‘Virtual tours’ enable urban kids to see nature, rural life
LUCKNOW: Covid-19 outbreak may have forced people to stay indoors, but parents and teachers are making the most of technology to introduce children to nature and their roots.
Several parents in the city are helping their children take online tours of their native village to see how people live there. For Sakshi Yadav, 14 and her younger brother Ashwin, this means a video call over WhatsApp to their uncle in the village almost every other day. Their uncle Akhikesh, a government school teacher, has been introducing them to different aspect of rural life each day.
The duo has seen how wheat is harvested and the grains separated, how the field is ploughed, how cattle are fed and milked and how food is prepared on an earthen stove or chulha. “Village life is so different from the city and exciting. Earlier I avoided visiting my relatives in the village but now I want to go there as soon as things become normal,” said Sakshi.
On similar lines, some schools in the city are also motivating students to take online tours of villages. Diwakar Verma, a Math teacher in a city school is sending his students on an online tour of the thick terai forests. “I have organised around a dozen online tours of villages and forests for my students with some help from my relatives in Pilibhit. We have shown them ponds, chicken farms, fields and several unique trees in the forest,” said Verma, adding that the session which attracted most students was the one in which they were shown how villagers caught fish in the pond.
“Students like these sessions so much that some of them have asked me to start a Youtube channel,” said Verma.