# Notemonk, innovative Indian website combining open textbooks and social learning


There are lot's of exciting open projects coming out of India, and I was
very excited some time back to discover that [the National Council of
Education Research and Training](http://www.ncert.nic.in/index.htm) had
[put hundreds of K12 books in several languages
online](http://reganmian.net/blog/2008/04/06/many-great-free-textbooks-from-india/).
It was fun looking at a first grade textbook in Hindi, or a 12th grade
history textbook in English. However, the interface of the website was
(and is) horrible, most people I showed it to didn't realize that they
could actually download the entire text of the books there (and right
now, the website is down entirely).

[![](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/prashanth_photo-217x300.jpg "prashanth_photo")](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/prashanth_photo.jpeg)I
began thinking about ways of mirroring the books, and presenting them in
a much more useful format. I was delighted to discover that a software
engineer in Bangalore, Prashanth Ellina, had already done so, setting up
[a simple website](http://ncertbooks.prashanthellina.com/) with links to
all the books. We chatted online, and I was hoping to be able to meet
him when I was in Bangalore, but that unfortunately did not work out.
When I gave [talks](/blog/publications-and-presentations/) at [IIPA](http://www.iipa.ernet.in/)
and [IGNOU](http://www.ignou.ac.in/) in Delhi, I also used his site as
an example of the kind of reuse that open licenses can enable.

But Prashanth didn't stop there, he kept developing his idea, and has
just launched a new project called
"[Notemonk](http://www.notemonk.com/)", which is a platform for people
who are studying with these textbooks to collaborate. He takes out the
detailed table of contents for each book
([example](http://www.notemonk.com/book/40/Chemistry%201%20Class%2011/)),
and for each chapter, collects relevant videos (like MIT OpenCourseWare,
and other open lectures), and enable people to ask and answer questions
([example](http://www.notemonk.com/node/1887/Modern.Periodic.Law.and.the.present.form.of.the.Pe/)).

[![](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Screen-shot-2010-05-04-at-12.08.56-PM.png "Screen shot 2010-05-04 at 12.08.56 PM")](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Screen-shot-2010-05-04-at-12.08.56-PM.png)I
think this is a great example of remixing open resources, and I am
excited to see where Prashanth will take the project. Since neither the
open textbooks in India, nor his project, is very well known
internationally, I asked if he would agree to do an e-mail interview. He
graciously agreed, and below you can see him introducing his project in
detail. Visit [Notemonk](http://www.notemonk.com/) and [let him know
what you think](http://www.notemonk.com/feedback/)!

* * * * *

**Who are you?**I am an entrepreneur working out of Bangalore, India. I
co-founded Headrun Technologies Pvt Ltd to pursue various innovative
trajectories under one umbrella. Prior to this I worked as a software
developer at [Veveo](http://corporate.veveo.net/) (A technology startup
HQ'ed in Boston, USA). I consider myself an ardent supporter of the Open
Source Movement and try to aid by releasing code to the general public
every once in a while through my
[blog](http://blog.prashanthellina.com). I am at the stage of awakening
to the Open Education arena and I believe there are exciting things
happening and even more yet to happen over here.

**When did you first come across these open textbooks? How? What was
your first thought? What did you think about the content, and about the
site itself?**About 3 years back I felt an urge to re-read my school
textbooks hoping to learn the same information but with new
perspectives. Simultaneously I was also looking for people with similar
motivations online. While searching I came across
[NCERT](http://www.ncert.nic.in/index.htm)'s excellent resource and was
thrilled to know that the Indian Government was providing easy access to
beautifully designed text books. The NCERT text books are fantastic.
They are much improved compared to when I was in school. The site itself
looks and feels like a relic out of the earlier days of the
internet.[](http://www.ncert.nic.in/index.htm) **How did you get the
idea of making an alternative site to make these resources available
(your first site)?**I starting reading the books after downloading from
the [NCERT site](http://www.ncert.nic.in/) and realized quickly that a
better organized site would make it easier to access the books.
Initially it was to be just a personal library interface and then I
thought it might actually be useful to others so I hosted it on my
website.

**How did you do it? Was it a lot of work?**At the time my day job
involved a insane amount of Python/Linux hacking, CGI's, System
infrastructure building, Web back-ends etc. So I knew exactly the right
tools and methods to get the job done. I spend about 3-4 evenings after
work to get [the first
site](http://ncertbooks.prashanthellina.com)[](http://ncertbooks.prashanthellina.com)
done.

**Did you receive any feedback, were there many users?** The interesting
thing is that I wrote the site and put it up for general access and then
completely forgot about it :) I was debugging something else on the
website a few months later and happened to look at the Apache logs and
found a steady stream of visitors pouring in. That is when I realized
that there was a "need" for this resource.

Looking back I got almost no feedback which I think is mostly because I
did not provide an easily visible email address or feedback form.

**Are these resources openly licensed? Do you fear any legal problems?
Have you had any contact officially with the people behind that
website?**The legality is in the grey. I looked around for licensing
terms on the NCERT page at the time and found no explicit document or
text. However, I received assurance that the material is intended to be
open, and I am working with them (NCERT) to have it explicitly stated as
such on the site.

**How did you get the idea of Notemonk? Was this the plan all along, or
did you first do the first website, and then get this idea?**When
studying text books in school my father taught me to first understand
the scope of the book by looking at the contents page and then to skim
through the book looking at the main topics and their subtopics. I would
do one or two iterations of this process until the "Framework" of the
book fit into my mind. This is incredibly useful because any content you
consume from the book thereafter fits into the appropriate niche in the
mind. This is the way I read any book thereafter (except for books where
suspense has to be savoured :)).

