Education

All it takes for Bharani (name changed), a social work student at Madras Christian College (MCC) to take part in her department's webinar is a mobile phone with a good internet connection.  Happy to save three hours of commuting time from her home in Avadi to her college in Nungambakkam, M Varsha, a Journalism student from MOP Vaishnav  College attends classes online. A BSc Maths student at Loyola College, Anto Nelson doesn't miss the class; he listens to the live online class and notes down the sum as instructed by the professor.  These instances clearly portray the evolution of college…

Kids and pandemic, pandemic and kids. No, I’m NOT looking for a pattern or a palindrome here. Instead, just turning our attention to the silent sufferers in this entire saga, our children. While this is an unprecedented situation for the entire world and the human race in general, I see that it has impacted our young children to a great extent, physically, mentally and emotionally. To start with, they were suddenly asked to stop going to schools and abandon their regular busy-as-hell lives. Unexpected school holidays are always welcome for children, but here there were caveats. They couldn't spend this time…

COVID-19 has had a seriously unsettling effect on all sections of people, not least on students who find themselves in an unprecedented situation caused by closure of schools and colleges, and a rather hasty, unprepared thrust on digital modes of learning. Figures released by UNESCO, as they assess the impact of the global coronavirus pandemic on education, say that in India alone, some 32 crore learners have been impacted in some way or the other by the closure of educational institutes, nearly 17 crore of them in secondary school or at higher levels. Undoubtedly, the most affected and stressed are…

2020 has been full of uncertainty. The pandemic and subsequent lockdown have had us struggling to adjust to changes like never before. First it was days, then weeks, then months. Now we are not even sure. There’s a meme doing the rounds on social media these days, about the most widely asked questions right now. Received on Whatsapp Those of us who are working from home and attending virtual meetings will be quite familiar with the last two questions. In fact, so will our children, who have been having virtual school for the last several weeks. Every weekday, we ensure…

Vaishnavi Bhardwaj’s ‘school’ is her dadi’s pooja room. And her classroom is her Dadi’s smartphone. Every Monday-Friday, 9-year-old Vaishnavi is ready to ‘go to school’ by 9 am. Her mother Rashi makes sure that the fourth standard student at a private school in East Delhi has all the required text books and note books ready in time for her morning class prayer, signalling the beginning of her day in school.  Schools in the capital began for the new academic session on July 1st with technology driven classes over the Internet and on television. Private school students like Vaishnavi, every morning wear…

It has been over four months now that schools in the country are shut, due to the lockdown following the COVID-19 pandemic. While there has been a big shift towards online schooling over this period, mostly through synchronous classes on platforms like Zoom or Google Meet, parents of schoolchildren have raised a red flag about the massive increase in screen time for their children when schools replaced classroom learning with online classes. The HRD ministry stepped in to assuage their fears and  announced guidelines called Pragyata, which laid down a cap on the duration and the number of sessions in…

Gayathri*, a 55-year-old Associate Professor of microbiology at Christ University, stares puzzled at the 21-inch laptop her daughter had gifted her two years ago. Backache continues to ail her even as she consciously corrects her posture to sit straight on an ordinary plastic chair. Gayathri said that although the college trained her, and her colleagues helped her handle virtual communication tools, she could not put together appropriate tools for remote classes amidst COVID-19. Working out of her apartment in JP Nagar, Gayathri said, “Although I enjoy interacting with my students after a long gap, it gets tiresome to sit caged…

As schools struggle to adapt to the new classrooms, it is the children who are paying the price Pic: Sandeep J Gupta It is a strange question for five-year-old Arya to ask his mother - “How many meetings do I have today?”.  But we live in strange times and my friend’s son still cannot wrap his mind around the fact that he is expected to sit in front of a computer from 8.30 am to 12.30 pm for his classes or what he calls "meetings". His mother, Anitha Anand, a physiotherapist, doesn’t have answers either. And she is not the only…

Through the years that saw it transition from being an industrial nerve centre to the country’s best-known hub of coaching centres for all kinds of competitive and other exams, Kota has seen a lot of action. But COVID-19 has brought the city to a screeching halt. Once known for its flourishing manufacturing units, the local economy suffered a large negative ripple effect with the closure of its biggest unit JK Synthetics in 1997, which rendered 5000 people jobless. Other units like Oriental Power cables, Rajasthan metals and Samtel Group soon followed suit. With the shutdown of government-owned Instrumentation Ltd in…

With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing closure of all educational institutions, India has seen a transition to online teaching at all levels, including in primary and secondary schools.  Predictably, it has not been a very smooth transition, however, and questions have been raised over various aspects of it:  What challenges does it pose for a schooling system that has made rare use of technology as an enabler? What are the ways in which classes are being conducted and how effective are they? Should private schools charge fees for lessons delivered online? How are schools bridging the digital divide that separates the privileged…