 Good evening, everybody is joining us live on this Facebook stream of our first segment of the equest, which is the case study presentations. It gives me a lot of happiness to welcome my students, of course, the teachers, the team of Skillshare and our very eminent judges. Without any further ado, let me just begin introducing the person behind the brain behind this entire concept of equest, Mr. Anansh Prasad. I really don't think there are many people in the alpha fraternity who would not know Anansh and his team at Skillshare. Anansh has been associated with this school for over seven years now and has been instrumental in a lot of programs for our young learners. Anansh is the founder and managing director at Skillshare Education. He is a golden medalist graduate from Mumbai University and then further went on to pursue his master's in economics at the Ivy League Cornell University USA. Thank God for his passion towards orienting young students in public speaking and communication skills that he found at Skillshare Education, which so many schools across the country are using the services of Anansh with his team of trainers has conceptualized various programs like EnlightenMUN, Emerges, Global Jigasa and Lead, which our students have been making most of among throughout so many years. So Anansh, thank you so much and your platform now. Thank you so much for the kindness, warmth, love, encouragement, motivation that we always get from the management at Elpro International School. And of course, most importantly, the students whose upliftment is our foremost objective, both at Elpro as well as Skillshare. And the equest is a very, very interesting event, which is going to give students another platform. There are many firsts that Elpro International School has been responsible for. We actually hosted the first intra school online quiz with Elpro in India. We also hosted the first intra and interest school MUN with Elpro International School. And this is probably the first literary event of its sort that is being organized by any school in India over two days. And I would like to congratulate the Elpro International School for taking up such an initiative and for giving Skillshare Education the opportunity to take it forward. Today, of course, is day one of the equest, which always talks about infinite possibilities. And today we are going to be talking about the infinite possibilities and education. Moreover, the infinite possibilities in online learning. So we're going to be talking about different issues or different problem scenarios associated with extending online learning to all sections of society and keeping problems associated with it. Three sets of students are going to be presenting very wonderful case studies to all of us. And I'm sure the question answer session post that is also going to add to a lot of the different pointers we'd like to talk about. Right. I would not like to take center stage, because it is not my stage to keep. It is a student stage and I'd really like to thank the judges, very, very eminent judges who have come in today. Mr. Vikram Deshmukh and Dr. Shilpa from Flock's Educon, wonderful educators, not only educators, wonderful members of the educational ecosystem in multiple ways. I'm sure Jens will be able to wax eloquent in much further detail. But more importantly, when we talk about the case studies today, the reason due to which these eminent judges are probably the most fitting for this purpose is that they understand that society are associated with taking education to rural sectors and to all sectors of society and have been very heavily working on this along with governments and other stakeholders in society. So thank you so much Vikram Sir, Shilpa Ma'am for having joined us. I think it is a wonderful opportunity for the students to learn from you. And I hope you ask students questions that they honestly deserve to answer. Okay, it's one thing to come up with a presentation students. It's one, another thing altogether to be able to justify our points. Okay, what we want you to do students is of course this is for everybody who's joining us on Facebook. We would actually like to start off a discussion. You would like to start off, you know, discussions on multiple perspectives and more importantly students, we would like you to realize that it's a very important point. But what's a lot more difficult at times is to be able to implement it. Okay, so we want you to think about the implementation the objective is not simply all of you speaking today. Yeah. So I hope you'll make the most of this opportunity I know all of you for a lot of time now wonderful students in finite possibilities for all of you. And I hope you're able to converge together and this wonderful occasion to give us an enlightening experience. And without much ado, I would like to introduce Jain Rajan, the manager for schools at skillsphere education. So Ganda Ma'am of course said it's my event, but it's actually Jain's event. Jain also manages all our schools in Pune, especially Elpro International School which is one of our most important schools in India we're a part of the family. So I would like you to take this forward. And I would like you to ensure that the students show their thunder, and they show their charisma to this wonderful audience that joining us on Facebook today. So thank you so much audience for joining us. And I'm sure it's going to be a great experience. Thanks for that. The ever modest challenge. This is obviously is the brainstorming of it right now going on to our judges to give you a little bit more information regarding our judges. Dr. Shilpa here is the founder and director and chairperson of Team Flock's eduCon Private Limited. It's based out of Pune. She's a dentist by qualification or yoga trainer and a trained Bharatanathian Dancer that's a lot of things back in one person who strongly believes that we evolve and our passions do too. Is passionate about every aspect of school education from administration and legal framework to mentoring teachers and students. She loves to write and has to her credit a few poems, street plays and skits and stories. She's an educator who believes that learning is a lifelong process. I'm sure a lot of us agree with what she feels. Going on to the other judge here with us. Mr. Vikram B. Deshmukh. He's an associate edulegal director. Team Flock said you can private limited. Mr. Vikram has diverse experience of working in sectors like land acquisition, SE, special economic zones, franchising, preschools and schools. Mr. Vikram has good knowledge of legal framework of school education system in India. He has research paper to his credit about comparative analysis of free regulation acts in six different states. He was associated with many schools across Maharashtra as strategic partner in solving various issues regarding the right to education act. Mr. Vikram pursued his graduation and economics from Ferguson College in Pune and completed his degree in law from Sambios' Law College Pune, one of the renowned law schools across India. Once again, yes. The idea or the beginning of Flock's Edicon is founded by educational professionals with aim to provide value added services to educational institutes. We offer school project feasibility, report guidance about formation of school edulegal consultancy, affiliation know-how, designing free structure, in-service teacher training, strategic planning for marketing and promotions. Team Flock's Edicon also provides standalone services like obtaining state permission, recognition, NOCs, guidance about CBC, ICAC, IDCAC, IB affiliation, fee fixation. Team Flock's Edicon Private Limited also works with schools as an edulegal consultant on retainership arrangement. They are now operating in three states, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana with around 120 schools for different assignments. They have comprehensive range of services covering the entire spectrum of teacher learning process. They have played a key role in various high court cases related to the RTE and the Free Regulation Act which resulted in landmark judgments. In favour of school management, they are very passionate about creating awareness and building capacity for all stakeholders involved. Their vision or their aim is to be the best consultancy provider of legal and academic services for educators throughout continuous upgradation of technology, bringing best practices under one roof and spreading knowledge through education and training. Their mission is to provide comprehensive range of services of highest standards under one roof again, covering the entire spectrum of teacher learning process through educational institutes across the globe. Not only India, it begins here by dedicated team of highly competent, skilled and committed professionals, maintaining the highest level of ethical approach in a student-centric environment. So, that is information regarding FLOX-Edward Private Limited and our judges present today here, Dr. Shilpa and Mr. Vikram B. Deshmukh. Moving on to the actual event, the first part of E-Quest as Mr. Anant already informed everybody here, it's a two-day event. We begin with the case studies and these case studies are analysing and they are actually talking about something very essential, something that is very topical. Going on in everybody's life, online education and offline education, of course, they are not one without the other. During the lockdown, we are obviously at home and there have been state government rulings which have stipulated that online classes and schools can begin in some cases and in some other cases, they may not or they need to be paused or they have to be only for so-and-so, so much time. All of that is great, students still have to study, education still has to continue, learning still has to continue. So, to better analyse this, to better make us understand how this is affecting people across different demographics in our nation, we are actually hosting this case study presentation. The first case study group that we have with us, it will be done by Khushagran Aram, Eshita Singh and Riya Jagi. They are students from grades 11 and 12 of Elpro International School. Their topic is going to be measures to ensure better data connectivity for students in remote areas of India to ensure technology-driven remote education. I hope this is clear. We are not speaking only about making sure that people get books and people get uniforms and etc. This is more about bringing education online so that it could be accessible for everyone everywhere across the country. So, I think I hand it over to you students, Khushagran, Eshita and Riya, I am sure you are going to wow us with your presentation. You may begin. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much, sir. So sorry, just one point. All the audience and everybody else watching this currently, your questions can keep coming in on the Facebook page where this event is live. And the rest of us were on this meeting. Please do not raise any questions until and unless they are done with their presentation. You, I am sure you already understand you have a time limit on it. So yes, please start. Good evening to one and all present here. Today, the topic for our case study presentation is measures to ensure better data connectivity for students in remote areas of India to ensure technology-driven remote education. My team members here are Khushagran Aram and Riya Jagi. Now, I would request Riya to take over. Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one learned in school. This rather famous saying by Albert Einstein perfectly reflects the fact that effective education is indeed constant and always evolving. In fact, the face of education has seen many changes over the decades. Once distinguished by the traditional classroom model, today education has metamorphosed into learning that is prompt, online, self-driven and flexible. The journey of education in India has been dotted with innumerable milestones. Most recently, technology-enabled learning. There are several challenges that are faced by students and children alike, including archaic, that is old-fashioned teaching methods, shortage of qualified teachers, highly disproportionate teacher-to-student ratio and inadequate teaching materials that affects the quality of education. The basic ground realities pose as a barrier in the way of complete digitalization of education. Poor infrastructure, lack of digital facilities, lack of electricity, etc. still need to be addressed in remote village areas for a convenient access of quality education to students. Though the government has taken several initiatives in order to elevate the level of education via technology, especially in rural areas, there is still a long way to go. Service providers cannot afford to wire rural areas because of a large proportion of low-income families. Wiring rural areas is very expensive and very few households can actually bear and support the cost. It is uneasy to see so many young generations with seemingly no hope to get an education in technology which would help them to rise above the barrier that poverty brings with it. The problem with solutions offered by developmental agencies is that they are not customized to the local needs. They more than often just blame the rural people for being resistant to change and for not accepting the offered solutions. Another thing that I would like to bring to your notice here is that a study was done that showed that students who have proper internet access and broadband access at home achieve higher rates of graduation and much better job opportunities than those who do not. High-speed internet access is also strongly associated with greater economic development for communication. So I would like to start my presentation by explaining how online classes came under the action and how it became so popular. During the COVID-19 outbreak, it was necessary to maintain the rules of social distancing. Schools and colleges were shut down and online classes were introduced due to which everything had to go over the internet. With the government trying all options for education from online to television classes through community radio, online education has not got the desired response due to over internet connectivity in remote and rural areas of the state. Many times, students had to go trek for a few kilometers in certain areas to get a proper signal so that they could attend classes or submit their assignments. The students who had connectivity to the internet were able to attend these classes, lectures, but the students without any connections to the internet are not able to attend any classes. If you ask us, how can we expect Wi-Fi connectivity in those areas who don't even have electricity throughout the day? So these students are suffering severely, but is it only the students that are suffering? No, the teachers from these areas, the remote areas and the rural areas are also suffering and are going through a lot. No connectivity to a broadband again leads to teachers not able to take online lectures. Also, when the whole world is going through an economic breakdown, these teachers are too suffering a lot. They are suffering financially because they are not able to make enough money again because of no connectivity to the internet. As my partner rightly mentioned that the quality of education depends on proper infrastructure, sanitation, hygiene and many more such things. But when it comes to attending an online class, it only depends on proper connectivity to the internet and appropriate devices. These students are lagging behind, which widens the gap between the people who have wealth and people who do not have enough resources. Thus, they don't get proper education and this might lead to lack of job opportunities in future. This technological divide marginalizes developing countries and makes it hard for them to meet their technology needs. It is not just in rural but children attending public schools are less likely to have access to computers, the internet or high quality educational programs. The rural and urban divide is very depressing. Moreover, even within the urban area setting are the wide disparities in access. Yeah, is home to the largest population of children in the world with an estimated 43 crore children in the age group of 0 to 18 years in the country. These children are the future of our nation and therefore it is imperative that they are provided with necessary means to realize their potential. A modernized education system can channelize efforts in this direction. Also, adding to the new needs of the education system comes the technological advances which need to be most urgently taken care of. There are a few things the government can do to help the students of these remote areas to access the internet easily, which would help them in studying in a more technologically driven environment. Firstly, more and more tasks should be set up so that data connectivity improves and students who have electronic gadgets available with them can have access to better internet such that data connection does not become a major concern for students in the remote areas of the country. Education can be digitized in remote areas by providing multimedia teaching tools to teachers and engaging students through learning methods that utilize digital tools such as smartboards, LCD screens, videos, etc. To teach them different concepts, even if it is offline and by making it possible for one teacher to deliver information remotely across several locations. In the union budget for 2018-19, the government's focus has been towards improving the quality of education by integrating technology. It has allocated Rs. 456 crore for digital education. The emphasis on the need to graduate from blackboards to digital boards signifies the role that technology must play in improving the quality of education. The role of NGOs in spreading digital education tools across Indian villages is also noteworthy. So this budget could also be used in providing the students of these remote areas, better data connections and finding out more ways and methods in which teaching could be done offline too. Another way is to share one electronic device among many people. Since many electronic devices stay connected in a region, it consumes much of the data of that place. The less number of electronic devices connected in a place, the better the data connectivity would be. Some students of a common locality could sit together at one place and one device could be connected rather than many. In places where internet connectivity is sporadic, unreliable or intermittent, innovative approaches to caching and distributing digital content can enable offline access to vast numbers of online resources in ways that can simulate online environments. The emergence of low-cost e-readers is enabling groups to distribute vast amounts of information in digital formats to students who read them on small, purpose-built reading devices. Google has recently released a blog on how students can continue using Chromebooks and G Suite for education, even if they don't have the internet. IT teams can set up offline access on devices for everyone, but they would need online access to go through the process. Now, while doing the research for this case study, we came up with a new idea, which would cater to two needs at a time. First, being reducing the usage of paper sheets during examinations and second, offline learning. As we know, many important exams in India, like the civil services, IIT, JEE, etc., are multiple-choice-based questions and answers. This means that OMR sheets would be used for these exams. If we give tabs to all the students in the exam hall and take it back as soon as the exam is over, we would reduce the usage and wastage of paper drastically. All the questions and answers would be in the tab and these tests would be conducted offline, so as to make it easier for students in the remote areas to take these tests. Also, these will not just focus on private schools, but government schools too, giving them equal opportunities to get digitized. Once the test is over, it would get automatically submitted to the serve. Development and evolution of any society depends on its availability and access to information and the same is applicable to the remote areas of India too. Online education can work wonders in this direction and help the socially marginalized community to attain their entitlements, giving a strong and equipped basic grounds, infrastructure and digitalized tools. My group and I would like to conclude our presentation here. Thank you. I hope you liked it. Thank you so much. Kushagra, Rishita and Riya, that was very well delivered. The eloquence overall was very, very good. The flow was very good. Now we go on to questions. Our judges will be looking at questions from you first if we can begin with you. Yes. When we are looking at the interior part, what is their conception of the interior part? Which part exactly they are considering as the interior part of India? The interior part basically includes those people who don't have access to the rural areas mostly and the areas in the cities or outside states who don't have access to such facilities, internet connections, towers, all these things. Was that answer specific enough for you? I want to specify with an example that sharing this particular village, that area, how they will turn. Otherwise, it is even considered in the presentation that an area which is not having a connectivity is considered as the interior part. I just want to know if it is specific area or they are aware about these are the parts in Pune district, these are the parts of Maharashtra or these are the parts of India wherein there is an issue of connectivity. Sir, we are not aware about a specific state like Maharashtra or Pune but we know certain areas like the hilly terrain, in the north-eastern sides, those areas or Himachal Pradesh that we take or the mountainous regions of India, those places don't have internet connectivity so over there we mainly need to focus and work upon it. They don't have exposure. We have to please request you to stop your screen share. Exposure to? Exposure to connectivity, exposure and internet and therefore they are lagging behind so we have to work on it. Any of the members, have you ever been in last 4-5-6 years to any government school from Pune PCMC? Just to see, observe? No, sir. Maybe. Okay, one of them says maybe so I am not so sure sir, do we have to define a government school for you who said maybe? If you like Mr. Vikram, you can go ahead and do that. You can define what parameters qualify it as a government school but I think the answer typically is no over there with regards to them actually visiting a school like that. Yes, follow up question? So specifically when we look at the majors, so for the case study what was the sample size or what was the source through which you collected all those data and how you authenticated the source of information? Authenticated as in the sources we have taken everything from the internet only. So yeah, we have taken everything from the internet, not specific sources. Yeah, the main source was Google and we see people every day around us, the children, the people from rural areas. I have my maid son, he's not able to attend any online lectures. So we can talk to them to like what are you suffering from? What are you going through? And these are topics which are basically of common interest. Like we hear about these topics every day in normal discussions also when we deal with parents, friends, family relatives. So from there also like we could learn about a lot of things. Okay, moving on to the next question. So basically the solutions that they presented or the facts that they presented were more or less from sources, not exactly vetted through government sources or specific sources, fair enough. But I think that is something that they do need to keep in mind for the future presentations of this kind or any kind for that matter. Anyone any other questions? Yeah. As a community member, I want to do some contribution in making that digital infrastructure available to rural students. What can I do as a normal common community member, as a normal common society member, not as in a government agency, not as an NGO. If as an individual, I want to contribute something, what can I do? I mean, what any one of you will do for that? Anyone of us, like if we have money, that is so we can just buy little digital devices and give it to them. That is like the easiest thing. But since that is not possible for everybody, if we have money, then we'll do something for ourselves rather than buying or doing something for others. But also if this COVID period is over, then we can go to them and then we can teach them at least the basics of everything. People from 11th and 12th standard, we can't go and teach them, but at least the small children, the basic things up to a 7th standard. If we look at them, we are financially, if we look at us right now, we are financially a little more stable compared to people we are talking about right now. So I think from our side, we can make small contributions just like to organizations, to NGOs, whoever works for that. And I mean, it's a small step, but I think it adds up. One more thing which we can do as people is pressurizing the government agencies. We can just say that 456 crore rupees is given for digital education. But is that really being used up right now? Is the government actually using it for the people and