Novel Corona Virus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, expanded its footprint globally within a shorter span of time. Due to this most of the governments worldwide decided to hibernate their country’s population, in order to break the chain of expansion of the disease.
Subsequently, the entire economic activity except for essential services such as the medical system was closed in hurry without doing any risk analysis and preventive measures. This led to complete unrest and haphazardness in everyone’s life.
Since the beginning of Lock Down 1.0 in March 2020, many spheres of life are disturbed including the closure of educational institutions. The closure has disrupted the progression of students to next grade due to scrapped examinations and delayed admissions.
In this process, many private schools moved to online classes instead to ensure continuity in learning and at a later stage Government also launched “e-Vidya” an online/on-air education initiative.
Digital Education:
So keeping in view the concerns about the impact of extended screen exposure on children, the Centre’s Pragyata guidelines for digital education recommended that live or synchronous online classes be held for no more than 1.5 hours per day for Classes 1–8 and three hours per day for Classes 9–12.
But a recent study of the Hindu newspaper conducted in Delhi and Karnataka found that “Teachers and schools have been haphazard in the way they give assignments in the new set-up, resulting in many children spending hours on the computer after the classes as well. It would be better to recommend zero screen time once classes are over to protect the children”
In this context, I feel necessary to mention that while EasyEdulab members visited in remote/rural area, the problem is more complex than what urban students are facing.
In rural areas availability of basic infrastructure like internet bandwidth, speed and smart devices are major concerns. Most of students are not able to connect to digital media due to the said lacking facilities. The data packages provided by telecom service providers are limited data and costly for low income families to afford to stream high quality videos for longer durations.
There are challenges other than unequal device excess and internet connection such as study environment at home in rural areas, teacher’s training and customized available online content.
Therefore, in my view Online-Offline Duo could serve the purpose of educating masses in better and efficient manner during the pandemic.
Read Also: 5 Improvements Schools Must Do To Modernize Schooling
By providing creative classroom and interactive sessions in brick and mortars schools would not only improve the learning, interactions and skill development but also improve health of students and teachers while reducing dependencies on gadgets for educational purpose. Hence, technology shall become the part of school system but should not acquire its valued position.
Conclusion:
EasyEdulab has made its online cloud based software suitable for rural areas with low internet requirement, less screen time and features to ensure communication between students, teachers and parents. You can see our demo on uploading assignments and its evaluation which requires a screen time not more than 10 minutes.
How to upload online assignments by school’s Admin, Teacher.