During my schooling years, I have always wondered why students were never given school lockers like what we see on television shows. Instead, we have to repack our bags each day and god forbid if we left a book behind.
20-year-old Ong Yong Xun felt similar when he had to lug around heavy and thick reference books in school and at home for revision. It was such a hassle that he wondered whether there are short and informative notes for quick revisions instead of flipping through a bulky book.
His desire to solve a problem resulted in a free Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) revision app for Form 4 and 5 students named Jomstudy. The journey to create the app was a huge learning curve for Yong Xun.
While he taught himself how to use programmes such as Ionic 4, Angular 8 framework for coding and Capacitor framework to configure the app, he has to juggle a part-time job as a customs agent for a courier service company.
The process in creating the app was also littered with bugs and errors which he had to learn how to fix. Nevertheless, his perseverance and passion to see his project through paid off.
Using our school textbooks as his references, he managed to create concise yet informative notes for all 16 Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) subjects ranging from Additional Mathematics to History.
Since he wasn’t able to hire teachers to work with him due to the lack of funding, he has help from ex-SPM candidates to go through the notes to ensure it’s free of errors and misinformation.
So far, the feedback for Jomstudy has been positive among students. The students who have used Jomstudy have even asked for notes in Bahasa Melayu for subjects such as Physics, Biology, Science and Mathematics, which he is currently working on with his peers.
Although Jomstudy has been successfully published in both App Store and Google Playstore, Yong Xun is far from done with the app.
While he’s waiting for his university admission to study Actuarial Science, he has plans to add more subjects to the list and create multiple choice questions so students get to revise what they learned wherever they are.