giving, allocating that much? So as a community, as a group, if we sign up some petition or we go to the government offices and pressurize them for putting that actual money or showing the results. Because we have right to information, right? So using that and actually getting all the results and getting it done in front of you, we can also do that if you're responsible citizens. A suggestion from my end, as an individual, if you want to contribute, knowing that you don't earn, so you'll be spending money from your parents. So it is dependent on someone else. But as a part of a community, if you can take a drive of any equipment which is lying idle at your place. So maybe we are switching over to the upgraded cell phones and we might have an Android which is lying on. So which is unutilized. So even if you work out on that. Small donation drive. Small donation drive. Unused equipment which is lying at families like us. So that can be what I was expecting actually. It is not always about money. It is about how it is always about a willingness. So it is not about capabilities also. So there are a lot of people who we might think are capable enough but are not willing enough. And if you are, I think Anish always will talk about it if there is a will, there is a way. So in a similar manner, everyone can contribute but we should be willing to do it. And it was a good presentation from all of you. It was a good thing to listen to it and understand what is the level of exposure which you have for that type of area. And considering COVID-19 situation, it's uncertain times. All of us are going through lots of pressure. The future is at the moment. At the moment we don't know what is going to happen with our schools, colleges and academic schedules. In spite of that, you people have poked up with this digital way of learning. And apart from that, you are participating in a competition, taking extra effort, collecting data, analyzing it at your end. It's really commendable. I congratulate all of you for that. And we are really happy to see the way you presented everything, the way you have made your PPTs. And also, Alek Jayan, you must, I mean, I must congratulate you also for making all these people to go through this process and equipping them to make such a good presentation with proper professional help. And thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, ma'am, for your kind words. Thank you Dr. Shilpa and Vikram for that. Yes, I think the last session given by Mr. Vikram was actually very intuitive. Something that can be done doesn't require, need too much effort. But it's a very, it's a small gesture, goes a long way, of course. And yes, very well done. Group 1, you were very good, very methodical. Yes. Sir, I would like to say that it was a pleasure to have knowledge. We got to know many things. Right. So I have a question before we go on to the next theme. One of the things that you two spoke about during giving examples to the judges was speaking about Northeastern region or mountainous region. We don't really need to go that far, but even if we take that as your example or that as your case. So have you thought of the logistics problem that exists? And have you thought of a way around the logistic problem that exists? When we are trying to overcome this issue of providing digital education to those areas as well. It's unavailable. So did you consider the logistic problem and then steps to overcome it? Is that something that you looked at as a team? Sir, I didn't get your question. I could not understand. Could you be more specific? Yes, of course. The question is, you said, okay, let's say Uttarakhand. Some very, very far off area of Uttarakhand where we are certain that connectivity doesn't really exist. There is no data connectivity. So now that we know it doesn't exist, data connectivity is lacking over there. And we know that it is a very Northeastern region of the country where it's quite difficult to reach when it comes to infrastructure to develop data connectivity over there. So we know this. So did you consider the logistic problems that people encounter or companies encounter or governments encounter and means and ways around this logistic problem to deliver data connectivity? How would you do that? Yes, sir. The problem is very simple. And like the problem everybody knows about it, internet connection, because there are such reasons and the regions, they are those places. It is very, very difficult for doing it. So like as we can see again, I'm talking about the budget which has been allocated to the government. If the private sector over here, the private companies, like we have many private companies, if they try to step into this and they step into this and they help people to making towers and all these things, because we can clearly see that development mostly happens if you want it fast. It happens through these private sectors only, not the public sectors. So if the special economic zones, we have many special economic zones in Uttarakhand also, I guess. So over there also if these private sectors try to step in and help a little, so it would be really beneficial. Okay, great. While that answer is all right, I would request all of you to when you do this next time, maybe since some other event in some other forum, I would request you to use less ifs and a little bit be more sure about what you're saying. So that means that you just need to go back to the drawing board and research a little bit more. Fine. Moving on to the next team now, thank you so much for patiently taking that question as well. Thank you so much. Team number two, this will be presented by Dya Jindal, Nandika Agarwal and Kanak Patwari. The topic for their case study is integrating online and offline learning post the lockdown. So now we are going, we are doing a little bit of a fast forward where we know what is happening and we are looking at it six, seven, eight, maybe one year also or maybe more than that. So we're looking beyond this timeline and we are looking at integrating both these facets of learning and education and how can it actually work? How can it actually materialize? That is what the second case study is going to address. So let's have you on screen, Dya Jindal, Nandika and Agarwal. You guys here? I hope you're all ready? Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Okay. Wonderful. So I think we can begin. Let's begin. Yes, I'll just share my picture. Sure. Please share your screen and let's start. The same rules apply or the same standards apply. Let's wait till the case study is done before we ask for questions. Good evening, everyone. Today we are going to present our case study on the topic integrating online and offline learning post-lockdown. The COVID-19 has resulted in schools shut all across the world. Globally, over 1.38 billion children are out of the classroom. As a result, education has changed dramatically with the distinctive rise of e-learning whereby teaching is undertaken remotely and on digital platforms. The face-to-face education has experienced a remarkable change in the last 10 years. Although face-to-face education is still considered the norm, but acceptance of online courses is increasing in the field of management and engineering. Some of the reasons for the exponential growth of online education is that it is an instant online, anywhere accessible, self-driven, and on the go. The government of India is supporting online education to improve education quality and reach through the Digital India Initiative and launch program like SWAYAM that is study webs of active learning for young aspiring minds. Top management institutes of India like IAM already has started using integrated approach for teaching the executive program courses. This transition from offline to online learning has achieved many benefits which may help in future education. However, both of them have their own problems that can be resolved by integrating them. In sufficient digital infrastructure, most schools have adopted measures to conduct online classes, but neither the students nor the teachers are sufficiently equipped for online learning today. Although government of India is taking initiative to develop digital infrastructure, but law needs to be done in this direction. High-speed internet and stable power supply are the biggest problem. India stands 89th worldwide on internet speed and stability. According to the report of the World Economic Forum, only 55% of the households have access to the internet and mobile broadband remains accessible to very few. After normal schooling is resumed, the students in areas with lack of infrastructure and remote areas that are not able to attend online classes will have to cover a lot of portion in a short period of time, thus eliminating the whole advantage of online learning. Limited interaction. Since online education can be accessed at home or any other convenient place, there's very limited direct interaction with the teacher and other people doing the course. Online classes have led to huge variation in quality of learning. According to our research, especially those courses which are self-paced, there's very less discussion among the peers. Most of the discussion takes place through email, chat room or discussion group. There isn't any campus atmosphere to improve social interaction, so you're not able to develop any social links which do help in career growth. Non-availability of qualified teachers. Return to offline is a necessity, but there's a problem of non-availability of adequately qualified teachers and experts at every location and scheduling seamless lectures with them. Dealing with change. The current time is of frequent change and it's difficult to adapt to latest changes in offline method of delivery. It can be adapted easily through online methods of teaching. Students' holistic development. Social, emotional, holistic development, physical development of children, social attributes, culture, camaraderie and basic human values of living together as a society cannot be developed through online education. And last, language of the course. India is a multi-linguistic country and a vast majority of the population comes from rural area. The content offered by most of the online courses is in English. Hence, those students who are not able to speak English struggle with the availability of the language. Now coming on to the need for indication. In today's digital world, education has become seamless, affordable, inflexible, chance to digital learning methods. But conducting offline classes have become a problem due to the pandemic. Many schools have large class strengths that can pose a risk to their health. Apart from that, offline classes are of limited nature. It is limited to the knowledge of the provider and physical environment around the child. They get homework in the school premises and playing, writing, learning happens only during those six hours. But integration will help us go way beyond that. If a child didn't understand a topic in class, he can make use of YouTube or other online platform to clear his or her doubts in a better way. The Open University in Britain has found out that the online courses equate to an average of 90% less energy and 85% fewer carbon dioxide emissions for students than offline courses. But conducting only online classes is not feasible. Increased screen time and less physical activity can be detrimental to the health of a new generation. Gadgets might also become a source of distraction for the students. We need healthy and productive youth to boost the development of our country. These days, companies no longer require academically excellent manpower. They look for skills like cooperation, people management, teamwork, communication skills, etc. which can only be developed through physical interactions with people in an offline system of education. In a physical class, they get a feeling of competitiveness that help them cope better with the stress of entrance exams. It becomes easier to ensure if students are paying attention in class. Now, let's see what will be the effects of the integration. Online will not be the default mode of education, but it will become an important integral component of learning. It will become a major tool to maintain social distancing without compromising the education of children. Through integration, some portion can be covered online and some can be covered offline while ensuring that class strength is less in offline mode in case COVID-19 is not completely eradicated. This can create an affordable and flexible model of education Besides continuous digital monitoring, multi-dimensional and multi-modal learning is possible, which can be seamless across devices and independent of the time of the team. Instead of seeing offline and online learning as to