E-learning makes edu fun for govt school students

LUCKNOW: Unlike most children of their age, students of government primary school in Patauli village, Unnao, cannot wait to go to school every morning and learn new things. Reason: Learning has become fun for them since their teacher has started teaching them new concepts on a laptop.

Now, instead of poring over books, these children watch power point presentations, videos and get their facts from the Internet, thanks to the teaching module and computer training for teachers introduced by the District Institute of Education and Training (DIET). As a result, attendance has gone up from 40-50% to over 80% in classes.

“The trainings started in association with Intel with an aim to smoothen the process of moving from a traditional platform to a technology-enabled platform. Nearly 140 teachers have been trained in seven batches so far. The training is given on demand basis and is not compulsory. But whoever has learnt computers is implementing it in classrooms and is getting a great response,” said Lalita Pandey, principal DIET.

Talking about the initiative, Amit Sharma, assistant teacher, government primary school Unnao, said students were enjoying learning new concepts through Youtube videos and presentations, as it made education more interactive and helped them understand better.

“We have started referring to videos of experiments and science concepts in order to explain them better to students. Even for simple phenomenon like photosynthesis, use of pictures and videos has generated interest among students,” said Sharma.

Similarly, Nagendra Mani Tripathi, head teacher at a government school in Gonda said, “We have witnessed an increase in the attendance of students from the time we made the classes more technology-friendly. And it is also much easier to retain students in classrooms when teaching is done through laptops and smart phones because this is the kind of thing children are interested in now.”

In many villages, lack of power supply had disrupted classes, but most times teachers continued with the classes through their own pre-charged laptops.

Chama Singh, a teacher from an upper primary school in Bijnor says, “I introduced phonetics in my classes through my laptop and have noticed an incredible transformation in students. Their pronunciation has improved and their interest levels have definitely gone up.”

She said the training had also helped teachers prepare report cards and maintain official records on computers without a risk of tampering.