For all those parents who are worried to death over how much time their kids spend on the internet, here’s some good news. Scooldudes.com is an online platform for students to hang out after school hours; but unlike other unnecessary content out there, scooldudes is actually informative and helps hone life skills.
Started by Ramachandran Kannan, a veteran in the HR sector, Scooldudes was born as a result of two national-level surveys. The first survey was conducted among parents to understand what was concerning them about the afterschool activities of their children. “This was when Facebook was trending and children above 13 were allowed to get on. Parents were concerned that their children were getting distracted. That was the feedback,” says Kannan.
He adds, “We also conducted a survey among 2,500 students. We found that they spend an average of three to four hours on the internet. We also asked them how much time was spent on gaming, music, movies and so on. There was a similar pattern in both the surveys. So we decided to start a platform, an afterschool hangout for children to spend time, and in the process, start honing their life skills, and giving them fun activities which they consider cool.”
Kannan and his team also asked the students for five most commonly used words. The tops two answers were ‘cool’ and ‘dudes’. That’s how they got the name Scooldudes. The platform has a lot of online activities and competitions like caption writing and picture visualistaion. Student judges then rate the participants. Talking about why honing life skills is important, Kannan says, “From my experience in the field of HR, I’ve seen a steady decline in the quality of candidates. The analytical skills have drastically reduced. So we’ve added content that can help kids develop these skills. The medium might have changed, but the time that kids spend on the internet has increased. When we started, we approached school principals, saying that this platform could help improve the chances of their students landing good jobs.”
This year, Scooldudes is all set for a relaunch, first in Mumbai, and later in Chennai. They will also be having summer camps in Kotagiri and one near Mumbai. It will be run by top-notch professionals and will include a golf tournament, cycle rallies, a baking contest and so on. Students will also be asked to plant trees and take part in cleaning initiatives. Plenty of features have been added to make the website more fun. The workshops will also include fashion designing, pottery and other hobbies.