separate modes of learning, the world post lockdown can experience an amalgamation of both of them creating seamless opportunities for children to learn and develop. My fellow presenters very well explained the advantages and necessity of the blended online and offline education in today's new normal. Also, they have shared the reasons of why a complete integration of online and offline education has not yet been successfully carried out by a majority of schools across the globe. So now, we can brainstorm the solutions for this seemingly impossible integration. The first step is to create and spread awareness for bringing a change to the rigid education system like ours. A suggestion would be that workshops are held in various cities to ensure that schools are first introduced to this new concept. There are many people who are very skeptical of the present technological developments and many of them would not welcome online education with open arms. Sample classes should be taken in these workshops to give an idea to the children of what it would be to study in such a class as teachers to be able to understand their role in such a learning environment. Most importantly, input has to be taken from both the teachers and the students to understand what kind of issues they are facing in the current system and what adjustments would suit them best. It's high time that a student friendly education system was to be developed by taking their feedback into consideration. In many private schools, equality and equity for all organizations or society is not there. Many students do not have the same Wi-Fi availability as others and lack access to good internet. To ensure equal opportunities for all, the central and state governments must invest in uninterrupted free broadband and free access to the collaboration apps like Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Google platforms which will lessen the financial constraints for those who cannot afford a quality online education. Will the free Wi-Fi and free app solve the problem of financial constraint of underprivileged kids? No. The biggest financial bottleneck for the online education is the availability of the devices itself. Not everyone can afford even the basic devices required for online education. Solution is again to some additional investments from the government itself. An example of an already tried and tested intervention is a mini personal computer called Gamma Tutor which has been developed in South Africa. This is an offline device pre-loaded with interactive learning material. These resources have been specifically designed for South African school conditions and could be altered to suit the conditions in other countries as well. The Gamma Tutor software package is a learner support resource for after-school hours. It will fit in the palm of a hand and will require no data and can be navigated by the click of a mouse. It's small size will make the device easy to keep and safe to take wherever it's needed. It's well known that major educational challenges exist in schools as a result of a country's multi-language society particularly in the teaching and learning of mathematics. The applications of Gamma Tutor will offer mathematics concept explanations in eight indigenous languages and more languages could be added to ensure that every child is provided education via their preferred medium. The device will cover the full curriculum for high school maths and physical sciences presented in video, PDF or animated PowerPoint format along with glossaries, exam revision support, translation from English into indigenous languages and many additional teaching support materials and can be used for interactive teaching online and remotely. Another issue is teachers not being sufficiently equipped for online teaching. Schools should onward competent content writers for developing validating and uploading high quality 20 to 30 minute micro lessons on the school curriculum as well as best practices of online teaching. Then the micro lessons should be made available to all frontline teachers to bring effectiveness in the whole integrated education system. Finally, I think as we have all grasped the fact that flipped learning is very much possible with teaching methodology that makes a student protagonist in his own learning promoting an active investigative and collaborative learning. In flipped learning what will happen is that a student will learn via technology the subject or the chapter from home and come and once they arrive at school they will be involved in an active discussion where they will become an active participant in the classroom. So let us all work towards making it a reality which is surely going to be the future of education soon. With that I conclude my presentation. Thank you. Thank you team number two for that very enlightening and illuminating case study. You did cover a lot of aspects with regards to the online and the offline platform which is there and if we have to actually integrate it how do we actually go about doing it. A lot of it was covered and it was delivered very nicely again very still very poised enjoyed that. Let's go back to the judges any questions. I hope there are questions. I'm sure there are questions. So as far as this particular topic is concerned all of you are objects of this case study because you were experiencing the classroom learning and now suddenly after COVID-19 pandemic situation you are suddenly switched over to online learning. So what are your personal experiences about this online learning process? What kind of problems you as an individual are facing in this system of learning? We just want to listen from you. That's great. Any of you can start out and then the others can also join in. So basically online learning is not basically that interactive as offline learning. One major drawback that I personally felt was that if we didn't understand a particular topic sometimes a child takes time to grasp the things that is going on on the screen but the teacher might not even realize that when they physically present the child feels more confident to ask questions but in an online mode they just don't get the feel for that. So that can be a major drawback. Apart from that the teacher might not even realize if the students are paying attention or not the child the children have turned off their cameras and many children don't even reply to the calls of teacher. So that becomes a problem that whether the teaching is effective or not whether the child is learning or not. And if we have further doubts in offline classes after the class ends we can approach the teacher in the lunch break or during any free period to clear our doubts but that is not very feasible in online classes. Okay. Thank you Khanna. Do the other teammates also want to add something on to that? It's just that also there is the problem of wifi connection and sometimes in many societies there's power cutoff. So there's the problem that you can attend the classes but yeah it again has an advantage that you can see the recorded lessons lectures again which you can't do in the offline one. So if the child feels a little less confident on a chapter you can go over the lessons again to ask the teacher but yeah wifi connection is a major problem over there. Right. So then that basically ties in with the first topic that we had where how do we get better data connectivity right. So they're all linked of course. So you can't solve one without solving the other. Right. Yeah the third teammate as well. Would you like to add something to it? Yes. Yes. Thank you sir. What I personally feel that one of the major disadvantages of this online education has been that I am not able to convey how I truly feel to the teacher. It feels as if there's a gap in between and I'm just talking to a screen and it does not feel as if the teacher is physically present. So if I have a doubt and the teacher has already moved on to the next slide in front of so many I know that there's other people on the call I am not able to build up the confidence to inform the teacher that I have not understood this concept. Can you please go back to the previous slide. It becomes more of a challenge online and if it was an off if it was an off end thing then the teacher would have been right in front of my eyes. She could have possibly seen that I had not understood the concept and she would have taken a minute or so for to let us grasp it. That's right. Okay. Thank you. Yes sir. Yes ma'am. Yes sir. So the way she said sometimes kids are not attentive and teachers are not able to monitor it or make it out from such a disadvantages because the mode of learning is online. So can you suggest few solutions which we can incorporate as a schools educators wherein we can also monitor our kids while conducting online classes. Do you as a team have any innovative suggestions or solutions for that? Very good question. We can make it short that the videos of the students are kept on and if they don't turn on their videos then they won't be marked as present. So they lose on attendance in that manner. At a small level that can be done. Yes. As a consequence I think most students wouldn't really say that's a lot that they're losing but that is something surely. Is there something else that one of you would like to add to that answer? In fact I'd like to also ask you something. You talked about some of the cons of online education in general. You talked about the issues associated with a tentivity of students. You talked about the overall supervision of learning that teachers might not be able to do adequately. You also talked about data and connectivity issues associated with it. There are these cons associated with online education which definitely exists. There's no doubt about it. There are ways that are definitely a lot of workarounds which teachers have worked on and everybody has evolved along with COVID-19 as virus loses its zing. Online learning is gaining zing as we are getting more and more mature in this era. So that is really what is happening right now. So in fact you all yourselves, a lot of students yourselves have actually suggested a lot of changes which I believe are getting incorporated to make learning more fulfilling. My question is what about the pros? There are pros also of online learning. I would just like to know since we're talking about the cons. Let's talk about the pros. What are the pros? One of it can be that while you're offline like now CBSE has changed the syllabus it has actually cut the syllabus more and it has introduced more syllabus. So when the teachers are online they can actually provide more worksheets for it and they can do work instantly and cooperate to that. But when you're offline you actually take days to do that plus the textbooks like the textbooks which are government based they do not change at least for a year. But teachers themselves can do it through online method. Fair enough. Yes what I believe one of the major advantages has been that we have got an experience of what an online education would look like with the modern world and technology developing at a very fast pace this was very important and I think this has been one of the major advantage. Coronavirus has actually been a bone to us in a way that we've finally realized the need that at any possible time there might be an emergency where we have to shift to it. So we have to look into solutions for that now. It's really speeded up the process and the thing with online education is that teachers can monitor our progress much more easily and data tracking and those things become much easier and their creativity presentations are much better developed and they can explain via that videos. There's a lot of new concepts that are able that they're able to explore and artificial experiments are being conducted by our teachers that are that simulations that they are using to make us that make sure that we are understanding while sitting at home. Fair enough. Thank you so much Jen please go on. Thank you for a very detailed answer I think from both of you. Any for the comments or questions from the judges or anyone else? We have been discussing since long about this online learning that the elements which are missing in this part of learning are like we are missing on a collaboration. There is no team building activities happening. There is no teamwork which is happening but through this case study presentation I can say it's an excellent showcase of the teamwork and collaboration. So I really wonder how we have incorporated maybe knowingly or unknowingly this part of teamwork and collaboration in this online studies. I think we as a team should analyze how these kids have worked together staying at their homes and created presentations and have coordinated everything so