Nagaland: No computers in rural areas to access pen drive

Our Correspondent
Wokha, Aug. 12 (EMN): The department of School Education had announced that class-wise video lessons broadcast through Doordashan, Facebook and YouTube would also be made available in pen drives to students of class 5 to 12 who couldn’t access online classes due to poor network.

However, this innovative idea of the state government to help students learn during this pandemic too may not be as helpful as envisioned because of lack of computers for students to receive study materials and information.

Some government teachers said that learning through lessons stored in pen drives is not practical as most of the rural areas ‘hardly have a television set’.

Speaking to Eastern Mirror, a government school teacher shared that computer sets in many schools were damaged, and some schools don’t even have access to electricity.

While the School Education department is mum on how to access storages devices containing lessons, some are of the opinion that teachers can be identified to access such study materials and help the students in rural areas personally, as there are cases where enrolment in ‘one class hardly touches double digit’.

Some teachers opined that students of classes 8, 9 and 10 can have regular classes on alternate days by maintaining the SOP as most government schools in rural areas has less enrolment compared to urban areas; and that they usually don’t need transportation to attend classes.

Moreover, in the rural areas, village councils strictly maintain SOP and restrict entry of people to the villages which have helped in containing the spread of Covid-19, they said.

Meanwhile, some teachers shared that the state government should not focus only on government schools but also need to give attention to private schools in rural areas as 70 to 80 per cent of students study in such institutes.

The state government needs to renovate schools by demolishing old buildings and start afresh for quality education as many schools in rural areas are old and could collapse anytime, a teacher said.

It may be mentioned that the shift to online learning, necessitated by the Covid-19, has exposed the gap between the rich and the poor, and the rural and urban population as many places, especially hill stations still don’t have access to regular electricity, computers, television and internet.