KOCHI: The smart classroom movement is getting stronger among the government schools in the state. Setting an example for others Government Vocational HSS, Njekkad has already converted 16 of its classrooms into smart ones under the project initiated by IT@School, with the help of its former students.
“Ever since the Hi-Tech school programme of the Education Department was announced in August, our former students started coming together and began efforts to the school into one,” says the headmaster K K Sajeev.
He adds, “It was during one such old students’ meets, a School Vikasana Samithi was formed to look into the same. The board was formed not just to oversee the development of hi-tech facilities but also the school’s overall development.” When the old students came to know about the school’s efforts to come up with more smart room facilities, they began separate bank accounts to collect the contributions.
According to Sajeev, who is also a former IT@School district coordinator, the current plan is to convert around 45,000 classrooms in 1,500 schools into smart rooms.
With the school alumni coming together and making contributions, the school was able to renovate 16 of its classrooms. The HM says,”The equipment, for instance, the projector, speakers and the laptop will be provided by the Government. However, the school has to do rest of the work like renovating the classrooms. 16 of our classrooms have been paved with tiles. The electrical works have been done and a gadget rack has been fixed in all the rooms. Sans equipment, all the other works have been done.”
For the HM, going the smart way is all about convenience and easy learning.
With 45 classrooms catering to the secondary and higher secondary divisions and close to 3,000 children studying in the school, his goal is to convert all of them into Hi-Tech classrooms. He says, “Like most of the government schools, we used to have one smart classroom, where we used to take students at different times. Teaching with the aid of visuals will help students to grasp the concept better.”
Electronic equipment will be distributed to schools depending on the results of a survey by the government, the first phase of which has already been completed. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan distributed the first set of electronic equipment at Tagore theatre in the city on Monday.