well. So they must have put lots of efforts. We all need to analyze what exact efforts we need to decode that process how it happened so that it can become a part of online learning. So thank you so much for an excellent a showcase of excellent teamwork and collaboration through this online platform too. Thank you. Thank you ma'am. Thank you so much Sherpa ma'am and thank you so much team number two for presenting that case study very very effectively and efficiently and also answering and having a discussion with the judges here honestly with those questions. So moving on to the last presentation that we have scheduled for today. The topic for the last one is a little bit more complicated because it looks at two things at the same time. So I just so that it's clear for everyone the topic is preventing sorry yeah preventing the educational divide between the rich and the poor during the lockdown. So this is quite complicated if you're looking at it you're also first of all trying to ensure that there is education provided to the rich and poor equally that's first and secondly you want to do that same thing during the lockdown I think the first step itself is quite difficult and then we try to add that with the second step which I'm sure it's quite difficult and I'm sure group number three has solutions and models and policies that could ensure that there could be less educational divide between the rich and the poor during the lockdown. So group number three is Srishti Sharma and Jennifer Ryan you may start sharing your screen yeah there you go yes please begin. Thank you sir Good evening everyone my partner Srishti Sharma and I Jennifer Jain are here before you to present the case study on the topic preventing an educational divide between the rich and the poor during the lockdown giving a special emphasis on the situation in India. The disparity due to one's economic status has been prevalent since time immemorial and as the entire world clenches to survive amidst a pandemic this disparity is even more evident. Concentrating on the educational aspect today we would like to present our case study to explain the magnitude of this problem our solutions and possible contributions to the same. Present before you is a brief roadmap that we made for ourselves to aid throughout this whole process of the case study we started with identifying the problem at hand collecting information pertaining to it analyzing the current scenario blueprint of the plan and finally finding a way to actually executing this plan. Giving a brief idea about what our PPT deals with here is a snapshot of a case study that summarizes the next eight slides. First we must realize that this COVID pandemic has affected an integral aspect and that is education hence a radical change in education propagation along with funds and policies to implement them and the vision of necessary resources are the need of the hour to continue in the lines of development and attain pre-prepared goals taking India into consideration maximum support must be from the state government. Reiterating what was said before we aim to give a student's perspective about the size of this issue especially since we are blessed to continue on the journey of education without much hindrance and aim to provide this same learning of relief and security that we are getting education to the ones deprived of it hence as they too are going to be the future of our country. The task of imparting education to the less privileged children is very challenging and presents several hurdles before us. In our presentation we have attempted to accommodate the surface as well as the underlying problems. The first and the foremost obstacle is the inability to purchase gadgets. A 2019 report by Hindustan Times reveals that in India 36% households are not equipped with the gadgets required for learning from home. Taking the issue of electricity though the urban lower class may have access to this basic resource there are still a lot of villages who lack continuous access to electricity and this being a major hindrance to the implementation of online learning. Unavailability of qualified teachers is another major problem. Even though the number of teachers admitted to schools has risen the competencies of the teaching staff are below par. According to the data of unified district information system for education 18% teachers in India in 2018-2019 had no professional qualification in teaching. Failure and proper implementation of existing schemes and policies has always been a problem that we face and hence is a constant aspect that may drag this initiative down. Hence even if we come up with state of the art technologies on near perfect policies not implementing them and thus affecting the ones in need is always going to slow down these initiatives. Most of the unprivileged people are not even acquainted with the various ways which can be utilized by them to continue learning even during lockdown. Having stated the problem, we students have devised certain probable solutions such as facilitating electricity supply, provision of digital appliances, fair implementation of the policies, access to quality education, channelizing platforms for nationwide interaction of students and proliferating events. Now we will take a closer look of each one of the proposed solutions. Facilitating electricity supply. When we talk about the rural poor, facilitating electricity is the founding step in imparting education during lockdown. Certain ways which we think can help in facilitating electricity supply are firstly, the power from depreciated plants and unutilized capacity can be provided at concessional rates to the distribution companies. Secondly, imposing stringent laws and financial penalization in case of poor quality supply. Then the use of non-conventional sources of energy that is solar energy, hydropower, etc. should also be taken into consideration. For example, the decentralized renewable energy system in the Dharnai village of Bihar, which is the first village in India to be fully powered by solar energy. We propose that similar systems can be implemented in other villages as well. We have also evaluated the existing schemes and believe that the cost for setting up renewable sources of energy can be funded by extending the integrated power development scheme to rural areas as well and also by using funds from the Pradhan Mantri, Ujjwal Yojna and the Sabhagi scheme. India has always considered education as an integral part of development and hence 99,311.52 crores has been assigned for education in the fiscal year 2021 and this is exactly the basis on where we plan to procure funds. A significant amount of this amount is kept for infrastructure, grounds, meals, stationery, staff members, etc. This money can be planned and now used to obtain devices like smartphones, televisions, cable connections or even help local cable operators for better accessibility for online classes. Provision of internet, this will also indirectly help in the digitization and smart village and smart city programs that are now prevalent in India. We also suggest a mode of community learning in areas where the virus isn't that prevalent or internet is an absolute problem and so are funds. A handful of children living in the same area assembling together to study this will not just help in better learning but also better understanding. We have also stated a few notable examples that are currently prevalent in our world like the MOBI station, a UNICEF initiative in Uganda, BRCK, a connectivity device in Kenya that helps better internet accessibility and well the Kerala TV education under the name First Well which is free on cable networks over the internet and has direct to home access. It may be difficult to implement the first two examples where we would like to shed light on the route taken by Kerala. Very well known for having a hundred person literacy rate in the state, we suggest other state governments to take a similar technique if not the same which can really help in curbing the educational divide between the poor and the rich. Online classes through television, smartphones and radios will completely eradicate the major problem of absenteeism among teachers and ensure more productivity. Online teaching also enables the higher authorities to keep a close watch on the teachers, their method of teaching and ensure that only competent and skilled teachers are given the responsibility to shape the future of millions. Fair and square implementation of the schemes, we all are very well acquainted with the fact that every year the union and the state governments come up with different schemes to aid the less privileged but the very long chain of executive increases the possibility of corruption and deceit. Reshaping the executive hierarchy for implementation of plans is an important suggestion which can be considered. According to us in villages the Gram Panchayat should be at the apex and the villagers at the heart of the executive. Similarly in urban areas the local administrator should be at the crest and be connected directly to the residents. This will help the government to understand the needs and actual requirements of the residents from the court. The government should also try to collaborate the work of local government along with efforts made by non-governmental and non-profit organizations like Maker Difference, Pratham, Akansha Foundation etc. As A4 mentioned, we students who are part of this presentation and many around us have access to resources and in this light are very privileged. Despite education being a need to aid a country's development we often blame the government for their inability to combat this problem. But personally my partner and I feel that we too must take part in this venture and hence we propose an idea. By using platforms of interaction between students like us to the ones in poorer households offer different backgrounds once the provision of devices and the problems related to online learning occur. This will help us to get a better view on their societal conditions and may even provide a new perspective for the ones on the other side of the call, get new information or vice versa for us. Awareness of these platforms and plans can be spread through by mouth, catchy advertisements, local announcements etc. to let them know the benefits of education and why we stress upon universal education. Significant Indian platforms can be like Se Namaste or Aaha Guru which are video calling and study websites respectively can be collaborated with as a stepping stone to online education for all. There are two sides to every coin and so we propose solutions as well. We have endeavored to critically analyse our solutions and thus we have come up with some of the possible drawbacks of our proposed solutions. These are resistance from the government, time constraint that is implementing the solutions within a short span of time, lack of support from common people, reach that is reaching out to people who are actually in need, funds arranging financial resources. As my partner stated the drawbacks we will now like to let you know of ways we thought to combat these drawbacks. First, resistance from the government. Excuse me, excuse me TMC please come in two minutes. By suggesting the integration of provision of education and digitisation into larger country developmental goals. To gain support of the common people we need to use various media such as television commercials, billboards etc to spread awareness about the importance of education to survive in this competitive world. Time constraint. To help curb this time constraint we propose a hierarchy model of personnel with according division of labour thus obtaining maximum productivity, ideal output and better time management. Reach, being well aware of the population of our country and the population targeted we propose a model to connect to the grass root level integrating the local government to help in the conduction of safe service. Keeping this keeping the pandemic in mind we also suggest NGOs and other people who wish to contribute who come in contact with them to get an idea of their needs. To get money for implementation of the plan we have already suggested a careful analysis of the available funds allocated for education especially concentrating on the funds for infrastructure and diverting them into the purchase of devices and other need for appliances. Funds from schemes like Baiti Bachao, Baiti Padhao can also be used to provide the necessary devices to the less privileged girl child. One futuristic idea that we have come up with is when the Dyson NEO census will be taken that is in 2021 to add a column on who and how people are getting access to education. This will also help in formulating future education related policies. These suggestions were propounded keeping in mind a larger concept. With the demographic dividend that India's comparatively young population will bring in a skilled and educated population will accelerate the overall development of the country and the base for this being universal access to education. