rajkot when schools were locked due to the covid pandemic educators were left with no option but to search for learning tools to overcome the distance barrierbut many years before the lockdown nahid khan ligari a teacher working at a district panchayatrun school in junagadh district had tapped on to the benefits of alternative modes of learning and developed learning apps what more he also devised a way to overcome the internet connectivity issue by developing apps that worked in offline mode toowhat makes his efforts even more praiseworthy is that apart from facing the usual limited or no resources issue ligari also had no technical or software background a language teacher ligari teaches gujarati hindi and english yet he took the pains of learning the basics of app developingthe desire to make education accessible to all fired him on says ligari i was always thinking of making education available to the students at their doorsteps ligari saidligaris work was recognized by the national council of educational research and training ncert he was recently conferred with the national information communication technology award by the ncertligari has developed two apps so far an encyclopedia and a dictionary once downloaded on mobile phones the two apps work in offline mode the internet is needed only at the time of app updatethe encyclopedia developed in 2015 provides general knowledge to primary students it has three sections providing information about gujarat state its tourist spots and animals and birds found herethe encyclopedia opens with a map of gujarat with detailed information about each district by going through the map of a district the students get information about its history geography tourist spots and other important aspects the fauna section gives the students basic information about animals and birds living in different parts of the state along with their photos and sound the app has got around 20000 downloads till date ligari says proudly i am constantly updating this app students need the internet only while updating the app he adds so how come a language teacher was able to develop these apps it was possible thanks to my brother he holds a master of computer application mca degree i learned the basics of software engineering from him ligari saidafter the encyclopedia ligari set his sight on his forte the language he developed an english to gujarati dictionary for students of class 3 to 8 students it has 2500 words and is being updated constantly it can be downloaded in pdf format so that it can be put up at school notice boards or other placesligari also compressed the videos prepared by gyankunj an initiative of gujarat council of elementary education he compressed 2gb videos of four subjects to 35 mb so that students can easily download and store it in their mobile phones