MLE
Bhasha SetuMULTILINGUAL LEARNING · LANGUAGE & LEARNING FOUNDATION

भाषा सेतुA bridge to the home language.

A multilingual-education platform that puts tribal-language teaching content in the hands of early-grade teachers — authored once, delivered offline to the classroom.

3
Tribal languages
~15,000
Teachers served
12
Activity types
Offline
First, by design
Technical Overview · v0 vertical slice · Contract LALF/P458
01 What Bhasha Setu is

Teaching children in the language they think in.

Early-grade children in Bastar learn best in their home language before bridging to Hindi. Bhasha Setu gives their teachers a pocket resource — vocabulary, classroom phrases, audio, stories and practice activities in the local tribal language — that works on a low-end phone, with or without a signal.

It is built for the Language & Learning Foundation as two connected products: a Flutter mobile app the teacher uses, and a web content studio the LLF team uses to author and publish that content. The two are joined by a single, frozen data contract — so what an author builds is exactly what a teacher sees.

हल्बी
Halbi
The lingua franca of the Bastar region — the first language in the pathway.
भतरी
Bhatri
Spoken across southern Bastar; second course in the catalogue.
हो
Ho
A Munda language; part of the multilingual catalogue.
02 The system at a glance

Two products, one contract.

Authors work in the Content Studio; teachers learn in the app. Content is compiled into versioned, self-contained “packs” that the app downloads once and runs entirely offline.

03 The teacher app

Built for a classroom, not a desk.

The app onboards a teacher in under a minute, then becomes a self-contained learning companion that keeps working when the network doesn't.

Sign in with a phone number

A one-time code (SMS) signs the teacher in — no passwords. The session is held securely on the device and persists for weeks, so they rarely re-authenticate.

A guided learning pathway

Courses (Language Fundamentals, Classroom Talk…) are broken into modules and bite-size activities, laid out as a clear path with progress, XP and badges.

Twelve kinds of practice

Listening quizzes, flash cards, matching, word clouds, fill-in-the-blank, dialogue building, picture labelling, pronunciation, audio narration and more — each rendered from authored content.

Works offline, end to end

Content packs (including audio and images) download once and run with no connection. Progress is saved locally and synced back when a signal returns.

Why offline-first matters here: Bastar classrooms have intermittent connectivity. The app never blocks a teacher on the network — every screen works from on-device data, and syncing is a background convenience, not a requirement.

04 The content studio

Authoring without writing code — or JSON.

LLF's content team works in a tailored web admin. Every activity type is defined once as a schema, and the studio turns that schema into a friendly form — so authors fill in fields, not raw data.

Schema-driven authoring

One form engine reads each activity's definition and renders the right inputs — text, number, options, a media picker for audio and images — for all twelve types and any added later.

Live preview of the real thing

While editing, authors see the activity render exactly as the app will play it — the same engine, embedded in the studio — so what they build is what teachers get.

Review & publish workflow

Content moves Draft → In review → Approved → Published. A reviewer queue surfaces what's waiting; only approved content can publish.

Roles & accountability

Editors, reviewers and admins each see what's relevant to them. Every publish and change is recorded in an immutable audit log.

05 How content reaches a learner

From a saved edit to a child's lesson.

Publishing is automatic and versioned. The moment approved content changes, the system rebuilds a fresh pack; the app picks it up on its next sync.

01

Author & approve

An editor builds an activity in the studio; a reviewer approves it. Content is validated against its schema on every save.

02

Auto-rebuild

Publishing triggers a background job that compiles the module into a self-contained pack — content plus every referenced audio clip and image, each fingerprinted for integrity.

03

Version & serve

The new pack supersedes the old one with an incremented version, and is served from a CDN-backed endpoint the app reads.

04

Download once, run offline

The app fetches the catalogue, downloads new/changed packs, verifies them, and renders activities directly from on-device data.

05

Progress flows back

Completions, scores and XP are written locally and synced to the backend when online — visible to LLF without ever blocking the teacher.

06 Security & privacy

Trustworthy with minimal data.

07 Engineering & quality

Held to a standard that survives handover.

The codebase is built to be picked up by any engineer and kept honest by automation — not tribal knowledge.

Tested both sides

Automated test suites cover the app's engine and the studio's logic; the production build is type-checked on every change.

One renderer, no drift

The studio's live preview reuses the real app engine compiled to web — there is no second implementation to fall out of sync.

Docs that can't go stale

A continuous-integration gate and a commit-time guard fail the build if documentation drifts from the code.

A single source of truth. Each activity type is defined once as a JSON schema, validated by both the studio and the app. Add a new kind of activity by writing one schema — the authoring form and the contract follow automatically.

08 Technology & deployment

A small, modern, standard stack.

LayerTechnologyNotes
Teacher appFlutter (Android)Offline storage on-device; one codebase, room to add iOS.
Content studio & APIPayload 3 + Next.js 15 (Node)Containerised; runs content authoring, the publish pipeline and the learner API.
DatabasePostgreSQLManaged instance; migrations run on deploy.
Media & packsS3-compatible object store + CDNAudio, images and compiled packs, served fast and cached.
Live previewFlutter-web bundleThe real engine, embedded in the studio for authoring preview.

The studio ships as a single container with documented environment configuration; staging and production differ only in configuration, not code. An operational deployment guide accompanies the codebase.

09 Status & what's next

Where the build stands.

The v0 vertical slice is complete and verified end to end — a teacher can sign up, learn, and play real authored Halbi content; an author can build content that reaches the app.

Done

  • Onboarding, phone-OTP sign-in & hardened sessions
  • Learning pathway + all 12 activity mechanics
  • Offline packs, progress capture & sync
  • Content studio: schema-driven authoring, review/publish, live preview, roles & audit
  • End-to-end content flow (author → pack → app)

Next

  • Staging & production deployment
  • Live SMS provider for OTP at scale
  • Content authoring at full catalogue volume
  • Remaining product polish & field hardening toward launch
10 Glossary

Plain terms.

MLEMultilingual Education — teaching in the child's home language before bridging to the state language.
PackA self-contained, versioned bundle of a module's content plus its audio and images, downloaded by the app and run offline.
Activity / mechanicA single learning interaction (e.g. a listening quiz). Its on-screen behaviour is the “mechanic”.
SchemaThe single definition of an activity type's content — used to build the authoring form and to validate content on both sides.
Content studioThe web admin where LLF authors, reviews and publishes content.