Background

About 5 years ago, when I was using my Acer Tablet Laptop (one of the first few) I used to show students how to solve a problem by drawing on it. It was bulky, hot and slow! Over the years, computers have sort-of taken over the world, and we thought the keyboard would replace paper & pen! Didn't happen - tablets became paper and pencils were replaced by styluses, still the use of handscript didn't go away. When I teach animation using my tablet, on a large screen, students seem to pay more attention. There is a sense of sophistication as-well-as human interactivity, along with a 'coolness' factor to it.

But with the growing population, disappearing schools and falling infrastructure - how do we keep the process of teaching & learning going forward, how do we keep it evolving? How do we take these tablets, which were a $1000 before, now a couple of hundred, use to increase learning? How do you connect people, across cities, states and countries? Sure, we have email, twitter, Facebook and youtube - but that still doesn't address the education, it doesn't address the fundamental need for us to watch someone answer a problem, solve a puzzle, watch & learn to draw. Above all connect with a great teacher even in a remote town in India, who is only connected to you by the Internet!

Solution

BrainBart is an application on Android and iPad for teachers and students. Its free to use, community driven, cloud based, forever living, fun platform for kids as well as adults.
It is optimized for most mobile devices and game consoles like Xbox and PS3. And of-course its available on any PC. We are designing a beautiful app for android and iOS tablets. Availability is the key and very important to us - so we are making it work on most android tablets, lets be honest, there are way too many tablets with android on them, so we don't want you to be left out.
Unlike other platforms, BrainBart is supported by for-profit educational institutions, so its zero cost to a student. The best part is, captivating teachers will make money. A key features of BrainBart is our partnerships with schools and universities across the planet. Currently we are working on partnering and bringing them on board. TeachforAmerica.org is also a partner in this exciting venture.
We are also working on getting the app pre-loaded to Aakash (Ubislate) the 35$ tablet to reach at least 10 million indian students soon. So if you are a teacher, you should be excited about the potential large new market.
BrainBart lets you collaborate with other teachers, pause/stop recording the lessons and resume at a later point or let another teacher over 2000 miles away resume and complete the lesson for you.

Keyfeatures

- Learn anywhere anytime, by 'saving' videos to you device (they are available when you are not connected to internet)
- Use is to teach football strategy or follow a lesson plan, upto you
- Collaborate with teachers from across the planet - start a lesson, complete only half of it, let the rest be completed by a collaborator sitting - few 1000 miles away
- Make money, by making lessons interesting
- Zero cost to a student
- Partners sponsor teachers and videos, so the better you are, the better are the chances to make more money
- Get under the radar of some top notch schools and universities
Teach someone from India, China or Locally or learn from them.

Learning Platforms
Android 2.2+ (tested platforms)

Motorola Xoom
Asus Prime, Slider & Iconia
Samsung Galaxy
Sony Tablet S
Toshiba Thrive
LG Optimus
HTC
Kindle Fire
Aakash Tablet
Apple

Web application (including PC and Mac) - Jan 15 2012 (almost ready)
Android & iPad app - April 2012
Other devices (PS3, Xbox & all mobile platforms) - June 2012
Where does the money go?

We have the webapp now, and a working prototype for iPad & Android tablet. It's time to build it into a full-fledged app and build infrastructure around it. It involves 3 steps:

Teaching Tools - Building Teaching Tools requires a lot of work, we need to ensure it works on most android platforms, without any lag or bugs, the handwriting is smooth, screen capture is great and audio recording is seem-less.
Learning Tools - We need to build the learning tools for most mobile platforms and game devices, our goal is to be the netflix of learning. The design and core functionalities are ready but we need to refine and re-refine the app to ensure there are no bugs.
Web App - Even-though the web-app is ready, we need to beef-up our servers (we plan to use Amazon AWS) to ensure its available globally at a very minimal cost. The site needs maintenance and until we have more content from users like you, (which is when we see partners sponsor us), we need to keep the servers running and data be available to everyone.
We've already spent 12 months on this project, and need to spend at-least another 3 before its ready for primetime!
We need several servers and they cost, on average, about $150/server/month. As we add more users, we need to add more servers and pay extra for bandwidth.
We also need to add one more programmer to our team, to ensure we hit our Targets, which are just around the corner.

What BrainBart isn't...

Brainbart is not an application that will replace teacher-student interaction. It only enhances the experience, and enable to teach globally and collaborate word-wide, over the internet.

Some apps try and do everything, but we try to keep it simple. We try and stay focussed on key elements like the user experience, bandwidth consumption, speed of the app and the videos and overall learning process.

Who are we?
Carmen Talbot born and brought-up in Detroit, is an educator and non-profit Junkie. She has travelled the world, spent 3 years in China, teaching children, ran a successful school in Detroit. She worked countless hours working with kids and understands the learning mechanism. She has a sister who suffers from Down's syndrome, which is where she draws her motivation from.
Satya Murthy was born in India and has travelled half the planet. The rest is on his bucket list. He is an designer and loves startups. He worked for Lego Toys, Disney Imagineering and a bunch of films doing animatronics and robotics. He is also a game designer and artist. He is a wannabe chef and drives a vintage cadillac (whenever it starts).