Edufina: A University Research Portal For The Arab World

Edufina is a newly launched startup that aims to fill in an empty space providing comprehensive, accurate and up-to-date information about universities around the Arab world.

The portal targets both students and parents, and enables them to access very detailed university data and statistics, as well as use a set of comparison tools in order to compare between all options that match their needs and interests.

What’s great about Edufina is that it collects all this information that is freely available from universities but still cumbersome to get a hold of into one place, in a clear and structured way, through a simple and really nice interface, that enables users to run and filter searches on, run comparisons between different universities on, and come to their final decision on which university better suits them.

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Areeb: A Free Arabic E-Learning Project Providing Video Lessons

Areeb School is a new non-profit educational project for the Arab world, which aims to provide good education for all Arabic speakers, at different stages of their lives and covering various topics and natural sciences.

The site aims to  explain the various scientific subjects of mathematics, physics, chemistry and others in a simplified and easy to understand manner, all in the form of short video clips that do not exceed 15 minutes, that should be enough to simply deliver the information and get it across to the learners.

The goal of the site is to build and provide an extensive library of tutorial videos that cover hundreds of explanations and lessons in various fields of science; this is to facilitate access to information and clearly explain all these topics to a large number of people from around the Arab world, whatever their financial situation is or how advanced the  educational system is in their countries.

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Loomni, A Knowledge Sharing & Educational Platform

LoomniLoomni is a new service that’s being launched today for the region that promises to reshape and transform continuing education, making it more accessible and affordable to everyone.

The problem Loomni is trying to solve is that of education outside of public schools and universities being out of reach for most people as it takes the form of limited, relatively long and expensive courses offered up by training institutions.

The idea of the startup is to fill the existing gap and provide learning opportunities for people who can’t afford expensive courses, nor have the time to spend locked up for long hours in a training venue somewhere. It aims to do this by providing focused practical courses delivered in 90 minutes, at a fraction of the price available in the market.

To be able to provide these lower prices, Loomni goes after another profile of instructors, mainly experts on certain fields who can share their knowledge and experience, educating people about their areas of expertise, but also helping market themselves and their services along the way.

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Yooyaland – Education & Entertainment For Arab Children

YooyalandYooyaland is a Palestinian startup that aims to fill the need for creative educational resources for 3-9 year old children in the Arab world; providing resources that blend technology with an enlightening learning process, and utilize Internet as a medium to deliver across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and the rest of the world.

Its exclusive, original content is carefully created to stimulate the children and challenge their intellect; provide teachers with entertaining, educational material; and transform the home educational cycle by giving parents an ever growing library of resources ranging from Yooyaland’s interactive portal to worksheets, toys and other products.

Yooyaland delivers a rich variety of age-appropriate activities to each user, providing parents with the possibility to change the level of difficulty to each activity, according to their child’s pace.

It also focuses on the educational skills that are most important to the child’s development, including basic language skills, number recognition and mathematical thinking, critical thinking, spatial reasoning and logic.

The animations are based on flash technology and demonstrate effective use of e-learning methods such as dividing the content into few learning steps, examining the knowledge gained in each step, and interacting with the child to keep him/her playing online.

To get access to all the lessons and contents of Yooyaland, subscribers have to charge their accounts using one of the supported payment methods: Visa, CashU, OneCard and Yooya Prepaid Cards.

Yooyaland

Alia Abu Shmeiss submitted the Yooyaland project to PICTI (Palestine Information and Communications Technology Incubator) back in 2005, where it was then incubated for a period of 18 months, through which it went from idea to reality with support and consulting from PICTI.

PICTI then linked Yooyaland with Hadara, a member of Paltel Group, which launched it to the private sector, making Yooyaland the first case of a merger and acquisition from the incubator in Palestine culminating in transfer of equity shares in exchange of US$450,000 and an additional US$1Million of investment in the company.

Yooyaland