In another effort to help digital education percolate to the bottom of the pyramid, EdTech platform Schoolnet has partnered with the Tribal Area Development Department, Government of Rajasthan. This partnership will enable the Noida-based company to bring its digital resources to 36 residential schools and 480 hostels in tribal areas of the state.
Talks for the same began about five months ago, informs RCM Reddy, Managing Director and CEO of Schoolnet. "Post unlocking and reopening of schools, the government realised that children have suffered an 18-month-long learning gap, more so the children from tribal areas. And to compensate for the learning loss, the government wanted to leverage technology," he shares. And that's where Schoolnet comes in.
The first component of the collaboration is ReadToMe, which digitises the education board textbooks of students of Classes VI to X, both in English and Hindi, and with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI), infuses them with multimedia elements. While English textbooks will help students with the meaning of words and pronunciation, Math and Science digitised books will have explainer videos. If you are thinking what we are thinking, which is the abysmal internet penetration in tribal areas, then it is a valid question to ask. Schoolnet had previously joined hands with IIT Bombay to create a device called K-Yan, a teaching-learning device that has an in-built computer, speaker and more importantly, a screen projection system, that turns any wall into a screen. This device will come into play. There will also be personnel from the EdTech start-up who will be deployed to address any shortcoming the teachers might face.
There is also Geneo that takes up content that is above and beyond their textbooks, to the children's understanding of the concepts they find in textbooks. Along with this comes mentorship and assessments. The priority is to introduce this for Classes IX to X because of the upcoming Board exams.
"We hope that engagement levels of children will go up since multimedia elements have been included," says Reddy, adding that they launched a partnership with West Bengal just last week and are in talks with the Government of Andhra Pradesh. "Many students of India enrol in government schools and affordable private schools. It is their learning outcomes that we want to focus on," says Reddy. He hopes that they are able to impact 5 crore children in the next 5 years.
