compete in the 2011 Pan American Championship, her father Shah Talukder had to stay behind. Not being able to see his 11 years old daughter earning prestige representing the US in sports, drove him mad. Shah, a Silicon Valley veteran, had to stay content with the instant commentary MrsHendleyTalukder managed over the phone and a CD of the performance three months later for which his daughter won not one but two gold medals. “I mean, come on!” he vented his exasperation when telling us the story.
It wasn’t the only occasion they felt that something was amiss. Four years ago during their first visit to Bangladesh, Leilah and her sister Sabera started working with Sajida Foundation, a NGO here in Bangladesh, to educate and support street children. They formed the English Language Outreach Club and recruited 4-5 students from the prestigious Los Gatos High School, California to teach a group of 5-6 students English here in Bangladesh through video conference via Skype. That extremely rewarding effort wasn’t trouble-free. Sometimes either internet went down or Skype chose to freeze up, wasting many tens of minutes per session or abandoning a session entirely.
Shah and Leilah looked for a better way to do this. Finding no alternative to the lackluster performance of Skype, Shah decided to take matter in his own hands. He envisioned a mobile app that will broadcast one-to-many 2-way video streaming with freedom of interaction among viewers. He rallied the network that he developed over 28 years in Silicon Valley and began working in secret for the next four years.
Shah recruited veteran engineers and developers from all over Silicon Valley. His pitch of the idea captured the imagination of these tech connoisseurs. A passionate group of these seasoned experts began working with Shah – voluntarily – on the project for the next 4 years in secrecy. Now with a robust beta of his innovative app at hand, it is time to let the world know of YakSee.
“YakSee, as we call it, is a truly interactive live broadcasting platform. It came from the deep frustration that we had from Skype, to be frank. But unlike it, YakSee is not a run-of-the-mill video conferencing app. YakSee thrives in broadcasting, both video as well as audio, among many people in a group while those who are broadcasting and those who are viewing can interact and exchange ideas, ask questions at the same time, either in video feed or in text comment. And all of it will happen on mobile devices and over wireless networks.” Shah described his creation in a demonstration session in front of some selected Bangladeshi university students and media.
This was the second public presentation of YakSee. “I was looking for ways to reveal this app close to my heritage, not only because of the sentimental aspect, but because most importantly developing countries like Bangladesh are the ones who can benefit the most from this innovation, particularly in education. Thankfully, Google I/O Extended Dhaka gave me the opportunity to pitch to a Bangladeshi crowd. I am extremely grateful to them for that”, Shah conveyed us, “It was certainly important to have a world-class team of engineers to develop the state-of-the-art network architecture that we needed to handle the huge amount of video data. But we also needed a strong network of cloud servers if we were ever to pull this off and we never had the money to acquire it. Then out of the blue, Google Cloud contacted and said they were very excited about the project. They offered to fund the project and supply significant Cloud services free to YakSee. We would’ve faced a fatal impasse if not for them.”
YakSee now plans to bring the first truly interactive Virtual Classroom to Bangladesh and take remote learning projects in Bangladesh to a new level. It will allow teachers to fully participate live and interact directly with students while other students look on and learn in the process. Unlike traditional distance learning, remote learners can be pulled in from anywhere in the world to participate in the broadcast so their skills can be immediately demonstrated, critiqued and improved. By allowing this interactivity, YakSee preserves, enhances, and extends the teacher-pupil relationship. All the teachers and students need is a smartphone or tablet, access to a network, and YakSee.
YakSee could be used to train new teachers too or help them continually improve the skill of the existing ones. Want to hire new teachers through evaluation procedures? YakSee can help with that too. Imagine an interview panel – maybe not even in the same city or country for that matter – being able to see and hear candidates perform and evaluate their skills and personality online can give a huge boon in quality hiring. The hiring process will be cheaper, quicker and much less disruptive.
YakSee is giving limited access to its beta build right now, specifically to support interactive distance learning projects in Bangladesh. A full and more general worldwide YakSee release will follow later this year.
By: Mustansir Mashruk Rahman
Content Provided by HiFi Public
