While it may be true across the globe, one thing that we
must emphasize in the Bihar Education, the need of getting the kids &
Teachers online. Bringing someone online is not just about providing a computer
or a laptop with an internet connection.
Its whole lot of improved state of affairs that one needs to envisage by
getting the Teaching & Student community on the talking terms on a daily
basis across the State/Country/World. One of the impediments of today's
education system is that of being obsolete as well as conventionally
disconnected, to the extent that, students have to be highly dependent upon the
physical presence of the teachers for solving their issues, at the location
where they reside.
Few initiatives that I think could help overcome this issue
& also make the state education a whole lot more interactive:
1- Link all of the existing Educational Institutions across
the state thru a WLAN - This can be done by first classifying the schools on
parameters if they belong to Primary, Secondary, Higher Secondary, Higher
Education, Vocational etc. With this, you reduce the dependency on the school
teachers who are limited by location. All these teachers can be provided with
the necessary education on computer usage & can be provided laptops to be
able to interact more with the kids. One might think that all teachers may not
have the inclination to do that but even if 15-20% can do that, it will be
great success & help to the student community immensely. This would also
help teachers teach, thru live meetings, at those schools where there is an
acute shortage of qualified teachers. Not just those, one can rather tap some
volunteers from colleges to teach the Primary or Secondary kids. It can rather
be in their curriculum as well.
2- Provide schools with wide range of computer system &
encourage computer loans to them over a 3-5 year duration that they are in
higher education. This subsidy & long term loan terms can help students
have their own Laptops, besides the computer, that they are provided with during
the day time within college. This will not only let students talk to the
students from other colleges/schools rather they can talk to teachers from
across locations of the state. All must have a login ID for all to remove the
iota of doubt for ill usage of such system.
3- Like a text library, create an online library with a
central server repository of all knowledge from all schools coming &
residing in there. This repository can be used & enhanced by the student
community themselves on the lines of Wikipedia. Creating an Online directory of
such sort will not just help publish the articles to the rest of the world but
would also help attract reviews & critique to make it even better. Projects
of wider influence can be used for Consultancy work by the colleges /
universities & thus create a self-sustainability instead of depending upon
state government funds for its functioning. It may take a while to develop this
as a strategy but once there, there is a no looking back.
4- Create Social Outreach Programs, as part of Student
curriculum, as a must for all students of all ages starting from Primary.
Whatever they do as project of social relevance needs to be put into the
repository. Once a project is done & implemented in one place, others can
enhance it by making changes or implementing the same way in other parts.
Remember to make the projects more interactive rather putting 100/1000's of
text. This can also help create programs that are cross cultural, cross geographical
rather than limited to a small place. District authorities can be provided a
link to such projects to see if they can also benefit from some good ideas.
5- Online Blogging & Chat facility would not just help
the students work more speedily on research ideas but also the ideation would
take the minutest of time to spread across miles. This will help students
engage lot more than what they today. Getting an able administrator to create
statistical analysis could also help government find what the areas of maximum
interest are for students, what areas are they really finding difficult to get
the right help & like wise. This can help the government focus on the needs
in a more relevant way.
6- Creating a group of schools on Mentor --> Mentee
relationship will always help drive towards achieving the results much faster.
There needs to be an autonomous body to see thru the success of such programs.
Virtual tours are a very important facet of projecting yourself.
Schools/Colleges/Universities can do this in a more effective way to create
their own programs & making a virtual world full of knowledge.
Professionals like Abhayanand, Anand Kumar & many
learned academicians today relentlessly help few thousands students thru their
Super 30 & other programs but with the above structure, they may be able to
help lacs of them. Dependency upon high fee based Private tuition may disappear
over the next 4-5 years, if not immediately. I would be more than happy to
volunteer for such project with support from like-minded people across Bihar
residing in various parts of Bihar, India & the World, provided the
government shows its inclination. It's the youth that will change the Society
of tomorrow. If it be for good, will only be decided by what kind of education
one gets today, to make a better tomorrow.
Jai Ho
