AMARAVATI: Municipal Teachers Federation (MTF) state president Somarauthu Ramakrishna has demanded that the municipal administration department should shift the online classes for high school students to Doordarshan or Youtube.
He said that nearly 60-70 percent of children in urban areas do not possess their own mobile phones and online classes through zoom app would cause irreparable loss to the poor children.
He said that the director of municipal administration (DMA) should retreat his call on the issue of purchasing zoom applications and shift the classes to Doordarshan or Youtube which were being used by the school education department for rural schools.
In fact, children could watch youtube webex classes any number of times which help them for revision of lessons, he explained.
Interestingly, civic bodies could earn money by utilising webex stream, said Ramakrishna.
“Majority of the children are dependent on the mobiles of parents who are daily wagers. The parents are worrying about giving smartphones to the children particularly to the girl children while going to work. We need to understand their concerns and fears,” said a school HM.
However, the decision of the municipal administration department to conduct online classes through zoom application is reportedly causing a huge financial burden on the civic bodies as they have been asked to purchase the licenses depending on the strength of the students.
The director of municipal administration (DMA) MM Nayak had recently asked about 60 commissioners of municipal corporations and towns where the municipal schools are working to launch online classes for high school students from next Monday. He directed the commissioners to purchase at least 5 licenses per school to manage the online class for class-VII to X.
Although, DMA advised the civic commissioners to merge some of the classes for online sessions where the student strength is below 100, the very decision to go for expensive mode is questioned by the civic chiefs.
“Conducting online classes for the students is a good decision. But why should we purchase the licenses of an expensive mobile application when free options like Doordarshan are available,” asked a municipal chairperson.
He said that the decision of the DMA to issue instructions directly to the commissioners without consulting the elected chairpersons or council is not correct.
Sources said that each conference license would cost Rs 3000 which might incur an expenditure of nearly Rs 15,000 from each high school. In addition to the licenses, the civic bodies have to purchase infrastructure like white boards, camera stands
This would result in huge burden on the municipal bodies.
Interestingly, the school education department which is managing the rural schools is streaming the online classes through Doordarshan and youtube.
