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Afghan teenager Muqtader Omari was first inspired by science by a children’s book about the solar system. Now, through his organization, TalkSCIENCE, he has inspired many other teenagers in his country to share a similar passion.
After working as a tutor during high school, Muqtader decided to take a gap year before college to promote STEM throughout the country. “A lot of the problems, especially in Afghanistan,” he said, “all have roots in the fact that a lot of people there don’t pursue science or education in general.” He wanted to be part of changing that narrative.
This past year, TalkSCIENCE hosted STEM-related events for teenagers, connecting them to other students and Afghan professors around the world. TalkSCIENCE also translated scientific educational materials into Dari, Pashto and Persian to boost accessibility.
This fall, Muqtader travels to the United States to study at Harvard University. While he plans to continue exploring his interests in astronomy, his non-profit work also inspired an interest in politics. Now, he considers a concentration in studying Government.
Muqtader will not be traveling alone either. “Two students from our organization got into Ivy League schools so they’re going to be flying with me to the United States,” he shared.
While TalkSCIENCE and other organizations are making an international education more accessible to some Afghan teenagers, Muqtader estimates that “95 or 90 percent of Afghans that pursue higher education do it in Afghanistan.” Earning a Bachelor’s degree anywhere is a huge accomplishment, but attending some schools outside of Afghanistan will give students access to more prestigious research opportunities and internships. These benefits, Muqtader observes, “you wouldn’t find in Afghanistan.” He attributes this shortfall in opportunities to a lack of investment in research and higher education.
One transformative service further democratizing education is Jinso, a network providing research opportunities to high school students. Jinso connects researchers worldwide with mentors and collaborators. Geographic location or university affiliation does not inhibit access, so anybody can use Jinso to access support for research and share their work.
Muqtader sees a possibility for Jinso to make a positive social impact in Afghanistan: “A lot of students, especially STEM students, have no big research opportunities, even at very good universities in Afghanistan… [T]here’s definitely a need for organizations like [Jinso].”
The future of education and research in Afghanistan looks more promising than the past. “I think Afghanistan is a very untapped market,” he stated, “And so I think both the students and the professors will benefit from an opportunity like [Jinso].”
GitHub is a popular platform used by computer scientists to manage their collaborative projects, but a similar program does not exist for academic work. There is no standard platform to create work, connect with others, and share work in one place. Most platforms only fall into one or two of these categories.The Jinso collaboration tool is a better way for groups to work on projects. By bringing the entire academic collaboration process onto one tool, it simplifies workflows and communication.The first steps for using the Jinso platform are:
Once a user builds a network, they can create new Groups that consist of their network members. By default, the creator of a group is the admin. The most common Group is a research group, but the platform can manage several other types of academic projects. Platform users can create study groups for sharing course materials or groups of club members for extracurricular work.The admin of the Group has the ability to add new members at any time.
Admins are also responsible for creating Projects within Groups.
A Project for a research group is usually a research paper, but Projects can also be other forms of documents that could benefit from discussion and revisions. Examples include study guides, business plans, articles, and essays. Each Group can have an unlimited number of Projects within it, and all Projects within a Group are shared among the same members.
Once a user builds a network, they can create new Groups that consist of their network members. By default, the creator of a group is the admin. The most common Group is a research group, but the platform can manage several other types of academic projects.
Platform users can create study groups for sharing course materials or groups of club members for extracurricular work.The admin of the Group has the ability to add new members at any time. Admins are also responsible for creating Projects within Groups.
A Project for a research group is usually a research paper, but Projects can also be other forms of documents that could benefit from discussion and revisions. Examples include study guides, business plans, articles, and essays. Each Group can have an unlimited number of Projects within it, and all Projects within a Group are shared among the same members.
When a new Project is created, an initial revision must be shared. This can either be plain text or a PDF.
The Project will be immediately visible to all Group members with the first revision shown. Group members can comment on the revision with questions or feedback, and others can reply to comments.When another revision of the paper has been completed, the Group admin can add a new revision to the same Project.
The revision will become visible above the prior revision, and it will have a new comment box associated with it. Projects make it simple to keep track of a paper’s entire revision history and discussions at each stage.
For each revision, Group admins can also create subtasks. Arrows allow Group members to view all of the different subtasks and comment on them individually. Subtasks allow a paper to be analyzed in unique components. For example, a research paper can have a unique subtask for each of its sections, and collaborators can discuss them all separately in the comment boxes. Jinso is a quicker way to collaborate on long-term projects. It makes it easier to connect, share, and manage the development of ideas and papers. You can create a Jinso account and start using the platform today for your research and academic needs at jinso.io.
Afghan teenager Muqtader Omari was first inspired by science by a children’s book about the solar system. Now, through his organization, TalkSCIENCE, he has inspired many other teenagers in his country to share a similar passion.
After working as a tutor during high school, Muqtader decided to take a gap year before college to promote STEM throughout the country. “A lot of the problems, especially in Afghanistan,” he said, “all have roots in the fact that a lot of people there don’t pursue science or education in general.” He wanted to be part of changing that narrative.
This past year, TalkSCIENCE hosted STEM-related events for teenagers, connecting them to other students and Afghan professors around the world. TalkSCIENCE also translated scientific educational materials into Dari, Pashto and Persian to boost accessibility.
This fall, Muqtader travels to the United States to study at Harvard University. While he plans to continue exploring his interests in astronomy, his non-profit work also inspired an interest in politics. Now, he considers a concentration in studying Government.
Muqtader will not be traveling alone either. “Two students from our organization got into Ivy League schools so they’re going to be flying with me to the United States,” he shared.
While TalkSCIENCE and other organizations are making an international education more accessible to some Afghan teenagers, Muqtader estimates that “95 or 90 percent of Afghans that pursue higher education do it in Afghanistan.” Earning a Bachelor’s degree anywhere is a huge accomplishment, but attending some schools outside of Afghanistan will give students access to more prestigious research opportunities and internships. These benefits, Muqtader observes, “you wouldn’t find in Afghanistan.” He attributes this shortfall in opportunities to a lack of investment in research and higher education.
One transformative service further democratizing education is Jinso, a network providing research opportunities to high school students. Jinso connects researchers worldwide with mentors and collaborators. Geographic location or university affiliation does not inhibit access, so anybody can use Jinso to access support for research and share their work.
Muqtader sees a possibility for Jinso to make a positive social impact in Afghanistan: “A lot of students, especially STEM students, have no big research opportunities, even at very good universities in Afghanistan… [T]here’s definitely a need for organizations like [Jinso].”
The future of education and research in Afghanistan looks more promising than the past. “I think Afghanistan is a very untapped market,” he stated, “And so I think both the students and the professors will benefit from an opportunity like [Jinso].”
