THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Ahead of the launch of school-level online classes, the state general education department has begun trial classes in select schools using the Google Workspace for Education platform or G-Suite.
Plus Two students attending the online classes, being carried out on a trial basis at VHSS, Pirappancode, had a special guest joining the session on Thursday. General Education Minister V Sivankutty who observed the conduct of the trial class appeared online and interacted with the students
During the interaction, the students told the minister that they found the new mode of learning interesting as it provides them the option of live interaction with teachers. The General Education Department which has been providing common digital classes for school students through TV and web is planning to shift to school-level online classes this year.
The G-Suite platform is being set up at in schools by Kerala Infrastructure Technology for Education (KITE) under the General Education Department.
The minister said further trials will be conducted on classes via G-Suite and it will be implemented in all schools after making necessary improvements. Sivankutty also assured that online classes will begin only after all students are provided digital devices.
Rollout of online classes
As part of going online, all teachers and students in schools wil be brought under a single domain - kiteschool.in. Login facility will be arranged for 47 lakh students and 1.7 lakh teachers in the platform. The general platform has been provided free of cost by Google India. No sensitive individual details of students or teachers would be shared. KITE would have the Master Control of data uploaded in the platform and there would not be any advertisements.
“All teachers and students would be provided with training on how to use the platform. Exclusive training modules have been developed for this purpose," said K Anvar Sadath, CEO of KITE. He said KITE VICTERS channel would also be used for imparting the training. Based on the learnings from the pilot phase, necessary modifications would be incorporated in the platform, he added.
Benefits of G-Suite
# G-Suite provides Google Meet for Video Conferencing, Classroom Learning Management System, Assignments, Quiz, Facility for evaluation, Drive for creation and storing of data. Further, Word Processing, Presentation, Spreadsheet, Drawing and Form application features are also available as part of G-Suite.
# Since login facility has been created for teachers and students in the general domain, external individuals would not be able to get into the classes. If anyone tries to enter the class anonymously, they would be tracked.
# Specific permissions are set for each category of users (Teachers, Students, and Administrators) and using these, class wise and subject wise groups of students can be created at school level. School Administrators and Teachers would have complete control of their classes.
# In the event of students forgetting their passwords, the same can be reset in the School Admin level login in the platform, who would also have the privilege to classify different classes and groups.
# Facility to record the classes Live and its link can be shared with the students who might have missed the classes.
# Since Google Drive would be used for Online Class for activities such as recording and viewing and for using allied apps, there is no need for a dedicated storage space (including that in the mobile).
# Dedicated auditing module available in the platform to assess the usage on a State, District, Sub-District and School level. There is also facility for creation of different online groups and bulk-messaging
# Students can also be given access to First Bell 2.0 classes through KITE VICTERS channel and digital resources in Samagra resource portal.