This was one fundamental drive. Another one is a more recent feeling.
When in school and college I realized two things. Firstly, the staff was
underqualified and ill-equipped to act as agents of learning. That was
mostly due to the economic conditions which paid teachers far less than
in the Industry. Secondly, most students would not learn about things
because they weren't excited enough about understanding things. This is
both due to lack of exposure and to lack of proper training. Education
was simply not made enough fun for them. The proliferation of online
communities in the form of Forums, Social Networks coupled with Online
Video coupled with the above seeded a subconcious thought that something
could be done to harness new age technologies to solve this age old
problem.

So, after watching [the first
site](http://ncertbooks.prashanthellina.com) grow and attract people, I
thought of experimenting with the ideas I've had for a while. That is
when I started building [Notemonk](http://www.notemonk.com).

**Who is the target group for Notemonk? How do you see people using
it?**Right now we are looking at engaging school students from India
using NCERT text books. However we are already working on making the
site more generic so we can support more syllabi from across the country
and beyond. [Indonesia has put up textbooks
online](http://reganmian.net/blog/2009/03/19/407-indonesian-textbooks-openly-available/).
Tamil Nadu (a state in South India) [has also done the
same](http://www.textbooksonline.tn.nic.in/). We are going to make those
accessible on Notemonk. At some point we want to actively involve
teachers too.

It has been just a month since we launched the site and we have 500+
registered users and fledgling community asking questions and answering
on various books and topics across the site.

**What is some of the unique functionality you offer?**

-   Book outlines and discussion pages for every topic in the outline
-   Ability for Q&A on any topic.
-   Users can write notes on any topic and others can benefit by reading
  those.
-   Every topic has associated Videos from Youtube. Users can suggest
  more videos too.
-   A powerful notification system ensures students get emails when a
  book they are "following" has some activity - e.g. Followers get
  emails notifying them about new notes added or questions answered
  under the book.
-   A basic social networking framework to help people find like-minded
  learners and to follow their activity.
-   An innovative and fair "points" system to assess the user's
  contribution to the community (You can read
  [this](http://www.notemonk.com/book/72/Help.on.Notemonk/) to get a
  better idea of the scoring system)
-   A redemption scheme - We share revenue with all users in the form of
  "credits". A user with more "points" has a chance of earning more
  "credits". A user can exchange his credits at Notemonk for a variety
  of gifts. We've designed this to be a formalized method to thank the
  community players on a monthly basis.
-   We are actively working on adding more features.

**What is the business model? Is this something you are doing purely
voluntarily or would you like to make money in the future?**We do plan
to monetize this in the future although all the base features will be
free for all for ever. We've identified a few business trajectories but
what we put in place will depend on the learning we are deriving right
now. We are firm believers of the fact that a solid business can keep
churning out quality products and feature sets for the benefit of
consumers and are working hard to get there. Right now our focus rests
solely on making a highly relevant and useable service.

**How can you afford to [hand out stuff to
people](http://www.notemonk.com/node/2772/Credits/) if they get enough
points?**It is a revenue sharing programme. Right now we do not have any
revenue so we are investing for now and plan to continue to do so until
we can get revenue started. If we make 5000 Rs running the site in a
given month and decide to share 50% with the community that makes it Rs
2500 for that month. This amount is distributed to users based on their
overall score. Users can either choose to redeem right away or wait to
accumulate enough credits over many months.

**What do you think of the potential of open educational resources in
general, especially in India? And what about the sites where they are
usually hosted?**The disparity between the number of people with quality
knowledge and those without is very high. Traditional methods of
learning involving going to schools and universities are not scaling as
much as we would like them to. South India alone has nearly a thousand
engineering colleges but even these are not able to provide education to
all. Also, most of them are ill-equipped to train students owing to lack
of trained staff and facilities. The same applies to primary and
secondary schooling.

Open educational resources have the potential to make a real change in
this space. If we can create the right tools and generate enough
awareness thus connecting students to the tools, there is immense
potential to revolutionize education and improve penetration to
previously unthinkable levels.

Existing Open education resources are more concerned about making
content available to students. This is a great place to start because
content comes first. Most sites seem to be at this stage of development.
I believe that we need to fasttrack to the next stage - creation of
interaction models around content. Imagine being able to create a rich
interaction model like that of Facebook only in the space of educational
material. A framework within which students can be exposed to
educational content, peers and seasoned teachers from across the world.

**Anything else you want to add?**Yes. A call for help!

We are building a rich feature set along with a carefully crafted
interaction model for Notemonk. Please consider dropping by at the site
to get a feel for it. We would love to [hear from
you](http://www.notemonk.com/feedback/).

* * * * *

Thank you very much to Prashanth for agreeing to the interview, and best
of luck with his venture. I think these kinds of aggregations of OER
around certain topics (in this case, TOCs of common textbooks) is great.
Students are not that concerned about which university the video comes
from, they just want to watch it. However, it would be very useful to
slice up the videos in smaller segments – 10, 20 minute pieces that each
explain one concept. People who want to see the whole lecture could
still subscribe to a play list, but if you are just studying the zinc
substrates, you could plug in exactly that part of the lecture relevant
to the chapter.

Stian