Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will launch Samagra — an educational resource portal prepared by the Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) for schoolteachers — on May 31.
The portal samagra.itschool.gov.in and its mobile app for use in 45,000 classrooms that are being made hi-tech, with the academic support of the State Council Education Research and Training, is designed to help teachers transact online all learning objectives in the school curriculum by using lesson plans. Over 10,000 unit plans and 15,000 macro-level plans have been made available on the portal. Teachers should become members of the portal in order to avail themselves of its facilities. As on date, 1,10,000 teachers have taken the membership, information made available by KITE executive director K. Anvar Sadath said.
In addition to lesson planning, Samagra also features digital textbooks, question banks, and e-resources, which are accessible to everyone, without the need for a log-in. Samagra contains over 19,000 digital resources in the form of videos, audio, pictures, and interactive simulations, which can be sorted class and subjectwise.
According to Mr. Sadath, teachers can use the online and offline versions of Samagra (corresponding plans can be downloaded in advance) for taking classes. Moreover, teachers can submit their class notes in digital form through Samagra, for the approval of headmasters or Principals. KITE has already provided specific training in Samagra to 74,000 teachers during the summer vacation.
Monitoring mechanisms
In a government order it has been clearly stipulated that all directors concerned should ensure effective usage of Samagra in all hi-tech classrooms in the State from the next academic year (2018-19).
In addition to that, it has been mandated to review the exact usage of Samagra and to set up proper monitoring mechanisms right up to the sub-district level on a regular basis.
FOSS-based
Samagra’s content would be totally FOSS-based, without any licence restrictions.
The first phase would cover Classes 8 to 12 and the second phase, Classes 1 to 7. “Samagra will soon include a self/peer assessment feature for students and teachers. We will also provide special log-in for students for monitoring academic excellence and a dedicated forum for teachers for subjectwise discussions,” he added.
