Pune: PMC approves Instashala for online learning at schools
Mehab Qureshi
Pune, December 9, 2020: Many children across the globe were deprived of education during the lockdown owing to several reasons right from technical problems to financial ones. But Dr Geeta Bora and her team at Spherule Foundation gauged the problem and came out with a solution.
Dr Bora and her team conceptualized Instashala, an app which will help the students especially from financially weaker sections and government schools to be in tune with their school syllabus.
“With the sole aim of reaching out to all the government school students, it is a free learning app that makes learning fun and easy for students. This App is designed keeping in mind the need for underprivileged students and Govt school teachers”, said Dr Bora.
“The app does not stop at just providing school hours to the children but it also helps them in catching up the things they have missed and acts like tuition classes”, she added.
InstaShala on wheels
“Some children do not have phones, for them, our educators carry tabs to their homes. Children are given two hours to complete a chapter and answer MCQs after which the tab is given to the next batch of students”, she informed.
Meanwhile, we visit and help the students from 16 Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) Vidyaniketan Schools and seven slums from the city. Currently, Instashala is planning to reach all 1.5 lakh students in PMC and PCMC”, she explained.
PMC accepting it
PMC in a letter responded to this Initiative, “As per the data there are total 7045 students of class 1 to 8 and among them 40011 students attend online learning while, in the secondary and higher secondary section i.e. class (8 to 12) as many as 5170 students are attending online learning classes. In the present situation, we have observed that many students cannot maintain regularities because of internet data”, PMC official said.
“We have requested PMC to provide educational facilities like stationery kits, Data pack, mobile phones etc for all students from class 1 to 12. The total tentative number of students from class 1 to 12 will be approximately 81.679 as many come from weaker sections of the society”, she said.
