Ahead of the formal launch of digitalisation of classroom instructions in government schools on November 16, half-a-dozen schools in Siddipet, Sangareddy and Rajanna-Sircilla districts on Friday conducted trial run of the programme to be sure about their preparedness.
The government will launch the programme two way — online using Receive only Terminals (ROT) connected to Mana TV studio and off-line with K-Yan devices that will be provided with 1 TB hard discs having 900 lessons from classes six to nine. Director of School Education G. Kishan said the Class X students will not be covered because it will disturb their preparations for SSC exams.
Though there were 4,583 government schools under different managements in the State, the launch will be restricted to institutions recommended by Collectors. Some 900 of them, including 182 in Hyderabad, all model schools, Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas and residential schools will get the facility.
ADVERTISEMENT
The trial run exposed chinks in the programme as a lot of content was outside the syllabus. Only a small portion was included from the syllabus and a major content, particularly in maths and science, was drawn from lessons shown on You Tube which was not part of syllabus, a headmaster complained. He said it was an additional burden for teachers to weed out the unwanted portion. Moreover, most of the syllabus was already completed in schools.
The content was designed by State Institute of Educational Technology on the basis of lesson prepared by SCERT.
However, Telugu was the medium of instruction which was a handicap for English medium model schools.
ADVERTISEMENT
For instance, the children could not follow business maths which was taught as “vyapara ganitham” in Telugu. Eight to 10 lessons in each subject of all classes were packaged for virtual classroom lecture by subject experts off-line on K-Yan projectors.