Mr Sanjeev Bagul is a Zilla Parishad teacher from Pune with more than 29 years of teaching experience. 10 of the 15 students whom Bagul sir teaches belong to the Katkari Adivasi Samaj. Parents of these students do not own technology of any kind, not even mobile phones. Online education was impossible for these students when the nationwide lockdown was imposed, unless technology was provided to them. Dr. Ranade of the Joshi Hospital in Pune came forward to solve this problem. 15 tablets were donated from the IWAD trust to these students on the 26 th of June as a result of Dr. Ranade’s efforts. Hardware without the software would not help these students with any learning gains and so Bagul sir reached out to Mr. Deshpande from Chaitanya Software, Pune. Chaitanya Software was able to provide curriculum-based content mapped to each grade, which can be accessed on Tablets without an active internet connection. Bagul sir soon found out that technology cannot replace a teacher. ...
A study was conducted by the Muttha Foundation in Nov 2020 across Maharashtra to understand the roll-out of the tech-based distance education across the state during the school closures due to COVID-19. 19 Children with special needs and their parents were interviewed as a part of the study and their experiences and responses were recorded in the form of case studies. The type of disabilities in these children was diverse, for eg. Visual impairment, hearing impairment, speech disorders, cerebral palsy, etc. These disabilities ranged from mild to severe in case of both physical and mental disorders seen in the children. In most of the observations, the online platforms used were not compatible with assistive technology used for teaching children with visual, hearing, or any other impairment. Out of the total 19 students interviewed only 4 students had access to the synchronous type of classes, while 10 students had asynchronous classes going on. 3 students were being taught by tea...
A study was conducted by the Muttha Foundation in Nov 2020 across Maharashtra to understand the roll-out of the tech-based distance education across the state during the school closures due to COVID-19. As a part of this extensive study, 1254 students of primary school and 1260 parents were interviewed. The study showed that, a mongst all the tech devices, smart phones were readily available in more than 90 percent of all the households across all the social groups. However, the challenge was more regarding the child’s access to these devices for educational purposes. This access was the highest for open category students and the least for tribal students. The prime reason for denial of access was the need of the parent to carry the mobile/smart phone to work. The percentage of tribal students who had to connect from uncomfortable locations was also the highest among all the three social groups, which could be because most of them were from remote locations where network connecti...
Comments
Post a Comment