SHUBHANGI SHIFA
Ranchi, Feb 21: The Ranchi district administration has set up digital laboratories named ‘tab labs’ in various schools as a pilot mission to support digital training among the school students. The tab labs have been put up in several schools of the Khalari block of the Ranchi district for students that are functional since December, but because of the schools being closed, the tab labs could not be put to use then.
Deputy Commissioner Chhavi Ranjan said, “The tab lab initiative is the first step towards bridging the digital gap for government school students, especially at a time when online education has become the norm due to the onslaught of Covid waves.”
Deputy development commissioner Vishal Sagar said the idea to set up tab-labs emerged because Covid has reinforced the idea of digital education. “Even though schools have started to reopen following a fall in Covid cases in the state, these labs will continue to assist students’ access to quality content and hone their academic skills. The tabs have preloaded content on various subjects like general studies, science, in addition to study material on the basic syllabus by JAC. The tabs will have the basic content in both Hindi and English,” he said.
“In the first phase, tab-labs have been set up in 20 middle and high schools in Ranchi’s Khalari block, however, seeing the positive response, we are planning similar labs in 20 more schools in the Burmu and Chanho blocks. The project is funded through the District Mineral Foundation Trust (DMFT),” the DDC added.
Pratikshita, project officer, Health and Education programmes under DMFT said several government schools lacked the digital infrastructure that we might require in an education system. This is a huge leap for these students, as these portable devices give information on a large scale.
“This is not a part of any existing state scheme, but a project under DMFT. DMFT is a fund allocated under the Mines Act for the development of the mining-affected areas. We initiated this project from our end targeting the learning and digital literacy gap,” she added.
She further said it was decided that depending on the success of the pilot project, more schools will be covered under the initiative to promote digital literacy among government school children, most of whom are from humble backgrounds.
“Each tab-lab has been set up at a cost of Rs 7 lakh. We are using funds from the DMFT for this project,” Pratikshita added, describing it as a first-of-its-kind initiative in Jharkhand. “We have a list from the mining office and know of the other mining-affected areas. Now we are in the process of getting sanctions, after which we will identify more mining-affected areas, scale them up and replicate the programme within the district. We hope the state will take steps to replicate the programme in other districts as well in future,” she further said.
The tabs are Lenovo Tab 7 Essential with 7 inch display, 8 GB internal memory and a 1.3 GHz Quad core with an operating system of Android 7.0.
With schools now open within the state for offline lessons, the importance of digital studying will proceed to develop in future even in the course of the post-pandemic interval. Due to this fact, such labs may go a good distance in serving students with correct research.
