Aiming to provide best in class education facilities in schools in rural areas and increase the standard of education in rural schools, the Nanded Rotary Club and Nanded IT Association (NITA) has jointly rolled out the ‘Digital School’ project in Nanded district. Under the project, the members of the Rotary Club and NITA will distribute e-learning tools to schools. The associations aim to digitize 100 schools in the next 6 months.
“Under the Digital school project, we are donating e-learning software, projectors and other equipments to schools. The main objective of this project is to bridge the gap between rural and urban education and reduce the rate of drop outs”, said Dipak Mortale, president of NITA.
Emphasizing on digital education, the Maharashtra government has announced to launch e-learning in all government-run schools. Under the initiative, students in government-run schools would be given skill development training. While the government has taken several policy initiatives for the success of the e-learning project, NITA and Nanded Rotary Club have taken their own initiative to increase the standard of education in the district.
NITA will provide e-learning software to schools that comprises regular syllabus from 1st to 10th standard, tutorials for preparation of competitive exams, interactive video, encyclopedia etc. that are useful for teachers to make teaching more interesting and informative.
Mortale, who is also the president of the Nanded Rotary Club said that many schools have given a positive response to the project and also agreed to share the cost of technological deployments in the schools.
“There are many limitations in rural areas such as lack of resources, poor quality of education, lack of facilities and so on, due to which many students discontinue studies after 5th or 6th standard. We aim to retain students by generating interest for studies among them. E-learning tools will certainly make studies interesting for students”, Mortale said.
Mortale said that two schools have been digitized and nearly 25 schools have registered for the project. The cost of the project per school is INR 50,000. The association has appealed to the citizens and the local administration to support their cause.