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Number three for that very very good and very well explained to us both of you Srishti and Jennifer. Very clear it was the the solutioning that we did was extremely good. I think it was more robust when I compared some of the others but yeah that was very good. Let's go on to questions or comments from the viewers. Yes, Dr. Shilpa Wicham sir any questions or comments that you'd like to give? We begin with you and then I think there are other people who might want to get in there. As far as content and everything is concerned I think the way you said the overall presentation and the approach to the problem at hand was quite good. So at the same time it's a divide which is each and four be it a lockdown or a non-lockdown situation. One will have to work out on it and still the way there was a question which was asked by Shilpa for the first team in what way you think you can contribute to it. You are talking about government doing it, NGO doing it and so as an individual how you can contribute to it? Yes sir. Thank you for your question. So I think personally the first idea that struck in my mind when you asked him the same question is all of us also have household helps and all of them have their children. So maybe in that very basic level if you ask your own household help is your child getting education is the one is your neighbor's child getting education then you have an idea of all the people in that area. So that itself is quite a lot of contribution and again as NGOs and government organizations they will want to have a list of the people they will want to list of the people we need to help to give devices. So even if we help in making the list I think that's a very big step from our side sir. Okay. Thank you Jennifer for that answer. I hope it is acceptable as a start for the change in the beginning. Ma'am anything that you would like to add or anything that you would like to question? So I have one thing which I have in common for all three teams is how you selected the topics. May I answer? Yes. So we went through all three of the topics me and my partner and we thought since the current situation is the problem of education in lockdown because one of the topics is a futuristic idea and the other ones I think technologically based but we thought this one right now we do know the divide because there are a lot of news channels and you can see the problems like children are suiciding because they couldn't attend an online lecture. That's a major problem. So we thought if something if we research and we have a broader idea and we can pass this on which is why we thought this topic was apt to work on. Before you started researching on a topic of removing that or preventing the divide of reach and poor in a lockdown situation. So have you researched on what is the level of divide in non-lockdown situation? Yes sir because we all do know that there's always going to be a disparity. As I already mentioned there's always been economic disparity and I'm not I don't have the exact figures but we did realize that there was a very significant population not just in rural areas but also in urban areas where children even if they had a school they either wouldn't go for reasons like they had to work to provide for the family or even if they had schools they were willing they didn't have qualified teachers which again we addressed the problem or they had problems with other materials or equipments and books like one of our previous teams mentioned their presentation. So yes we do realize there was a disparity before lockdown too. Have you the same question which I asked for the first team have you ever been to any government school or an elite school? Yes sir I have been to one person. I think it is a new English medium school I'm not sure I think that was the name. There's a planetarium or something so I had gone there as a field trip I think but yes I did realize and I saw the school. Yes sir? Yes sir. So what is the difference between the school which or the type of school where you study and that type those schools? It's immense. I mean at a glance you will feel like you have the building they have huge grounds they have everything but once you enter you can see like maybe when it was built it was a very good establishment but now the walls are faded the walls are chipped the benches are all scraped off or the people have written on it the boards are not properly cleaned and even the charts are very there's no actual organization and you can see that it's not the same quality that we have like when I enter the school we have our teachers coming and once you come to a class we have huge benches a huge board we have the books we need I didn't even see lockers and maybe they were there at the back I just had a sneak peek so I think there was quite a lot of differences compared to our school. How you will define quality education? Because when we are talking about divide we are talking about divide on that front. Yes sir so here quality education according to me is at least the same education I mean the same level of content everything that we have like we know there is a divide with the different boards but then all of that like even if I'm a CBC student my friend is a ICC student we at least know there's some part of the content which is the same so maybe help you know integrate that same content and make sure like whatever they're learning maybe they have a different board I'm not exactly sure personally except I'm not sure what they are learning but maybe make sure at least the basic content that they are learning and we are learning is the same so we are at least in the same platform. When you said you are not sure about the content I will add on to it almost the content with the state board be it CBC ICC may not be the same but it is similar the way you said but the differentiator you talked about were different and I asked what is the difference between your school and their school is it only content which will define the quality of the education Not necessarily sir maybe the way it is explained to the student because one same content I would be able to grasp it someone else may not be able to so maybe like qualified teachers again as we mentioned there are a lot of teachers but as my partner mentioned not all of them at least even come to school they're just there just making sure that the person who delivers this content has the same knowledge I would like to add to this to my partner that teachers I'd say are like the most important aspect in teaching because it can be the case that the content we have is very good but if the person teaching us isn't qualified enough then no matter how much the what is the level of content the students won't be able to take it far and like at a personal level I'd say I'm a person who connects a lot with the teacher and I have experience that sometimes even in the textbook the content is not that much but the knowledge that my teacher has given me is something that's there with me to retain forever so teachers are like the important aspect and they are the ones that I think set the standards for the quality of education more than content or the infrastructure or anything Thank you Okay Jayan if you have anything Okay okay so that was wonderful that was actually provoking and there was a whole question back and forth that was very well done Vikram sir had a lot of good questions in the sense technical questions actually Jennifer well done I think you tried to feed them as much as possible as much as you have seen and observed wouldn't you to remember your visit to that particular school as well that really helped with the discussion going forward My question actually would be something along the lines that sir asked and again when you look at the educational divide how the rich and the poor as we accept this very thing is there so any thoughts on how we would actually overcome that forget the lockdown it's normal it's normal the lockdown is a very major problem but let's be on that Yes sir can I answer Yeah sure Yeah sir first of all again we know the government has assigned funds but we don't know if they are actually reaching the correct people correct time and if it's going for good use so maybe making the RTI the act more powerful maybe give it a little more you know a little more power so we actually get the answers and we see the same implementation and I think as one of the previous team said to keep forcing or telling the government that this is not happening Right so if I may interject over there so this point was brought out by I think team number one as well and this is to do with transparency how funds are being allocated and what sort of what is the accountability for it right so this is that fair enough transparency is required but any concrete step that would lead to incremental betterment or greater reduction in this divide that you know exists Yes sir again as my partner stated teachers so maybe ensuring that like ensuring that the teachers who are reaching these areas the ones who are teaching these students they know what they are teaching because again even I've read I've read it somewhere I'm really sorry I don't remember where but they said a quite a major percent of these teachers even though they're teaching they don't even have a degree to teach they're just going there because they've been assigned the work so maybe ensuring that at the same time we came up with an idea of like of an interaction platform between us and students from the poor household people who are being affected so I think if that comes into I know it's really difficult to get into reality if that comes I think as students we'll know what they're going through and maybe then we can come up with our own ideas to help them Fair enough one last question this is to all of you all here I also have one thing to add so I think there is a misconception with us that teachers who are working with the aided and government are not qualified but it is a misconception why I'm saying it is a misconception so if you go through a data of 2019 all private schools across India be it CBSE affiliated ICSE or IGC or IB so compared to government schools if you check on the qualifications and eligibility which are required to teach in India as a teacher so you will find that with all government aided and government schools all the teachers working over there are qualified because there is a defined process I just wanted to add on this and second thing before we wind up everything one thing is that which I would like to suggest to them so definitely it was appreciated that definitely the work done is very good the way you researched on the topics but the key when you are researching when we asked for the first team also is see to it that you are authenticating the source of information what we have realized when we are working in school education is somewhere as a student we get conditioned to believe that whatever is said by the teacher is right I should authenticate it whatever is told by my parents is right definitely they have experience they have that authority to convey all those things but as an individual I should inculcate that habit of checking the authenticity of the source and that's where the work which we are doing is what we have realized is that everyone was dependent on government offices as a source of information and that source was never authenticated and people went on doing something which legally might not be correct so on the similar friend the way we made a comment that there is a problem with the qualification no there is no problem with the qualification on the contrary in 2019 when government decided on removing teachers in accordance to right to education teachers who are not qualified and eligible so to surprise to everyone's surprise 15 lakh teachers working across India with private educational institutes did CDSE, ICSE, IGSE, IB were found non qualified because government has a structure to appoint and looking at that that is one aspect which I would like to so what happens is that when we make these judgmental comments why we end up making this is based on our perceptions and assumptions always so as students this is a learning platform for you the job which you have done is definitely commendable no doubt about it and second thing is that all the team members whoever decided on these topics on this line definitely it is the need of the hour second thing going ahead on this we are similarly discussing