Akal academy school during crises and lockdown

Short videos, limited students per call: The Kalgidhar Trust resolves data challenges of rural areas for smooth conduct of online classes

For rural children across North India, online classes during the nCOVID-19 lockdown are a problem because of poor internet connectivity and limited internet package. Teachers of 130 schools run by a non-profit trust have found the answer to this problem by preparing short video lessons that do not exhaust much data. Video-conferencing is limited to five students only. 

These simple, workable solutions have been adopted by The Kalgidhar Trust, which runs 130 Akal Academy schools in the rural belts of Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. While these measures have resulted in increased workload for teachers, it has achieved the objective of resolving the challenges faced by students living in villages and towns. Approximately 60,000 students study in the schools run by the Trust. 

Baba Iqbal Singh Ji, President of the Trust said that as the lockdown started and the shift was made to online classes, multiple challenges were observed. Poor internet connection, unavailability of smart phones, computers/laptops in each house and data-pack exhaustion were the top challenges being faced initially. But despite that we developed a methodology to deliver quality education during the lockdown through three modules. The first module is to conduct live video sessions through apps like Google duo, Zoom and Seesaw. The number of students per call is limited so that bandwidth is not exhausted. Second, dissemination and collection of assignments through e-mails and WhatsApp groups. Teachers divide and disseminate lectures into small video files and voice messages on wats app. The third module is to have one-to-one interactive sessions over the telephone for clearing doubts.

Teachers clips their lectures into small video files so that it consumes less download time and can easily be sent on email or Whatsapp/ Seesaw said Placheril Devasia Mani, Head Primary School (IB), Akal Academy, Baru Sahib (H.P.)

A 20-minute online session is scheduled daily on Google duo and Zoom App for a one-on-one interaction of students with the teacher. To manage the problem of limited internet usage and server issues, the school’s administration has advised all their teachers not to conduct virtual classes with a dozen or more students because when number of users in a single video-conferencing room increases over ten or more participants, the quality of internet connection gets hampered, said principal …. (list of all principals in the respective district)

For students whose parents do not have either a smart phone or a computer, classes are conducted over the phone. A day before the session, teachers send messages to students, and through teleconferencing, batches of students (less than 5) gets connected every day.

Pavneet Kaur of Akal Academy Dhaliwal Bet studying in class X said  that I am happy that my school has started online classes to bridge the education gap created due to the nCovid-19 lockdown.

The schools also have access to digital resources of Extra Marks app, Macmillan, Xseed Education, Pearson, Cambridge World Book, Encyclopaedia and its inhouse LMS.

Despite the global challenge, there is a new face to the schooling as digital connectivity is proving to be a blessing in disguise for 130 Akal Academy schools giving an opportunity to explore the untouched resources that adds on to the experiential learning as the teacher is just one tap away.

Akal academy school during crises and lockdown

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