Picture this: It is 2 pm and students of class 9 in Government Inter College Gaurihat in the hills of Pithoragarh district are seated in front of an LED TV in their school and learning “Simple Present Tense” from their teacher, Kavita Rawat. But there is a twist. Rawat is not in the classroom. Instead, she is in front of a camera inside a studio situated almost 500 km away from the classroom. Rawat is the ICT Virtual Classroom set up in the campus of Rajeev Gandhi Navodaya Vidyalaya in Dehradun. Earlier in the day, students of class 10 from various schools across the state were getting clarification about “amorphous oxides” through similar method from a science teacher stationed in the same studio in Dehradun.
This is an example of virtual classrooms that have been launched in Uttrakhand recently and the state government claims to be the first state to have this facility for school education. The studios and the classrooms are connected through a satellite.
Under this project, around 300 state government schools have been connected to four central studios set up in the campus of Rajiv Gandhi Navodaya Vidyalaya.
In the classroom of these connected schools, a camera with a microphone and a speaker is provided alongwith an LED screen. The students watch the screen and are able to listen to whatever the teacher writes on her screen in the studio.
Read more of this initiative to change the education scenario in remote areas in a report by Lalmani Verma published in The Indian Express... (Link given below)
