Edunite | Devpost

System Flowchart
Image showing working of the service

Inspiration

During the pandemic, the term Digital Divide was coined as the gulf between those who have ready access to computers and the internet, and those who do not. The rise in covid cases has increased the gap between the students and education, especially those who don't have access to the internet. So, our main motive is to bridge this gap through an amazon service known as Eduhub.

What it does

The student who wants to access the internet will send an SMS with his details (address and pin code) and then the student will be matched with the nearest location where the internet resource is available.

How we built it

The two main entities in our flow diagram are end-users and volunteers. We used the Amazon pinpoint service, along with AWS long code to get the address of the student from the SMS. We then set up an AWS lambda function instance, to get the communication service data via Amazon Simple Notification Service(SNS).
We build 3 main features in this microservice. First, we got the exact latitude and longitude of the end-user address request. Then we used these geo coordinates and made an API call to our AWS Elastic Search service. Elastic search returns the 3 nearest volunteers/Eduhubs from the end-user who are willing to provide internet and other educational resources to the user/student. Lastly, we built a webpage using React.js for volunteers to register.

Challenges we ran into

Our main challenge was to get the data from the SMS messages. As we explored AWS, we found out about Pinpoint and SNS and were able to set up a workflow using these services. The very next challenge was to make an API call and connect our microservice with AWS. We leveraged lambda and python and were able to complete the entire setup.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We accomplished the primary goal of the problem statement, i.e to decrease the digital divide. By leveraging SMS services, which do not require internet, we are providing the nearest available volunteers to students in need, and students can book appointments. We are also proud of the vast amount of AWS tech stack which our project uses, making the data flow efficient while providing the ability to scale the product.

What we learned

We learned how we could leverage AWS to decrease the digital divide in virtual education caused due to COVID pandemic.

What's next for Edunite

We are thinking of scaling up our system to volunteers who have good access to internet resources and are willing to accept students for accessing the internet.