with few schools on is there option why I am talking about is that you people have now looked at a situation is prior to lockdown and post lockdown so now Anansh there is a discussion within the educators can we have an option of online schooling no physical school last week we had certain brainstorming sessions next week onwards we will be sitting at it and maybe Pune will see online school and I think when Anansh was asking about pros so I think geographical limits is you don't have those limits so you can be any part only condition is that you should have a data connectivity so being at any part of the town or any part of the world you can still participate in the whatever learning process is there that's what I wanted to add it on and one more thing I would like to add as far as the third presentation about poor and rich it's concern the very first thing all of us need to change is our attitude we are always underprivileged kids somewhere as a secondary citizens we need a government machinery we the teachers working in both schools we as a societal members members of society or citizens of this country we need to change that attitude and I think that change in attitude a best example as far as upgraded quality of government schools is concerned Delhi government schools is the best examples one should study how they have defined their processes how they have changed the attitude of entire system so they are also citizens of this country like us they deserve best quality education they deserve best quality healthcare facilities so definitely change in attitude of all of us and all this budding citizens of country is very much we need as far as that poor and rich divide thank you ma'am and thank you sir for that clarification and actually providing us this very important information regarding this unnecessary misconception that we have regarding teachers that work in government schools and private schools and also how different schools are tackling this problem of quality education and you so much for that now this actually brings us to the close of this particular event for day one at least and we would like to hear the results from the judges where would we I think Anuj can have a concluding sure sure sure adding on the numbers absolutely absolutely in fact sir and ma'am I would also like to request you I think one of the most important things that will come out of this session is of course great presentations firstly congratulations to all of you students I was very much a fly on the world as I promised over the duration of this session and I was witnessing I also could not hold myself back and ask one of the groups a question I would like to congratulate all of you for coming up with some brilliant points very very good points very workable points I like you know the level to which you all have been able to think now as Deshmukh sir and Shilpa ma'am correctly stated that you know you can't just randomly come up with things and expect them to work you have to really think about the next step and the next step after that and take it forward from there okay you have to have a very balanced perspective in addition you have to make sure that the sources that you are looking into are verifiable so all of these things are very important but what is equally important at this point in time also is to make the best of the current situation okay if you asked us four months back as skill sphere education or if you ask Deshmukh sir or Shilpa ma'am whether we could discuss the possibility of an online school four months or five months back we would have all laughed at you we would have laughed at ourselves if somebody asked us to possibly you know move everything online but necessity is the mother of invention and COVID-19 has given us the opportunity to realize that there is such a wonderful platform that exists for its for our utilization right there are so many issues that can be sorted out via online learning and that does not in any way disregard offline learning but whether it can't take place learning has to move on and online learning is something that's redefining the way we are doing things I think you know a great man once said that the worst thing that we can do is not manage to live through a pandemic but the worst thing that we can do is not to learn from the experience okay so at this point in time you know we are learning through the experience we are talking about education you are learning at so many social economic financial even community levels but what we can learn in the field of education is really everything related to online learning how we can take it forward at the same point in time I feel that you know a lot of things that we talk about in popular discourse today are very privileged concepts I was telling Sugandha ma'am the other day that you know the entire concept of social distancing in a slum like Dharavi is a privileged concept it's very easy for us to sit around in the houses that we are sitting where we have so much place behind us free space behind us to sit and you know participate in a case study session without anybody disturbing us just go into a 12 by 12 foot chawl in Dharavi or in any other slum and then talk about six people living together and then discuss social distancing it's not possible it's very nice to say these things and that's why honestly speaking you know I sometimes marvel at the fact that the Mumbai Government and the Mumbai Municipal Corporation was able to contain COVID-19 in a place like that now when we come to discuss things like education for those students okay it's it's not simply about getting data to become available it is not even simply about you know having stuff running on a TV okay let's talk about your own households if you have two siblings and your parents living together each one of you would probably require a device today each one of you would require a device you know I'm sure there's a lot of juggling of devices a lot of juggling of places taking place and all of these things actually translate to the rural levels as well or to the under privileged sections of society as well so the question that we are asking is that you know all of you are brilliantly privileged great school great teachers great everything but what are we going to do to ensure that this economic divide does not grow okay obviously we are not going to stop learning it's not something that we did when we were offline either we didn't decide to you know stop we didn't decide to shut schools down because you know a government school was probably not the best like we were we never decided to do that we never decided to not have a panel discussion or a case study taking place via eQuest back then Quest because you know a student in a government school was not able to do so well unfortunately you know these divides do exist in society but fortunately we do have the ability to effect change as far as this is concerned so what you need to work towards is effecting this change you need to effect this change honestly a lot of this change can be effected in a much quicker manner online and offline much quicker manner it's much easier to actually effect change by helping students from underprivileged sections of society online then if you were to actually go from school to school school to school in the offline mode Deshmukh sir actually I would like Deshmukh sir and Shilpa ma'am to also provide some realistic experiences to you sir and ma'am ask you on multiple occasions have you ever visited a government school sir I would like you all to give a little bit of a picture of the issues that when you are sharing the results I would like you to share a picture of the issues that schools from the underprivileged sections of society are facing ma'am talked about government schools I was very fortunate to go to one of the best schools in New Delhi the NP co-ed secondary school that's in Lakshmi by Nagar it's actually better than some of the CBSE schools as seen across the country it's state of the art it's not that government schools are bad schools especially when you go to Delhi I mean I was shocked I had a very preconceived notion which was horrible yes but there are issues with scalability with systems and these are things that you need to realize now on a closing note of course we are going to have many discussions and you're going to hear a lot more of me tomorrow during the panel discussion and that we are also having a debate as well what I'd like to tell you is that you know it's very difficult to type cause something as good or bad okay there's actually nothing that you can really typecast everything as it's pros and cons unless you're talking about smoking alcohol consumption and drugs in my opinion but yes when we are talking about education when we are talking about online learning you know there are going to be cons and the funny thing is that if you had had this discussion four years back when I was at Cornell University we were already using zoom for sessions it was way more primitive than what we have today okay there was one way discussion at all points in time questions were asked why a chat bot presentations used to lag four years down the line today this is almost as good as a class of course if somebody keeps their video off and somebody doesn't want to listen it's very little that anybody can do even in an offline classroom but if somebody is willing to learn somebody has that curiosity to learn jigiasa as they call it my favorite word there is absolutely no problem with the mode of education at the end of the day if you have willing teachers if you have passionate teachers you have passionate students I believe online offline or online and offline all objectives will be served that is my personal opinion and as much as every teacher right from Sugandha ma'am to Pallavi ma'am to every other teacher and every other student is probably absolutely cannot wait to get back to the classroom and probably pull each other's leg and perform a lot of mischief which otherwise gets muted on zoom or on teams or whatever else that you all use we have to make the most of this opportunity learning cannot stop and I'm glad that we are trying to actually put this entire discussion into further perspective thank you so much it's been wonderful to honestly have both of you joining this discussion today and I was telling Sugandha ma'am that there can't be better people because you are trying to be a part of this at so many levels so students today are very good at going to Google and figuring out things and then thinking out of the box coming up with solutions but understanding how realistic they are something that we have to give to them in fact ma'am while you are providing the results I would humbly request you to also provide a little bit of a realistic situation to them with respect to these three topics thank you for that closing actually from your end I mean I'm sure yes all the content that was covered in the question is very good yes, Vikram sir and Sipangam are we ready with the results? Yes we are it's wonderful so I think I hand it over to you to declare the results and also give us some insight and some realistic examples of what actually goes on in the schools that we discuss the different types of schools that we discuss today see even if we start with the first topic wherein about data connectivity I think two major challenges which we discussed is electricity available and is data connectivity available so when I said that how you do a research so data connectivity is dependent on the mobile network one thing, second thing BSNL has been a major player with a wired communication so when you look at that problem why data connectivity is not there or how one will get a data connectivity so what is expected is that you know what is the way in which data connectivity is established what is the journey of last say 20 years so if you are aware about your generation might not have seen pages so prior to 96 before the mobile network was launched in India so paging was there so when you look at that journey one should look at that journey of getting data connectivity now we are wherein the fiber optics are there and all those things are there definitely there are challenges there will be challenges worldwide there are challenges with data connectivity so when you look at a realistic thing data connectivity in this lockdown situation plays a key role in your learning being continued or discontinued but at the same time when Anuanshi is saying that a school so the best school one of the best schools from the government is from a Shiroor district which is very which is very near to Pune so a zero energy school in that particular school initiative was taken by one of the teacher who is working in that school everyone will be surprised to know that admissions