By Sagar Mohod :
■ COMPUTER LABS EQUIPPED WITH DIGITAL TOOLS PLANNED FOR 23 SCHOOLS
SPECIAL STORY
With new measures, the civic body will strive to arrest dropout ratio of its schools
NAGPUR Municipal Corporation
(NMC) is going to ramp-up the
infrastructure at its schools to
enhance teaching experience
and provide new learning environment for the students.
As per the plan drafted by
Education Department with
assistance of experts from
Information Technology unit,
about 23 schools have been
shortlisted for equipping them
with digital tools. With technology being the dominant theme,
NMC bosses are keen to upgrade
the teaching instruments as students are excelling in studies over
the years.
NMC has decided to procure
128 digital units that would be
distributed among the identified
schools in the first phase.
The
schools were shortlisted based
on ground study of available
infrastructure as well as the
requirement, stated Swapnil
Lokhande, Deputy
Commissioner and Director, IT,
NMC, while talking to ‘The
Hitavada’. In short, the classes
would be turned into smart digital classrooms where the teachers can provide much deeper and
intense coaching to students in
various topics.
The idea is to retain the children, make learning fun.
Especially in teaching science,
the digital tools are reported to
be very useful apart from the languages. The digital boards can
ensure audio-visual presentation which as per scientific study
enables better grasping by
the students. Also the boring
nature of classrooms can be
turned smarter with digital
intervention, felt the
Education Department, and
hence the Digital Classrooms
project.
Among the schools shortlisted also include the six
schools run by Akansha
Foundation. These schools
are now English medium and
are one in each of the assembly constituencies in city.The
Foundation with excellent
track record by roped in by
NMC and handed them six
of its schools that were closed
owing to poor response from
students. But post introduction of English medium
schools the students head
count increased and now
demand is to open more such
institutions as these 6 schools
could not accommodate all
the desiring students due to
capacity constraints.
Talking further, Dr
Lokhande stated that in all
128 digital units would be
installed at the selected 23
schools. The decision he said
stemmed from good show on
part of civic schools students
in SSC exam. Also to a querry he said these digital boards
can provide teaching in languages and this will be quite
helpful as NMC provides
teaching in Urdu, Hindi and
Marathi medium at its
schools.
Computer Labs: Another
part of the school programme
is to set-up computer labs to
provide students exposure to
web.
These computers would
enable e-learning and provide
access to unlimited knowledge as there would be subscription to scientific journals that can enhanced the
learning capabilities of students. Lokhande further said
estimated cost of the digital
classroom project is pegged
at around Rs 6 to 7 crores.
The computer based animated media is sought to be
introduced in class room
teaching with idea of making it interactive and enriching. The labs would come
handy to imbibe soft skills as
knowledge of computers is
must in today's world.
Apart from installation
gadgets, NMC is also going
to insist on 3-year contract
for continuous training to
teachers.This will ensure that
teachers adopt to new teaching concepts and they are
equipped to handle the new
age technology. From start of
work the concept should be
ready within next five to six
months and target is that students do get benefit of the
technolog