28 more govt schools to go digital

Visakhapatnam: The Telugu NRI community of America is establishing digital classrooms in 28 more government schools in the rural areas in the district. The state government is providing aid covering 70 per cent of the total cost and the remaining 30 per cent is being funded by the NRIs.

The Digital Classroom project, with active support from the Department of School Education, along with the NRI diaspora, aims to assist schools in co-opting a technology-driven study environment so that children can learn and perform better.

Recognising the importance of being digitally empowered, the programme aims at equipping schools to give students exciting, effective and comprehensive classroom learning experience, using tools such as interactive whiteboards, digital content and classroom software. The initiative is aimed at working towards providing digital content from leading service providers in both English and Telugu.

The objective seeks to establish digital classrooms in 5,000 government schools by 2018. It is also initiated to train the teachers at schools using undergraduate students as part of an internship programme for 30 hours in five modules in collaboration with Internshala, an internship and training platform. 

Around 1,000 under graduate students associated themselves with the ‘digital literacy programme’ which aimed at equipping the teachers at the schools to be able to use the digital aids imparted to them efficiently. As many as 2,400 schools are digitised since October 2016, on average six digital classrooms are added every day impacting over seven lakh students which also improved attendance rates by 17 per cent.

It is not just poor students who benefited but there is renewed interest among the NRIs to do something for their place of birth and the schools where they studied. These schools have become a must destination for NRI donors during their visit to India, Special Representative for North America and project coordinator Jayaram Komati said.