Introduction
Although digital education attained its zenith during the COVID-19 pandemic, The WE Foundation has identified that this concept of Digital Education is yet to permeate the system of primary school education across regions in India.
Having identified this problem, we at The WE Foundation, have come up with a flagship digital education project (eSarvaShiksha) which is a model e-pedagogy cum training and learning program for the school students in collaboration with our digital partner IT Giant Cognizant.
Students’ online education through eSarvaShiksha
Through this programme we aim to inject the essence of digital education into the municipal primary schools across Kolkata which are under the purview the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. This pilot program targets 7 schools, with about 50 students from Pre-primary to 5th standard, in order to provide them with a holistic pedagogical development in accordance with the STEAM system of education. We are now scaling the project both vertically and horizontally.
This financial year, with support from India Carbon Limited, we are targeting 15 schools and min 250 students to ensure that more and more children comes under the purview of digital education. For children, who are unable to afford a smart device, we are providing them workbook and other offline reading books to ensure their learning continues. We have collaborated with Cognizant, Government of West Bengal, and University of North Bengal to involve 100 schools in West Bengal under the digital learning programme. The Schools will be undertaken in phases.
Teachers’ Training through eSarvaShiksha
With the mission to run the eSarvaShiksha project sustainably, we have collaborated with Cognizant to train the teachers and professors on the pedagogy of the digital training cum educational platform. The Cognizant team is providing training to teachers on: Mobile digital mastery, Computer digital mastery and communicative English.
The training is taking place in phases: Phase 1 and phase 2 already completed during 2020-21 and until 15 September 2021. A total of 150 teachers have received training on digital tools and resources. The WE Foundation believes that digital education is evolving as the most accepted and student-friendly education in the country today. For successful commencement of the eSarvashiksha programme, we at The WE Foundation, are also focusing on the training and development of the professors and making them well versed with the digital tools and resources by giving them hands-on training jointly by the big players in the IT industry and The We Foundation digital team.