for next four years are booked so if you want admission for next four years there is no vacancy in that particular school people that there is a waiting list for next four years at the same time when I say government school so maybe anyone of you who is travelling from say you are home to school he will come across so we have been to we are working with PCMC to work on few schools to up gradation and all those things so one school which works in two shifts morning shifts is a girls school afternoon shift is a boys school first to seventh in Thirgav area so when we visited that school so we had primary discussions with officials and even political leaders but we were keen on telling them that you don't inform that you are going to see the schools you give us the numbers of the school principles and all those things and locations when we went to the school so it has seven classes so seven teachers that's the scenario so there is if the number of students are on say more than 200 then you have a pume otherwise there is no non-teaching faculty which is allotted to the school so cleaning needs either the teacher will have to do it or the students will have to do it we are talking about hygiene the way Anuj talked about social distancing so we are talking about sanitization hygiene to be maintained in these schools there is no non-teaching stuff which is available to maintain this there is no manpower which is available our first-hand experiences definitely the even the girls students where we went and say first-handers second third fourth they were street smart so if you look at they have a better exposure to the life all the difficulties are there struggles are there so maybe on road when it comes to moving on their own they are better equipped than all the students which we might have in our type of schools or our type of families at the same time definitely the way even our team members all three explain on certain part getting teacher to the class is a challenge teachers are there appointed there they are qualified second thing Anuj in last four five years there are lot of donations which are going on maybe in the way of books computers but electricity availability is a issue the faculty who is trained to teach second thing when you look at NGO intervention in all these specifically in Bombay or Pune with all municipal schools you will find Anuj there is a fight to get a power in the school on Saturdays there are NGOs who are working based on CSR funding and who want to show that I am doing some taking some effort over there so there is literally a fight for the time slot on Saturdays NGO activities which are conducted in these government schools are not outcome based so there is no accountability which we can fix for those activities and as those activities most of the times it's like wasting time of the students as well as wasting time of those facilitators all those systems need to be set right if you really want to get some outcomes out of those CSR funding there need to be a effort to define what do we mean by quality education there has to be some benchmark these are the minimum deliverables so in any school any student starting across India should get these minimum things so that needs to be defined wherein right to education made an effort in that direction so certain aspects at least on the infrastructure part were talked about but it will take a lot of time for us that's why my question was specifically when we are talking about that divide so we will have to define quality education we have we will have to define minimum deliverables and then making an effort and when we said is it possible it is very much possible use as students maybe once you are done with your 12th or something like that even it will be a learning experience for you or whatever is part of a society will have to live and coexist together be it a poor be it a richer one then ask be it a cultured one uncultured one be it illiterate everyone is part of a society and we need to present my opinion is that we need to train ourselves to coexist with all of this so prohibition is a key and in that direction it is better if we take these opportunities of exploration going to these schools once in a month will also make you feel how empowered you are how lucky you are how entitled you are how blessed you are otherwise as an individual you might have a list of complaint about what your parents are not giving you what you might not get so there is a list which list is always there so the best thing is that if you get an opportunity to see that you will be able to know how better equipped we are and definitely government schools are there are examples wherein there is an improvement change across India find a lot of examples wherein there is a change change in a positive manner which is happening but not need to be done and one need to be sensitive enough the way Shilpa said that we need to feel at heart see Anansh I feel in my childhood dignity of labour was talked about and practiced I come from a family of farmers so wherein I used to call anyone a labour who was working on the farming so it was it was seen that all of us are calling them uncles from their age so if anyone from the same say financial that also comes was given the same respect considering the age and the same respect was given to irrespective of the persons say job so that dignity of labour was actually talked about and practiced which is not happening the way these students gave example that we should speak to the maids and everything I think this lockdown made us realised what is the role they have so we always look at it that maid gives us one hour for a minimal amount and we use that one hour for earning maybe 10 times 20 times more than what we are paying that maid so once you start looking at it what is the value addition of these people when Anansh talked about Dharavi if Dharavi stops working I think half of Bombay stops working absolutely everyone who are putting their blood and sweat for the economy of Bombay so you will not have drivers in place you will not have lot of support staff available so at least 50% of Bombay will stop working if Dharavi stops working so we need to understand and develop that approach and end of the day we are choosing different professions for livelihood which doesn't make any difference as such so maybe I will choose one profession for earning certain amount so if I am earning say on a higher side will not ensure that I am a good person so you should respect a good person so the way said at least Anansh said that certain things cannot be termed as good and bad so on a theatre line at least you should learn to treat a human as a human and which is we need to learn through education which is not happening in most of the schools we need a private or government so I think need of our is to go back to a 40-50 year scenario which was there in India where always it was stopped so it is for developing and equipping human beings to be better human so it doesn't happen maybe we are creating better professionals we are giving better skill sets but what we are missing in overall this journey is creating better humans and what is the need I think if Shilpa has to add to something and we will talk share about the results I think we will not talk about the marks we will talk about so should we start with the team which ranked first or third we go with third and then we go with second and first so I think they are aware about the parameters which Anansh you shared parameters which were given to us is pointers and content in presentation public speaking delivery presentation ability to answer questions effectively participation of all team members so on certain see as far as participation of all team members everyone is on the same score so that there is a equality on the third rank team one is on the third position team two is on second position and team three is on the first position thank you sir for letting us know so what we get to know share the score sheet with you thank you sir congratulations all of you you have performed very well and the way I said in uncertain time and the way you showcase your collaboration I am amazed to see this because you are sitting at your homes and then coordinating with your friends coordinating with Jaya and then probably Anansh and then you prepared everything presented it so well heartiest congratulations and we are proud of you the way you presented it we are really proud of you and you need to keep up this when I said at the beginning if you are trained by Anansh then this was expected very kind of you sir very kind words very kind of you ma'am kind of you sir thank you so much in fact so gandha ma'am we have had a brilliant session discussion a lot of good food for thought and in fact the students have come up with some very good suggestions which I think they should consider implementing they talked about a device collection drive I think that's what the first team talked about a device collection drive all of us have age old devices that we replace from time to time I think that would be a great idea why don't you all take it forward as 11th and 12th grade students I am sure the school's blessings will be with you I really think you should do this that's really the need of the hour the hour of such device collection drives at a very small scale very small scale which have really worked out 25-30 devices have been collected nothing has been bought and I can't tell you the amount of difference they can make I mean for you to get a device you should probably ensure that you get to play a couple of online games apart from attend your sessions but for them it's actually continuing education okay so it's a great idea so thank you so much for taking this discussion forward with sir and I'm sure a lot of you might have questions sir and ma'am I like to call them hermits in ways because you don't see them around too much but they're treasure troves of information and I'm sure they'd be very happy to talk to any of you students if you'd like to get any further food for thought food for thought so Gandha ma'am, thank you so much for the opportunity all of you, you're going to see us tomorrow once again having a great debate with the younger students of the school and then a great panel discussion in fact the school deserves a lot of credit online learning often becomes a topic that's a little bit of taboo it's a little bit of a taboo among educational circles today the ability to actually address the positives and negatives and give students a voice to actually share their honest opinions is something that truly shows that Elbrough International School Chinswad is in no way worried about the repercussions, the ramifications everybody wants to take this discourse forward in the most positive manner constructive manner possible and I can see the changes that have been implemented from April onwards when everybody was learning how to walk you were crawling, you learned how to walk and I think EIS Chinswad is now running so Gandha ma'am, kudos to you management leadership and I believe the floor is yours it's only fitting that you have the final word before we end this discussion thank you so much Anansh congratulations to all my students I think you all have done exceedingly well congratulations to the winners you will soon have your prizes and certificates coming your way, I'm sure you are excited for that but a huge round of applause to everybody will make us proud and I'm very happy with the kind of research you have put in thank you Anansh and Jayant for steering this entire event so beautifully, thank you Jayant I know you are my students favorite so thank you for taking their calls and their emails at any given point of time and for training them so well my heartfelt gratitude to sir and ma'am Mr. Vikram Deshmukh and Dr. Shilpa we are so honored to have you with us I'm sure the students are going enriched from today's session from hearing erudite personalities like you thank you for giving them really meaningful insights which I sometimes the students tend to miss so I am so glad you could take out some time and speak to them today on this occasion and I think it's really really an honorable moment for us to have you with us here so all in all I am really happy with the way we all have conducted ourselves today and yes like Anansh said we have more to offer on the platform of E-Quest which we will be continuing tomorrow with our debate and panel discussion thank you everybody thank you ma'am, thank you everyone thank you viewers, thank you all the participants the judges, Anansh you as well for making sure this has happened very nicely and the quality is maintained we will see you all tomorrow again we will start at 4.30 again tomorrow our debate followed by a panel discussion thank you ma'am