To bring Digital learning opportunities powered by solar energy, a digi lab was launched in Government Middle School, Ayu on September 17.

The initiative was carried by AXIS bank, in collaboration with 17000 ft Foundation, NGO. 

Under 3-year project to improve infrastructure and bring in learning improvement for the children, 108 remote Govt. schools of Ladakh are adopted. In 2017, each school was provided with a playground and a library consisting of 500 storybooks in multiple languages. 

Sanjay Silas, President, Axis Bank was the chief guest. He talked about the commitment of Axis bank to Ladakh and informed that the CSR funds also include livelihood and the bank has sponsored around 1100 tabs distributed in 108 schools. 

He was also happy to learn that the adoption and adaption of Ladakhi students are fast.

Sujata Sahu, Founder, 17000 ft Foundation said, “Axis bank has chosen 108 schools. It is a 3 years project. We have put the curriculum of 1st to the 8th standard of J&K board in the tablets. It will be easier for teachers to teach. We have videos, activities and games on tablets of the main subjects English, Maths, Science, General knowledge, Computer science and so on. Students can log in themselves and their studies can be monitored.”

Tashi Dolma, Joint Director, Department of Education said, “When Axis bank discussed the concept of digi-lab with us, I told Sujatha that you have to work hard and also need to customise the contents of digi-lab according to our syllabus. I would try to shift the digi-lab to a good classroom. It took around 6-7 months to customize as per our requirements. Those teachers who are not computer-savvy should learn about it.” 

Initiatives under this project:

• Electricity- Electricity to power up a Digital Lab in the school consisting of a 200 W Solar Panel and Battery

• Furnishings- Desk and for the Digi-lab room in the school

• Tablets/Tablet PCs- 6 to 14 Android tablets (depending on the enrolment of the school) pre-loaded with a student centric learning platform with special curate and graded content to enhance learning

• L.E.D T.V- A32” L.E.D to allow the teachers to display digital content as a part of her teaching process

• Content Server-A Raspberry Pi content server to create a local wi-fi to sync student usage and house extra content

• Books- Graded computer Literacy for individual students of grades 1 to 8

• Educational Content- Specially curate content for Grades 1 to 8 in Maths, EVS, English reading and grammar, General Knowledge. Exploratory stories, videos and games aimed at increasing exposure and access to software aimed at building Digital literacy.

• Individual Students Learning- Personalised students logins, individual learning journeys and students assessments that will be stored in a central dashboard and will be accessible to teachers and the school management within the school as well as centrally to the local administration. 

• Individual Teacher Content- Personalised teacher logins to allow teachers to implement and run the program in accordance with the school curriculum

 

• Performance Monitoring- Assessments, usage and performance data that will be available to teachers, the headmasters and the local administration. 

The 3 years project will be closely monitored by the Department of Education with the help of 17000 ft Foundation.