Pune: Moving on from blackboard and textbook learning, more and more teachers across the State, whether in rural schools or urban, have began using projectors, digital boards, tabs and the internet to enhance the process of teaching-learning, bringing it at par with today’s tech-savvy generation.
In order to connect school-going students with each other, as well as experts on a common platform, and aid routine education with audio-visual content, schools across the State have introduced e-learning platforms, extensively in the past year.
In Maharashtra, the success of e-learning modules is mostly because of the teachers, who have played a major role in creating apps and websites for digital education.
Teachers creating learning apps
As Union Minister for Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar once rightly mentioned, it was the teachers, especially from rural areas of the State, who started the e-learning revolution. The Maharashtra State Council for Educational Research and Training (MSCERT) has made a provision for registering the apps and websites created by teachers, and it has evoked huge response from the techno-teachers of the State.
A few months ago, State Education Minister Vinod Tawde launched MITRA 2.0 app, an upgrade to the original MITRA app created and maintained by teachers. The MITRA app was developed and launched in April 2017 by SCERT Maharashtra and NGO Leadership For Equality (LFE). After its launch, over 1,29,000 teachers downloaded the app in the State. The MITRA app has content in Marathi as well as Urdu, making Maharashtra the only state to have e-content in Urdu. The app is also connected to the textbooks by Balbharti.
Some teachers are also going out of their way to acquaint more teachers from rural areas to digital teaching methods. Sunil Aloorkar, a Nanded-based Zilha Parishad (ZP) teacher, who has created zpguruji, a platform for teachers to learn using technology in their mother-tongue, said, “I make training videos in Marathi. We started training teachers in everything right from Marathi typing, to making educational materials. The teachers were trained to make adequate reference materials for students according to the concepts that they are being taught.”
Launch of e-Siksha at ZP schools
At the beginning of the year, the Government of Maharashtra signed an MoU with Rotary India Literacy Mission (RILM) for implementation of e-Siksha, a digital learning programme. Under this, the RILM is installing 37,000 E-Learning facilities in 18,500 government schools in Maharashtra.
e-Learning programmes
For the academic year 2018-19, the Education Department of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) rolled out the first phase of the e-learning project for 100 PMC-run schools. In two more phases, the project will also be implemented at all 287 schools run by PMC in next couple of years. PMC also plans to set up Virtual Classroom management system at all the 287 PMC schools for students to experience the best quality of audio video in real time. “Virtual Classroom comprises of studio at the centralised location and remote classroom at each school. The virtual classroom will enable PMC to conduct online interactive classes across the network,” states the PMC website.
Apart from the government initiatives, many NGOs in the State too are working to provide e-learning platforms to rural schools. Namaskar With Love Foundation, a NGO founded by Santosh Talaghatti, a Pune-based entrepreneur, has established ‘global classrooms’ at more than 1,000 ZP schools across the State. Through this, the Foundation connects the rural students and teachers to experts from several fields. Recently, the NGO has also started language forums at around 1,500 ZP schools to empower girl students.
