This story is from August 4, 2020

Radio to YouTube, digital avatars of classroom grow. Yet, mind the gap

A multi-pronged digital module of imparting education virtually to students of Classes I to XII, called Mission Prerna, will soon become a permanent feature in schools of the state as online lessons become inevitable during the pandemic.
Radio to YouTube, digital avatars of classroom grow. Yet, mind the gap
NOIDA/GHAZIABAD: A multi-pronged digital module of imparting education virtually to students of Classes I to XII, called Mission Prerna, will soon become a permanent feature in schools of the state as online lessons become inevitable during the pandemic.
The technology tools, however, will still not fill a crucial gap: the lack the human touch and the spontaneity of classroom interaction that, students say, makes learning simpler and fun.

Mission Prerna, started by the school education department in September 2019, has been much useful in filling the void created by the lockdown.
The director-general of school education, Vijay Kiran Anand, who is spearheading the Prerna mission, said creation of online content and its distribution through five mediums — radio, television, YouTube, WhatsApp, and the Diksha platform — will continue even when classroom teaching resumes after the lockdown.
“Mission Prerna encompasses 159,000 schools, 575,000 teachers, and 18 million students in the state. Since its launch, we have been preparing various modules and during the pandemic, they were put to practice. Schools have gone online from April 18. We are using our Diksha portal, YouTube, Swayam Prabha, Doordarshan and Jio TV, WhatsApp classrooms, radio to onboard students. Content is being created by professionals also we are sourcing content from the education department of each district which is being created into modules for mass dissemination,” Anand said.

Each district has been given specific responsibility and the school education department of Gautam Budh Nagar has created Hindi, economics, and commerce lessons for classes IX to XII for the entire state as well. “Teachers are individually connected to students. They are sharing videos and lessons on WhatsApp. Students are then working and submitting work on WhatsApp. All classes are covered by this,” district inspector of schools, Gautam Budh Nagar, Neeraj Pandey, said.
Students, however, complained of teething problems of this drastic shift from classrooms to screens. Yash, a Class XII student of Seth Mukund Lal Inter College, said, “Our school has introduced online classes under which teachers upload chapter-wise videos and notes on WhatsApp groups but since it is not interactive in a real sense, we have to call back concerned teachers if we have any doubts or if we fail to comprehend any concept but it is not as effective as face-to-face teaching.” He added that they don’t have virtual classrooms for doubt-clearing like private schools do.
Lack of a smartphone is still an access-gap for some. Danish Saifi, student of the same school, has not been able to attend a single online class so far. “I don’t have a smartphone and my family cannot afford one. Sometimes, I manage to borrow a smartphone from my friends or neighbours but that is of hardly any help to me. But even if I manage to get one smartphone, I will not be able to afford an internet service,” added Saifi, whose father works in a tool-making factory.
Ankit Patel, another student, said, “I don't have a smartphone and during lockdown, when my father remained at home, I used to borrow his smartphone. But now, he leaves for work early in the morning and I am unable to attend classes.”
Teachers also face technical problems while trying to send the content. Bhagwan Singh, a teacher from Sanatan Dharma College inter-college, said, “Many a times the size of video is so big that it won’t get uploaded on WhatsApp groups and since we have no technical expertise it takes hours to upload videos.”
To add to this, the schools have fewer teachers to help in this transition because a majority of them have been assigned Covid duty. KP Singh, principal of Seth Mukund Lal Inter College said, “We have 22 teachers but for teaching purposes, we are left with only 14 since the rest have been assigned Covid duties.”
Between 9am and 1pm every day, content for classes 1-VIII maths and sciences are broadcast on Doordarshan. On radio a one-hour slot is fixed from 11 am-12 pm where content for lower grades is broadcast. On WhatsApp, the department has reached out to 15 lakh students on their parents’ mobile phones to share class work. A YouTube channel that has 69,000 subscribers and content for classes 1 to VIII has been set up, and the curriculum textbooks have been uploaded on Diksha portal and digital content for each chapter has been mapped and 4,000 videos added to go with them.
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