To tide over the lockdown crisis that forced schools to shut down and send children to the safety of their homes, the Andhra Pradesh Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society (APSWREIS) plans to rope in Doordarshan (DD) Kendra, Vijayawada, to telecast classroom lessons to its students in dedicated slots in the morning and evening hours.
“We want to reach out to at least our Class 10 students through the State-owned television channel to impart classes and help them prepare well for their examinations,” V. Ramulu, society Secretary, told The Hindu.
Mr. Ramulu says, “Responding favourably to my proposal, the government and the DD have agreed, in principle, and if all goes well, the telecast will start in a couple of days. The society runs 189 schools across the 13 districts of the State with a 1.07 lakh student strength. Of them, over 13,000 students are from Class 10.
“We are identifying teachers who have the facility to shoot videos using i-Phones and other electronic gadgets,” says Mr. Ramulu.
The videos of the teachers explaining the lessons will be shot at their homes and sent online to Mr. Ramulu, who will edit them before forwarding them to the government television channel for telecast.
Interactive mode
Each telecast session will last for 45 minutes and will be followed by an interactive session, wherein the students can get their doubts cleared through a phone-in facility. The society, for now, intends to focus on training students in main subjects such as mathematics, science and English.
The initial plan of reaching out to the students using WhatsApp platform has to be dropped as 50% of the students do not have access to it.
“We have zeroed in on DD as almost 90% of the children even in remote villages have access to television,” Mr. Ramulu says. “This is the only way to connect the students to their teachers in this hour of crisis,” he adds.
Students going to the social welfare schools mostly come from rural background, and the new arrangement will enable them to learn their lessons sitting in the confines of their homes.
