Not just city colleges and universities but even village schools are going digital

GNN | Mar 30, 2020, 2:07 PM IST|

• Two Anand schools use WhatsApp platform to conduct classes
• Digital initiatives paying rich dividends to all stakeholders

Gujarat News Network
Anand, March 30, 2020: Effective and efficient use of social media platforms helps in easing out day to day problems. Two primary schools in the central Gujarat district of Anand have done some out of the box thinking and shown the way of how a school WhatsApp group can be put to effective use to continue with education even during difficult days of the nationwide lockdown announced on March 24.
The Gopalpura Primary School and the Jahangirpura primary school in Anand district are charting new initiatives in education using WhatsApp platform.
GNN learns just like all other schools, colleges and universities the Gopalpura Primary School located about three km from Anand has also downed shutters. But thanks to WhatsApp groups, over 200 students of the Gopalpura School are taking their lessons sitting at home. Teachers are taking classes through these groups.
“This is a voluntary initiative,” a school source tells us. The move to teach students while they are sitting at their homes is aimed at ensuring that the children continue with the momentum and do not forget what they have learnt in their classrooms.
The Anand district administration is also happy with this initiative. We hear the administration has started promoting it as a model to educate children when they are away from their schools.
“Initially, this WhatsApp group was meant to share general information about the school schedule, programmes and other communication with parents,” Gopalpura School Principal Shalin Dabhi tells Prashant Rupera of TNN.
But after March 25, every teacher selects a topic – be it simple dictation, multiplication, subtraction or tables of subjects like mathematics or alphabets of language subjects.
The teacher then prepares videos which are posted on the group and students are asked to follow them up at their home with the help of parents.
The school has nine teachers, of which six are involved in preparing this home-to-do digital syllabus. The school has extra benefit as the kids are already tech-savvy.
For a population of just 3,000, the government school is equipped with five smart classes apart from computer lab with broadband connection thanks to donations and support from NRI donors.
A lot many people from Anand are settled in western countries and send in liberal donations for the betterment of educational infrastructure.
Like Gopalpura, eight teachers of Jahangirpura Primary School near Hadgood village are also involved in this digital education initiative.
“We have 254 students in our school. The WhatsApp group formed has 200 members but many of them are wards of same parents or live in the neighbourhood. They share the content posted by our teachers,” says Principal Mitesh Mecklin.
It also helps in long term as although students will get promoted, they can be made ready for the next class,” said Principal Mitesh Mecklin.
Anand District Primary Education Officer (DPEO) Nivedita Chaudhary told Prashant that there is no directive from the Gujarat Government in this regard either to the schools or to the teachers. “These teachers have taken this initiative on their own just to ensure that the wards don’t get cut off from their school,” she said.
Both these schools have indeed shown the way on how to harness social media platforms for nurturing a young generation for a better India.