Call for blended approach in education

Bengaluru: eVidyaloka, an educational social enterprise with a vision to enable quality in education for the children of rural India, organized Rubaru 2021, the annual summit of eVidyaloka which aims to promote the spirit of rural-urban connection on Thursday. The event observed rural and urban India coming together to celebrate the successes of the past year and to mark the completion of 10 years of the eVidyaloka journey.

The event was attended by Education Minister Suresh Kumar and chief patron of eVidyaloka Prof V. Krishnamurthy, former dean, BITS Pilani, who appreciated eVidyaloka's efforts towards educating rural India and the concept of "Loka Sangraha" - a construct of leadership for welfare of the world.

According to Venkat Sriraman, founder-member, eVidyaloka Trust, said, "What started as an endeavour to provide quality education for children in rural India with a pilot project in one school in rural Tamil Nadu has now reached the length and breadth of the country. Our movement gained huge momentum with the passion of 2500+ volunteers who teach students in seven different languages which help deliver quality education to over 20,000 children across 11 States in India with 1 million+ child learning hours per year of quality education."

In keeping with the challenges of the past year and the completion of 10 years of eVidyaloka, the panel discussions revolved around the understanding the challenges of online education, the impact of technology to scale educational initiatives and building a future-ready system by multiple stakeholders participating in solutions, and the impact of online learning on children. The first session of the panel consisted of Harish Krishnan, MD, CISCO Systems India, Raghavendra K, Global HRD Head, Infosys BPO, Sapna Chadha, Senior Country Marketing Director, Google India, and South East Asia, and Shipra Sharma, CSR and Sustainability Director, LTI. The session was moderated by V.Ramkumar, member, Board of Trustees, eVidyaloka to discuss the impact of technology on education.

Speaking about the panel, Sri Ravichandran Venkataraman, chairperson of eVidyaloka Trust, said, "The entire session was very insightful with stakeholders from various folds of the ecosystem who threw light on the efforts that need to be put in to help make quality education accessible to the students, irrespective of their geographical diversities. The need for depth in our educational program came to light. The importance of looking at social impact as core to business was highlighted. As a conclusion, we were left with a pertinent point on whether we have harnessed technology in education well enough and the need to look beyond the obvious solutions in tech for education."

The second session of the panel discussions, which was attended by Shaheen Mistri, CEO, Teach for India, AbhinavMathur, Founder, Million Sparks Foundation, and Arun Nalavadi, Executive Director, Magic Bus India and moderated by Manisha Natarajan, a renowned journalist and public speaker. The panellists stressed the need to create joyous learning experiences and to recognize the stress factor that comes with online learning for children. Focus on soft skills in online education was discussed at length and a consensus was reached on a blended learning approach, technology enabled online teaching and option of offline learning through app as the way forward for the future.