How Edtech Companies Like Extramarks Helping Schools By Providing Online Education During Coronavirus Lockdown

Online learning has come as a big saviour for students of technology savvy schools during Coronavirus pandemic. All the schools and colleges are closed as the government has announced complete lockdown for 21 days. The schools that were technology savvy have moved to online learning platforms so that teachers can teach students from their homes. While the students can learn and interact with their teachers while sitting at home.

"It was a challenge for us to set up virtual classrooms. I'm thankful to digital education companies for helping us. These days, the students are of the digital age and every household has a smartphone and computer setups or tablets. This helped us in getting over that hurdle," said Major General Kanwar Vijay Singh Lalotra (Retd), chairman, Ridge Valley and Summerfields School, Gurgaon in a discussion program in News Nation.

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However, some of the schools are still wondering how to select right online platform. They are still using applications that were basically designed for video-conferencing. "Main aspects of digital education are Content, Support, Assessment, Classification of students and most importantly less bandwidth-consuming operations," said Mr Sriram, IT Head of Mayo College, Ajmer. "Extramarks is providing all of this at one place. It is one-stop-shop for all education needs. Basic bandwidth is helping us to simplify the process. Tutoring has been made easy."

In view of Coronavirus threat, Extramarks, India's leading digital education company has made all online classes free for students. "Extramarks has managed to streamline the online education system for teachers and students in three days in order to continue the process of online education amid Coronavirus outbreak. The online education platform has also made all online classes free for students to learn," said Poonam Jamwal, director, Extramarks. "More than 10,000 schools have enrolled to the Extramarks Online Classroom Learning system and is currently serving more than 70,000 online classrooms, which in itself is the beginning of the Digital Education revolution," she said.

"We have a platform called 'live virtual lecture' which has been absolutely free for all schools. Over 200 teachers are being trained through this on how they can teach students while sitting at their homes. This will maintain the continuity," said Ms Jamwal.

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Telling her experience Ms Amrita Burman, Deputy Director, Sunbeam Group Of Education said that Initially, said that initially there were some hiccups due to Internet connectivity as many students are in remote areas and small towns of Uttar Pradesh. "But gradually, the parents felt that the children will gain immensely from digital education and we have seen them investing in smartphones, tablets and laptops.

She also said that the teachers are motivating parents to enrol their child in virtual classrooms. Teachers are not just end-users, they can also use their creativity to generate new content.

The current pandemic may prove to be blessing in disguise for Indian school education as most of the schools still rely on archaic teaching methods. In the absence of modern teaching tools, even creative teachers depend on outdated pedagogy. They have no choice but to follow rote-based learning system. There is no co-relation between what is taught to students and what they observe around them. The old text books, which are frequently understocked, are not enough to satisfy curiosity of the students.