Changing lives though education
DIGITAL AID
Satyam Kumar, 14, a resident of Gurgaon had to migrate from Bihar with his parents, due to financial problems and left school in the process. When lured by the opportunity to play games on laptop, Satyam and many others like him gave in to the volunteers of Literacy India.
Attraction towards digital gadgets is highest among children, especially those from the lower strata of the society. In order to use this attraction as a tool to pull street kids towards education, Literacy India recently launched a new software called ‘Gyantantra – Digital Dost’, with an aim to provide education to millions of young lives, all over the country.
‘Gyantantra – Digital Dost’ is a comprehensive computer-aided educational package developed as a knowledge machine to encourage child participation and positive engagement at primary level education. This digital learning promotes education and ensures enabling friendly environment to all children irrespective to their class, caste, creed, sex and religion. Apart from mathematic problems, alphabets, word formation and experiments, it also contains interactive activities such as songs and stories based on crucial issues such as sexual abuse.
Discussing the need for such digital means of education, Indraani Singh, managing trustee and founder secretary, Literacy India said, “We started with five kids in 1996 and now we have 25,000 people enrolled in various programmes. We have realised that there is a fascination for digital things among the unprivileged children. Also, many of them felt ashamed to attend classes with children who were younger to them. Therefore, we worked on bringing out a digital platform, to attract children of all age groups towards education. Now, they learn together and also don’t indulge in begging and drug addiction.”
Explaining the software design, Vivek Padubidri, managing director, 4C-Learning Solutions Pvt Ltd said, “The software was designed keeping in mind the consideration that the prospective users might not know how to read and write yet should feel comfortable to click with a mouse and learn.” He adds, “The software can be used as a teaching aid and is also capable of improving the quality of teaching but is not to be looked at as a means to replace classroom teaching.
Sanjeev Jain, CEO, GE Capital said, “We will be happy to hire these children after they graduate.” Akhil Bansal, COO, KPMG, said, “Unfortunately the surge of wealth creation in our society has not been inclusive, therefore it is our duty to educate the 300 million children who will decide our future.”
