Valuable e-learning material for students in lockdown period and summer vacation
Students are fed up with too much free time due to Coronavirus lockdown and also some students have started their summer vacation. This article provides details of various valuable e-learning opportunities for students to excel in their studies. They give a fine opportunity for students to learn and acquire knowledge in an interesting way through video lessons, graphics, animations and explanations from most experienced faculty.
Introduction
Due to Coronavirus effect lockdown, universities, colleges, institutes, coaching centers are closed. Some education institutes are closed for summer vacation. Some university exams, Competetive and Board exams were also not completed. So the e-learning sites at present helping students to acquire the required knowledge to excel in their studies. Swayam, e-pathshala, Swayamprabha, e-shodgsindhu, National Digital Library are the e-learning sites run by Human Resources Development Ministry (MHRD). They are providing standard e-learning material in the form of video lectures and lessons. These lessons were prepared by most experienced lecturers and teachers from all over India. Some of these e-learning sites providing the downloading facility of video lessons and videos. Various mobile Apps. are also there that aid in e-learning.Swayam e-learning portal
This e-learning digital portal was started by the Central government to provide standard and quality education to students. More than 1000 experienced faculty selected from all over India have prepared these lessons. Students can download videos and printable material. Four to twenty-four weeks duration courses are there in this e-learning site that include courses from ninth class to Post Graduation, Management, and Engineering. This portal also provides self-assessing for students through exams, Quizzes, discussion panels to clear the doubts of students. Specific important topics are dealt with through multimedia effects for a better understanding of the students. The coordinators for the Swayam portal are AICTE, NPTEAL, UGC, CEC, NCERT, IGNOU, IIM Banglore, NIOS, NITTR. These valuable online courses were given free of cost. Credits given in these courses can be added to their regular courses. Those who aspire to get certificates have to pay the fee. From anywhere, one can access the courses.
Visit Swayam Portale-pathshala
This portal provides online learning facilities from Class 1 to Class 12 through NCERT e-textbooks, supplementary books, audio, and video lessons. Students can download these materials from the portal. This portal also provides e-books, rules, and regulations for teachers, learning outcomes, teaching techniques for teachers. For improving teaching skills and teaching standards, this portal is providing e-resources to teachers. Standard educational journals are published in this portal for educating parents with useful material. The e-learning portal was maintained by NCERT that was established by the Central government in the year 1961. NCERT helps in producing Text Books, Research Analysis on education, Production of Journals, etc.
Visit e-pathshalaSwayamprabha
The Indian government set up this portal with the help of satellite transmission i.e. a combination of 32 channels. This portal transmits the same contents 5 times within a day. So students can access the content at the timings they wish. This portal provides curriculum-based content for UG, PG students. Arts, Science, Commerce, Social Science and Humanities, Engineering, Technology, Law, Medicine, Agriculture students can get benefit through this portal. This portal provides teaching skills for teachers and teaching lessons for students. Materials required for competitive exams will be provided by this portal. This portal is coordinated by NPTEL, IITs, UGC, CEC, IGNOU, NCERTC, NIOS.
Visit Swayam Prabha PortalNational Digital Library
Through the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and IIT Kharagpur, this portal came into existence. This is a pilot project coordinated by the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT) under the National Digital Library of India (NDL India). This portal is helpful for competitive entrance exams, with study materials required for competitive exams in the form of content, text, video and audio form. The courses are in different languages from the school level to the PG level. Science, Social Sciences, Technology, Humanities, History, Geography, the various verdicts given in the courts, various journals which will be beneficial for preparing competitive exams etc are all here.
Visit National Digital Librarye-Sodh Sindhu
It is an online library for students. To get various topics, journals, Archives from this portal students have to pay the monthly fees. This portal provides e-books for educational institutes for nominal fees. This portal is maintained by UGC-Infonet Library Consortium, NLIST, INDEST-AICTE. Databases from the various big libraries that provide digital books on Science, Arts, Engineering, Medicine, books from publishers, Aggregators, universities, educational institutions are connected to this portal. More than 10,000 e-journals and 32 lakhs digital books are here. This portal tries to improve standards of e-journals, e-archives, e-books, and improve membership levels to this portal. Workshops are conducted to train in the proper utilization of this portal. Educational institutions that have membership in this portal can access any university or educational institute database. 217 universities, 75 technical institutes, are 3200 colleges are already having membership in this portal. So students can access a vast amount of digital content from various other membership institutes.
Visit Sodh Sindhu
This article is a very relevant and timely one. The COVID19 infection has necessitated lockdown and social distancing. The first one to attract the restrictions was the education sector. As children are vulnerable it was just prudence to keep them under the security of home and keep them away from the risks of possible infection. Though many other activities can be resorted by following social distancing, it is not practical to follow social distancing in educational institutions.
Since it was exam time and end of the academic year in most parts of India, it was more or less easy to implement the lockdown in educational institutions across the country. All needed to was to make certain crucial decisions like not conducting annual examinations for lower classes in schools but give the students automatic elevation to the next class, postponing the important qualifying examinations for convenient dates later, etc.
However simultaneously there was due encouragement for online learning too. Though it was a business scene for private players, in the light of the new situation, governments also came to the fore, either as facilitators or providers too.
Some of these developments are mentioned and dealt with above in this article. We can hope that there will be more thrust in this regard and this is going to stay and reign in the years to come. So awareness about E-learning and E-learning materials and platforms is necessary not only for the present situation but for the future too.