PM eVidya Programme for Digital Education in India

In order to promote digital education in the country and make e- learning feasible for students and teachers, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday launched PM eVidya programme. With this scheme, students and teachers will get multimode access to digital education. Over 100 universities will be permitted to start courses by May 30.

What is PM eVidya Programme: 

A programme for multimode access to digital/ online education that will consist of:

Top 100 universities will be permitted to automatically start online courses by May 30. This was announced in the union budget also.

“To provide enhanced learning opportunities to 3.7 crore students in higher education and expand e-learning by liberalizing open, distance, and online education regulatory framework, the top 100 universities will start online courses. Online components in conventional Universities and ODL programmes will also be raised from 20% to 40%,” the Union HRD minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank said in a tweet on Sunday.

DIKSHA that will give ‘one nation, one digital platform’ for school education in states and union territories: It will provide e- content and QR coded energised textbooks for all grades. This will benefit nearly 25 crore school going children across the country.

DIKSHA has content in 14 languages – Assamese, Bengali, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Chhattisgarhi.

Over the next three month a large number of high-quality e- resources for learning and teaching will be made available on DIKSHA through the recently launched VidyaDaan Program. VidyaDaan is conceptualised as a common national program for individuals & organizations across the country to donate/contribute e-learning resources for school education to ensure continuity of quality learning.

One earmarked TV channel for each class from standard 1 to 12 under ‘one class one channel programme’

There will be extensive use of radio, community radio and podcasts among students.The use of 289 Community Radio Stations will be attempted for school education.

Podcast called Shiksha Vani of CBSE disseminates audio content for various subjects of grades 9 to 12, in a timely, educative, lucid and seamless manner. CBSE-Shiksha Vani is available on Play Store for Android phone users. So far Shikshavani contains approximately 400 pieces of content in the form of audio files on topics in accordance with NCERT curriculum.

Special e-content for visually and hearing impaired students. “This is going to be one of the biggest steps forward and I personally feel very touched by this attempt of HRD ministry to provide equal access to good quality education to the Divyang students,” the finance minister said in a press conference.

Special e-content will be provided for visually and hearing impaired children. It is developed on Digitally Accessible Information System (DAISY) and in sign language on NIOS website/ YouTube, the HRD minister informed in a tweet.

For the Visually Impaired Learners

●Study material has been developed in Digitally Accessible Information System(DAISY), a technical standard for digital audiobooks, periodicals and computerized text.

●Learners can access all study material of NIOS through DAISY

●These lessons are broadcast on Gyanamrit, Channel 30 of Swayam Prabha

For the Hearing impaired learners

●Course content (Selected ones) of NIOS has also been recorded in sign language which is placed on NIOS website as well as on YouTube.

●The recorded content is sent to HI learners on DVD

IITPAL for IITJEE/NEET preparation.

SWAYAM PRABHA:

In order to support and reach out to those who do not have much access to the internet, MHRD introduced SWAYAM PRABHA DTH channels. SWAYAM PRABHA is a group of 32 channels devoted to telecast of high-quality educational programmes.

Four of these channels (27- Panini, 28-Sharda, 30- Gyanamrit and 32- Vagda) are already being used by NIOS and one channel (31- Kishore Manch) by NCERT to telecast school education related learning and teaching material. These channels can be accessed through DD, Dish TV and Jio TV app.

NIOS organises live interactive web-streaming of Personal Contact Programmes (PCPs) on various subjects of Secondary, Senior Secondary and Vocational courses for its enrolled learners through Mukta Vidya Vani (MVV). Radio Vahini also broadcast these PCPs to maximize its reach not only among the learners but to the masses in general.

Other Programmes:

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman also talked about various other programmes for boosting the education system in a press conference on Sunday.

1. Manordarpan: Finance minister also launched Manodarpan, an initiative for psychological support and counselling of students, teachers and families for mental health and emotional well-being.

2. New National Curriculum and Pedagogical framework for school, early childhood and teachers will also be launched. It will be integrated with global and 21st century skill requirements.

3. National Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Mission for ensuring that every child attains learning levels and outcomes in grade 5 by 2025 will be launched by December 2020.

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Source: HT

Image Courtesy: MommyPoppins

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