The month-long Amar Ekushey Boi Mela book festival in Dhaka is among many other things an opportunity for publishers to release new books, and every day the list of new titles has been mounting.

But this past week three innovative new additions to the list came in the form of a Youtube video, a science game and an augmented reality app, all designed to compliment educational textbooks used in Bangladeshi classrooms.
At a ceremony jointly organised by the Ministry of Education and the Access to Information (a2i) Programme of the Prime Minister’s Office, Professor Dr. Jafar Iqbal of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology explained that the three new innovations were,

an augmented reality technology based android app called ‘Bornokhela dedicated towards enhancing creativity among students who are in pre-primary school or have special needs, a science related entertaining game ‘Bigganer Rajje’ (Kingdom of Science) developed on science textbooks for students of classes six to eight, and the Youtube channel ‘Haater Muthoy Biggan’ (Science in our grip) containing assistive animated education content for students of classes eight to ten.

The Bangladesh Today news site explains that,

By holding the ‘Bornokhela’ app, downloadable from Google Playstore, in front of alphabets in pre-primary school textbooks, the pronunciation of the alphabets can be listened to and a 3D floating image would appear on the mobile screen,

while

‘Bigganer Rajje’, downloadable from Google Playstore and Apple app store, allows students to understand and learn the difficult topics of science textbooks through playing an educational game.

Reporting on the Youtube video, The Bangladesh Today said the video, ‘Haater Muthoy Biggan’

also allows students to understand difficult lessons in science by viewing and listening to animation, graphics, and music.

As we start the new week the Amar Ekushey Boi Mela still has ten days to run and continues to attract big crowds. So far over 2,700 new books have been launched at the fair, and typically 100 or more new books are debuted at the event each day.