It has been tough four months. Tougher for some more than others. While the world is coming to terms with the pandemic and getting used to the new way of life, we at Meghshala are also constantly challenging ourselves to look for ways to ensure education can continue for all of our children. The challenges are daunting and the barriers seem impossible to overcome, yet we manage small wins. Here is a quick glimpse of everything we have been doing to minimize the effects of the pandemic on education.
The new product offerings.
We are a country that has six Sanskrit words for “teacher” - escalating from “Adhyapak” who is someone who gives you information, and all the way to “Guru” who is someone who helps you find the wisdom that is inside of you. So what excuse do we have for the way we are so lackadaisical about the state of our national education? Meghshala is acutely aware of this need and in an attempt to reach every last child who wishes to learn in these times of COVID, we have designed a new web-app interface. Are you a parent, looking to engage your child during these testing times?
Here’s a link to our web app https://meghshalaweb.contentready.co
Being a high-quality content provider we have always been agile and flexible to accommodate the need of the hour. In the current situation, our team of content designers worked to make available the following resources:
1. Teacher Professional Development: Short video modules coaching teachers on remote teaching skills. Focusing on Technology-enabled distance learning for teachers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQzXROQYB90&t=447s
2. Video-based teaching Modules: crowdsourced teachers teaching Meghshala e-lessons which are shared on youtube channels. Class 7 ENGLISH | Chapter 1 | Healthy Life - Part 1 | Meghshala
3. Student/Parent Learning Modules Repurposing our teaching content to ensure students and/or parents are able to use the same. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-2Ln8wG6YGD4hcMAZXptjT5YAejomwcK?us p=sharing
4. Concept-based video modules which are an explanation of specific concepts. Proof : (a - b)^2 = a^2 - 2ab + b^2
On the Implementation front:
1. Online Training for Teachers and BEOs : Conducted quick short training on integrating Technology to teach in the coming days.
2. Video-based teaching Modules: Crowdsourced teachers teaching content to be shared on youtube channels and shared the same in teacher networks.
3. Student/Parent Learning Modules: we worked with partners and BEOs to share modules to enable home learning.
4. Community Engagement: Our Implementation team is constantly working to ensure kids continue learning at home with the available resources and devices. In this regard, we are working with parents to ensure they download the Meghshala app and allow kids to use it for a specific time period every day.
5. The team is also donning the hat of a teacher and conducting small sessions virtually and sharing them on Whatsapp groups.
6. We conducted two online sessions for our funding partners where we saw about 75 parents engage with us over a zoom call to understand best practices for at-home learning. 7. We are working with volunteers from our corporate funders, who are helping us translate our lessons to local languages. If you are interested, do reach out to us and we can ensure language is not a barrier for any child to access quality content.
We are constantly learning and iterating our strategies and on the lookout for partners to fund us to scale during these times. We are looking at building a collaborative editing platform that can enable teachers/parents/facilitators to make minor changes to help customize the lessons to suit their children's needs. We are also in talks with other partners who are looking to collaborate with us for our content.