The State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) has scaled up the level of monitoring and training being carried out as part of the Saksham Haryana technology pilot project, which aims to digitise classroom education in government schools. The project, which was started last year in December as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) tie-up, provides digital learning support to students from classes 2 to 8 in 20 schools across Gurugram and Rewari. The project provides students with tablets, which can be used during school hours for learning purposes.

Out of the 20 schools covered under the ambit of the project, 17 are in Gurugram and three in Rewari. In half of these schools, English is taught through smart classes, while in the remaining 10 schools, students have been given tablets for use. The tablet stores learning content for students.

Jyoti Chaudhary, director, SCERT, said that the goal of the project is to help students embrace technology. “Under the project, students are provided with tab labs and interactive learning classrooms. Based on the initial response of the pilot, we have incorporated more training sessions for school teachers and have increased the monitoring of progress made by students,” said Chaudhary.

Manoj Kaushik, trainer in-charge, Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, said that enhanced training is as being conducted under the project this year. “Since the initiative was started towards the fag-end of the last academic year, it is being carried forward and continued this year as well. We have increased the number of visits to these schools, added periodic training sessions, and are tracking the progress made by students,” said Kaushik.

Last month, the SCERT started a training module, which will continue till December this year, following which a review will be undertaken and feedback incorporated in future training sessions. “The first month of training was carried out in October, with the start of the session. The implementation and monitoring will take place until December. These training familiarise teachers with the technology being used,” said Kaushik.

He said that monitoring was crucial to the project since technology enabled the government to keep a log of the progress made by the students. By increasing the frequency of training and inspection visits, the SCERT was aiming at improving the academic performance of the students.

“The tabs have an interactive interface, due to which a record of all the content that has been accessed via the device is recorded. One gets to know which lesson was read and for what duration. Through the back end, we keep a tab on the engagement level of the students,” said Kaushik.