Sesh Kumar, Founder/CEO of Emantras

Sesh Kumar founded Emantras, (now) a digital education company, in 2000. Emantras began as a web development company, primarily using Macromedia Flash, and in 2004, began delivering e-learning solutions. Now with 9 offices worldwide, Emantras develops digital educational content for K-12, higher education, and enterprise. Emantras’ impressive enterprise client list includes Lufthansa, McGraw Hill Education, NASA, Nokia, Siemens Medical and IKEA. Under the Punflay brand, they’ve also developed a number of interactional educational game apps (playable online and on Apple mobile devices) for K-12. Their frog dissection app – offering a gesture based virtual simulation of everybody’s favorite biology lab – won 2010 best science app (elementary) by the IEAR (I Educational Apps Review) as well as the 2010 Mark Twain Ethical Science Award from PETA. Mobl21, Emantras’ mobile learning application, enables teachers and students to easily create and access digital learning content across various social networks and mobile devices. It launched in 2010, and won the 2010 Learning without Frontiers Innovation award.

Unlike many learning technology venture founders – though fairly commonly for web developers(?) – Kumar himself dropped out of college. It is unclear how soon after he launched Emantras. In a recent interview, he discussed how what he didn’t have in formal education – and what he seeks to provide students through Emantras – are highly accessible learning opportunities. Unsurprisingly, then, developing mobile learning content and experiences is Emantars’ current focus. His core skills are in web development, and the entrepreneurial quality that I can particularly see is willingness to adapt Emantras’ core activities to respond to changes in the marketplace and in especially in technological achivements. His leadership team has expertise in business operations and development, engineering, gaming and learning technologies.

Reflections

Looking through Emantras’ work, I’m beginning to really see the potential and value of mobile educational delivery. Emantras’ frog dissection app is using gesture-based computing in a way that is really valuable for learning. It’s exciting, and definitely warming me up out of my initially cool reception for tablets and other such devices.

It strikes me that much of Emantras’ focus is on content – indeed, a lot of the 1:1 discussions focus on content delivery. And yet it strikes me that the value of 1:1 education is as much in feedback as in content. Certainly some feedback can – and is – provided on these interactive, content-driven learning objects.

I’m thinking, optimistically, that the well-delivered content delivered through Emantras’ learning objects free up teacher/trainer time to focus on providing effective feedback to students. My imagination is sparked, and I’m trying to think of possible ventures that are directed towards – or more centrally include? – providing students with qualitative feedback. Is it possible?

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