SHAGHAF provides smart phone applications to help school students to understand learning materials in a creative way. The company’s premise is blending education with entertainment so that students can absorb learning materials in a simple way, said Ayman Abou El Magd, founder and CEO of the company.
The company launched an application called Eltakhta by which the curriculum is transformed into educational, interactive 3D games. The student must direct their phone camera to the image in their textbook to turn it into an interactive image, instead of the traditional, static method of learning through textbooks, he added.
For example, when a student is learning about the solar system, the components will appear on screen in 3D by using the phone camera with the application.
The curriculum can also be transformed into stories via videos in the application, in this way learning materials are converted into an interactive game that sticks in the student’s mind.
The company has begun providing these features for some middle school curriculum lessons. El Magd said he received requests from many users to carry out these methods on elementary and high school curriculums.
Eltakhta has five educational applications, including turning textbook photos and pictures into 3D animations, reviewing the curriculum, showing pictures of geographic areas that students are learning about, and mock exams.
The application has 2,000 users so far and the company targets to increase this to 20,000 users over the next year. El Magd is hoping to acquire 20% of private school students as users, which accounts for 100,000 students annually.
Adequate funding is one of the major challenges facing the company, in addition to technologically integrating all the educational programmes into one application.
“We are studying the availability of our educational services, not just those via the application, through the company website. Negotiations are ongoing with investors to attract investments into the company,” El Magd said.
According to El Magd, the company plans to achieve revenue through the payment of a monthly subscription by users in cooperation with private and international schools, or through social responsibility programmes that are directed to education.
