Tap and learn

Five-year-old Shraddha Kuldiwabale loves the class after recess. Thats when she gets to go to her schools digital room,where she gets a shiny tablet. Her tiny index finger gets to work straightaway,effortlessly tapping on icons and opening new windows and worlds for her before finally settling down on the maths icon. Numbers fascinate her, says Sandhya Pandurang Nanekar,an assistant teacher at the school. I dont coax her or the other students to follow any set pattern in the digital room. They are encouraged to explore on their own.

It has just been three months since this small zilla parishad school in Shikrapur village in Pune district introduced 20 tablets for its 35 students and the school has already managed to cut down absenteeism. Though school timings are from 10 am to 5 pm,a number of students drop in as early as 8.30 am and prefer to stay back even after school hours. Nanekar says that while earlier,the students would often skip school,citing a fair in the village or a wedding in the neighbours family,now they turn up bright and eager hoping to play with the tablets. For instance,on February 19,the school was scheduled to close after Shiv Jayanti. However,a lot of children insisted on staying back, says Nanekar.

The school spent Rs 1,20,000 on the tablets,made by a Pune-based technology company,and on getting the relevant e-learning course material loaded. Since the village faces constant power cuts,the school even spent Rs 80,000 on solar electricity at the school. We couldnt have gone ahead with the tablet project without electricity. So before introducing the tablets,we had to make sure that the school got uninterrupted power supply, says Dattatreya Vare,principal of the school. Vare says the money spent on the tablets and solar electricity was raised through donations from villagers and individuals and cultural groups of Shikrapur.

Vare says the tablets have educational programmes that make learning fun. Topics such as tsunami or volcanoes can be boring when taught on the blackboard. On the tablets,children Google and watch videos. The audio-visual experience makes it much more interactive, says Vare.

He says all his students come from families who cannot afford to enroll their children in English-medium schools. Our aim is to bring our students on a par with those studying in English-medium schools, says Vare.