Does your teacher have a smartphone? Your school is digital, says govt
The equipment will have to be purchased by the school teacher
An Android mobile phone, a magnifying screen
and a speaker are all that a government-run school needs to call itself a
digital learning centre, as per the criteria prescribed by the state government
which expects teachers to acquire the equipment at their own expense.
The government has declared 11 districts,
many of which are tribal-dominated, as those which have accomplished full
digitisation of state-run schools based on these standards. With no
standardised apps provided by the government for teaching the curriculum, each
school is left to chose or create an app according to the teacher’s choice.
While the government claims to have digitised
25,000 schools, it appears to have violated its own guidelines issued in a
Government Resolution on June 22, 2015 with respect to the Digital School movement.
In its GR, the state had promised a tablet to
every public school. It has also said that a school having an LCD projector and
a big TV screen would be ready to function as a digital school, although the
state isn’t providing the equipment. Nine months down the line, it has taken a
U-turn and declared that a teacher-owned smartphone qualifies the institution
as a ‘digital school’.
In his letter dated March 20 and addressed to
the education authorities in Gadchiroli, Nandurbar, Parbhani, Nanded and Hingoli
districts, Education Commissioner Dr Purushottam Bhapkar stressed on the need
for digital education to boost the performance of students in government
schools, which has touched a low because of the Right to Education Act, 2009.
Explaining the procedure to claim the tag of
100 per cent ‘mobile digital’ school, Dr Bhapkar in this letter has asked
teachers to “buy a speaker” and a “mobile screen magnifier”, clearly assuming
that every teacher will already have an Android mobile phone. “The entire country
is keeping a watch on your district. History is being written. Won’t you be the
witness and participant of it? I am sure you want to do it. Then why are you
waiting? Start from today,” the letter urged teachers.
With March 31 being the deadline, Dr Bhapkar
told The Hindu that government schools have been fully digitised in all
11 districts of the state. “In all, 25,000 schools are digitised,” he claimed.
The other six districts are Palghar,
Bhandara, Gondiya, Chandrapur, Buldhana and Ahmednagar.
“It is an effort to attract children to
government schools. Digitising schools is very easy as it doesn’t need anything
but a mobile phone, magnifying screen and a speaker. It’s very cheap, maybe Rs
1,000 or Rs 1,500 and so it’s not difficult for them (teachers) to spend on it.
Apps are already available and many of our tech-savvy teachers have made their
own apps to teach students. There is an app for each subject and for each
standard,” Dr Bhapkar said.
The government prescription for digital
schools hasn’t gone down well with everyone. Kishore Darak, a Pune-based
independent researcher in elementary education, said, “This once again shows
the state’s withdrawal from the education of the poor and marginalised.
Moreover, only the equipment without pedagogically-sound content would merely
create an illusion of digitisation. When people come out of the illusion, their
diminishing faith in public schools will erode further and may strengthen
privatisation of education.”
Source | The Hindu
| 4 April 2016
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Pralhad
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Khaitan
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