Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister of Delhi, Manish Sisodia chaired a meeting with officers of the Education Department, teachers, students and parents, on the effectiveness of the online classes and support activities.
Amidst lockdown, the focus of discussion titled ‘Parenting in the time of Corona’ was to understand how these daily activities and online classes have helped the students to enhance their learning even during these times when schools are shut due to the pandemic COVID 19.
While interacting with students, Sisodia said the idea behind running daily online classes for students is to minimize the effects of the lockdown and the consequent shutdown of schools on their academics. “Happy to note that more and more students are attending the online classes everyday,” “ I am glad to see that 1,33,193 students of Class 12 (the students of class 11 who are awaiting their results) have been registered for the online classes. Around 6 lakh students currently studying in classes -Nursery to standard 8th, are also connected with us through SMS and IVR. They receive a daily exercise/assignment on their parents’ mobile phones everyday, We have also garnered a great response for the Happiness Class that is being streamed online for entire family everyday at 4 pm,” Sisodia said.
“Lockdown has no doubt affected us all. It has also impacted our young generation a lot. It has hampered the studies of our students and so, our education department has been trying to introduce new ways (like online classes) to reduce this impact on the studies of the students and help them cope with their academics. We introduced the online mode of learning in the first week of April, and here we are today discussing how the online technology has helped us in minimizing the damage caused by COVID 19,” he added.
Notably, Delhi government had tied upwith Career Launcher to train around 60 teachers on how to conduct live online classes for students of class 12.
“It is like a revolution that has started in education. We were apprehensive initially about going from real classrooms to virtual ones but the transition has been smooth. Students are fearlessly asking questions in chat boxes during online class, more than they would do in real classrooms. I have also been showing them documentaries on history to understand the chapter better!”, said Dr Harita, PGT, History. “It is only because of your decision to distribute tablets amongst teachers that we have been able to teach our students remotely. I am happy to say that I started my online classes in March. All thanks to you,” added Jyoti.
The education department has also collaborated with the Khan Academy to offer specially curated Maths content for Class 9 students of its school.
“For the past 10 days, we have been discussing with the Khan Academy team on how to support students of class 9 in the subject -Mathematics.”
“Last time we had seen the Board results and noticed that only 71% percent of our students passed in Maths in comparison to subjects like Social sciences and Languages which we generally have a 97% passing results. To not let our students suffer in Maths, we have collaborated with the Khan Academy, a globally recognised educational non-profit organisation, which has been developing interactive learning materials for our students,” said Shailendra Sharma, Officer in DoE department.
“It is a 10 week long program. Starting this monday, the parents will receive an sms with a link to open that day’s micro lesson. It will have two or three videos and a couple of exercises. These lessons will reach the parents/students for 10 weeks", said Sandeep Bapna- Managing Director, Khan Academy India. This partnership is expected to benefit more than 3 lakh students.
For students in smaller grades- KG to class 8, Delhi Govt. is sending a daily SMS with general activities to 5,71, 661 parents of KG to class 8th students. A daily SMS alert is also being sent to 12,14,049 parents of KG to class 12 for Happiness class at home. Apart from this, 5,18,626 parents of classes 3 to 8 receive IVR for Mission Buniyaad activities every alternate day. And so are the 5,71,661 parents of KG to class 8 receiving IVR for Happiness activities every alternate day too.
Sisodia also spoke over the phone with parents of young students who had been receiving SMS and IVR for activities everyday.
Satisfied with the daily lessons sent by the Department to facilitate the learning cycle of his kid, Sanjay, a parent said, “I really like the kind of activities that are sent everyday. I try to make it a point that I sit with my kid everyday to do this daily activity and I have also been following the Happiness class everyday at 4 pm.”
Harvinder Kaur, a homemaker and a mother of a Class 5 student also had all praises about these online learning activities introduced by the Delhi Govt. which is also making her child aware of a lot of general issues like water conservation. "Today we got an exercise asking if we had 15 litres of water then how would we manage our household. So, I taught my child and made him aware about how to conserve water,” she said.