495 govt schools equipped with smart classrooms in Karnal district

Parveen Arora

Karnal, July 30

With an aim at improving the quality of education, classrooms of 495 government schools in the distict have been transformed into ‘smart classrooms’. There are 777 primary, middle, high and senior secondary schools in the district. Out of these, 313 schools got the facility of smart classrooms last academic session, while 182 schools have been upgraded in this session.

Teachers trained to use new technology

• Extensive training is being provided to teachers to equip them with the necessary skills required to effectively utilise new technologies
• A district-level dashboard has been established for monitoring the progress of the system by the education authorities

This step has been taken under the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN) programme from Classes I to V and from Classes VI to VIII under ‘Fun with Science’ by using resources that are in alignment with the state textbooks and the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) learning outcomes (LOs).

The initiative has been taken by the Sampark Foundation, an academic partner of the Haryana Education Department, with a purpose to improving learning outcomes among students and making them technology-savvy.

It has provided smart LEDs, along with Sampark TV boxes comprising offline devices having syllabus in animated pedagogy for the students of government schools.

To make this programme effective, extensive training is being provided to teachers, equipping them with the necessary skills to effectively utilise new technologies. So far, the foundation has imparted training to 676 teachers of different schools.

A district-level dashboard has been established for monitoring progress by the District Education Officer (DEO) and Block Education Officer (BEO).

Sudesh Thukral, DEO, said that smart classrooms had helped in making significant strides towards providing students a better learning experience. “We are monitoring the implementation of the Sampark programme in the district,” she added.

“In the last academic session, we upgraded traditional classrooms into smart classrooms in 313 government schools. In this session, we are working on 182 schools. We have distributed smart LEDs and Sampark TV boxes in all these schools,” said Pooja Moyal, district coordinator of Sampark Foundation.

Vivek Kumar, the district science coordinator of Sampark Foundation, said this programme would help in enhancing the learning skills of students in an interactive way. “We are collecting feedback from students about the effectiveness of the programme,” he added. “Among these schools, there are 161 schools where we are running classes under the ‘Fun with Science’ programme,” he said.

Teachers and students are enjoying this method of teaching and learning.