Lenovo Do Network Competition, an innovator competition organized by Lenovo Indonesia, gave birth to a software named Bintang Sekolah as the winner. Of the 10 finalists, Bintang Sekolah got the most votes, a total of 166.150 votes. On its victory, Bintang Sekolah, made by Nizar Luthfiansyah, is entitled to US$25,500 prize.
In his description on Bintang Sekolah on the competition page, Nizar describes Bintang Sekolah as a portable school which provides a learning atmosphere of a school in the form of 2D and 3D animation. Bintang Sekolah has several features such as teacher’s presentation video, virtual library, teaching material simulation, educational games to classroom test. The materials inside it are based on Department of Education’s curriculum and provided by the best teachers from Indonesia’s leading schools.
In an interview via email, Nizar said that Bintang Sekolah is designed not only to address student’s difficulty in finding learning materials, particularly students in remote areas or non-seeded schools. Bintang Sekolah is also designed for benefitting teachers in everyday learning activities so those activities become more exciting for the students.
The idea of Bintang Sekolah stems from the business activity of the company where Nizar works, www.garudamedia.co.id engaged in computer manufacture and computer tutorial video service. Because of the similarity of his ideas with the challenge provided by Lenovo, the idea of Bintang Sekolah was finally registered for this Lenovo Do Network competition. The result, Bintang Sekolah won the competition. But more than that, according to Nizar, Bintang Sekolah project has also gained another benefit by participating in this competition. Among them, of other participants’ ideas, Nizar got the inspiration to improve his project’s idea. Bintang Sekolah also received many input from the mentor of this competition; Budi Putra, Onno W. Purbo and Nurdiansyah.
Nizar got new learning from those three Lenovo Do Network’s mentors. Among them are to remain confident with our own ideas because ideas can be similar to others but the execution will be different. In addition, Nizar also learned not to dwell only on the technical aspects but also must have a good network with others so many parties can be benefitted, which is to make it as cheap as possible so it is affordable by user.
Bintang Sekolah does not stop after winning Lenovo Do Network competition. Nizar wants to turn the idea into reality in the next 90 days. Collaborating with many parties such as schools, telecommunication service providers, internet access service providers, education boards and many others, Nizar wants Bintang Sekolah to be available to all schools in Indonesia including schools in remote areas that lack adequate access to education.
[Image]
