Teaching community detests AI-based app monitoring
Focus on midday meal and sanitation leaves no scope for conducting classes
NELLORE: Integrated monitoring that is based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for midday meal and sanitation (IMMS) is giving jitters to elementary schools teachers across the state.
The government has mandated teachers to upload photos of toilets in the app during the first hour of school as a means to check cleanliness. However, the IMMS messages are finding fault with the conditions even after thorough cleaning much to the ire of headmasters.
Sources in the education department said that the IMMS compares the uploaded photos with clean toilet photos that are in its memory and generates tickets (memo) if the conditions vary from one another. Once a ticket is generated, it is the duty of the headmaster to get the toilets cleaned once again and upload the photos to indicate that they have resolved the issue, a teacher said.
He said they are facing similar problems after uploading photos of midday meal scheme implementation.
“There are two modules in IMMS while one pertains to sanitation facilitation in schools, the other revolves around the midday meal scheme.
With the help of 100 odd photos available in its memory, IMMS can detect the quality of cooked rice and boiled eggs” an official in the education department said.
Under the condition of anonymity, an HM alleged that a major portion of their time is being spent on taking photos and uploading them leaving hardly any time for taking classes. He said some of them are personally cleaning toilets disgusted with the tickets they are receiving online on poor cleanliness.
Annoyed over these additional duties given to them, a teacher said the problem is with the Artificial Intelligence in the IMMS and not with them.
He advised the authorities to provide high-resolution cameras or smartphones and tabs to ‘capture’ better quality toilet pictures.
He said uploading attendance of regular students and beneficiaries of the Ammavodi scheme is another burden to them. District president of AP Upadhyaya Sangam (APUS) K.K. Rajagopal urged the government to delegate the photos work and midday meal scheme supervision to village secretariats in order to enable teachers to concentrate on academics.