Tell me more about Goalfinder?

Goalfinder.com has been in existence since 1999, we employ people from diverse backgrounds- like engineers, science graduates and post graduates, designers, teachers etc. We are in the business of developing educational software and selling them through internet.

We have been creating software that is more movie like with interactivity included, it is based on "curiosity" principle, refer below for more on that.

The company is focussed on e-learning, frankly we are in this for enjoyment, we like solving mysteries of nature, unraveling truths and probing deeper and deeper in the realms of science to answer the six questions "Why, How, Where, Who, When, What", it is the curiosity that drives us and it is the answers that we sell.

Who are the people behind Goalfinder?

What is this site about?

This site has science and technology animation, games and quizzes for viewing on site or for downloading. The information on web page and the previews of animation are free to view and are meant for informing about the full version product. The full version viewing on site and downloading however requires payment.

This site has been created keeping in view the problems in education field, specifically clear and concise understanding of fundamentals underlying education, science and technology.

How do you propose to impart clear and concise understanding of fundamentals?

By using the " visual education system"; the major part of education has always been "textual and static", we want to bring about a change in this system making it more dynamic, animated, interactive and of course interesting. It is a proven fact that a dynamic visual transfers higher information than a textual static one. This premise is the basis of this system.

What is this "visual education" concept ?

"Visual Education" as concept means freeing education from text and making it more visual by using photographs, illustrations, animation, video and interactivity and making it curiosity driven rather than syllabus specific.

Why are you against text and memorizing by rote ?

We are not against the text or memorizing, each has its own importance, we accept everything cannot be made visual and most of the times, it is much easier to teach through text, same goes for memorizing specially in the case of multiplication tables, values of constants etc. However we are a firm believer in the fact that the concept that is best explained through visual should not be explained through text.
Visual Education works on the principle of a picture is better than a thousand words and a animation is better than thousand pictures.

How does visual education help ?

In lower education levels (upto K6 or class 6th) even geographic phenomenon and simple mathematics becomes tough to understand by a child burdened with a lot of subjects being taught at school and frequently the rote or memorizing method is subscribed to. The result is tests are passed but knowledge is not gained and fundamentals not established.

Now imagine what will happen to that child in higher classes, where no longer the rote method works as subjects are vast. Most probably the child will lose interest quickly and drop out or trudge through.

Now suppose there was a method by which he could still build up his concepts and be comfortable in understanding difficult subjects. Then he might continue on with renewed interest. This method is visual education method. Add to that our curiosity philosophy and you will have more people continuing on in science stream than before.

Now what this is curiosity philosophy? I thought it was a science site ?

Curiosity philosophy is that people learn far more easily if they are allowed to explore than if they are forced. It is applied to any field of life and of course to science and math.

We have based our site on basic premise that "human beings need to explore". So whatever we create on our site supports focussed exploration. Start on a question and go deeper and deeper into the answer till you are satisfied.

For example start off on how "light creates life"
--- learn about photosynthesis
---then about chlorophyll
--- if interested find out about cholorplast
----want to know more OK--find out about how CO₂ is absorbed
--- still want to know more, then there is electron transfer through carriers
---more!!! then there is calvin cycle for glucose production
---more then look at the chemical structure and equation of each constituents
----an so on ---- CURIOSITY that's it .

So our motto, punch line, driving statement or whatever you call it is ...

Exploration - the core need of mankind. Curiosity- the driving force. Science - the tool for finding answers. We create better learning tools . All we need is your curiosity.

But Visual Education is not a new concept, there are a lot of CDs with visual content today :

Yes and No ,
1) There are mainly Kids' CDs and CDs and animation pertaining upto grade 6 in the market and whatever material is available for higher classes is most of it is with 80 - 85 % textual with only 15% of visual and interactive content,
2) Lot of animation sites do not provide explanation along with the animation
3) There are very short animations available that for higher level that fail to reach depth
4) Some animation are costly costing hundreds of dollars and some are too heavy to be downloaded over dial-up account,
5) Most of these CDs are costly for a student from third world country and other developing nations. Even in the developed nations like USA and Europe there are few who can buy all the CDs.

Most of Goalfinder.com's content is 80- 100% visual , dynamic and interactive. We deliver in-depth explanations and most of our animation sizes are lesser than 1 MB, cost less than $25 and average around 25 minute each and work on very low hardware configurations.

There has not been a lot of development in the visual content for education for higher levels, we have consciously moved away from CD to Internet . Internet as medium is proliferating but it will still take time to reach every school and household in the world. Even in this limited form Internet has got a bigger reach and accessibility than any educational CD in the world. Hence this is the medium we are using as a platform for reaching across to all the seekers of education.

Who is this site directed towards :

We are trying to address curious people. From kids to teachers, from casual surfers to serious researchers, etc. This site is not limited to a section of people or to age group or class or syllabus. Just to curious people who want to explore science.

What does the name "Goalfinder" signify ?

Goalfinder means that which helps you find your goals.

Why is this a paid site?

Quality needs investment of time, money and effort. We have no external funding whatsoever and need money to keep on creating quality stuff. Now where on web you will find a one and half hour animation to begin with and a three hour quiz on topics like blood, atomic theory, insulation, paper manufacture. Without paid model we would close down.

Who are the people behind Goalfinder?

The team that is operating behind Goalfinder consists of people from varied milieu of the educational fraternity, there are researchers from engineering and science background. Animators are from arts background. Then there are programmers for coding. Most of the people are multidimensional, Some of the researchers also duplicate as animators and programmers, while most animators are programmers anyway. The back end of the site is managed by an external agency while the design work is done by us.

The promoter : Amit Kulshresth, BE (electrical), MBA (Marketing) has worked in various capacities in the industry under different disciplines including engineering, advertising, special effects for films, animation, printing & presentations, teaching management, videography, sound and computer based fashion design. Finally he has settled down to applying the knowledge to animation based learning specifically targeting science and technology.

Goalfinder also runs other educational and design related activities like

1) Teaching : Japanese : Sensei academy of japanese language, an institute for learning Japanese, the institute is located in Mumbai, India and functioning for last 15 years mainly involved in classroom and corporate training

2) Teaching : Printing, Sound, Video and computer based fashion design : Based in Mumbai, India. We have been teaching and training for multiple vocation based learning in the above discipline, we teach them what the industry requires, as we are also working for the industry also , the students work on the same industry projects that we deliver to the clients.

3) Presentations & Design : Taurus Presentations : Based in Mumbai and Pune, India. has been designing and executing projects for print, multimedia, video and web for last 10 years, and have worked on scores of projects mainly fro the technical and medical sector.

4 ) E-learning : The present initiative of which goalfinder site is a part has been undertaken to create interactive and visual learning, this concept has been experimented with by many companies around the world, our efforts are towards conceptual and Q & A based, low text learning . We also take up outside e-learning projects.