Khammam: Digital teaching in classrooms may sound like a very classy and modern idea, but there are so many glitches in the system that it is doing more harm than good.
There is no coordination between the designers of the digital lessons transmitted by Mana TV, and the syllabus of various subjects in Telangana schools, teachers are not trained in the new method, and infrastructure is often inadequate.
The government commenced digital teaching in schools for classes six to ten from November 2016 in 583 schools in Khammam district and 350 schools in Bhadradri-Kothagudem district. The lessons are transmitted from 10.30 am to 4 pm on every school working day.
But it soon became obvious that there was no match between the text book curriculum and the lessons being transmitted digitally. The method was also faulty. Teachers should be clarifying doubts or answering questions posed by the students after the latter have watched the digital lessons. But this does not happen in 90 per cent of the schools.
N. Sandeep, a tenth class student in Nayabazar school in Khammam, said, “We are unable to understand the subject because of lack of clarity. There is no teacher to address these problems in my school.”
Secondly, in the case of some subjects, such as social science, the subject being taught in the schools and the subject being transmitted through Mana TV is not the same. P. Kishan, a teacher, said that the officials involved in designing the digital teaching programme had not followed the text books for some subjects. They have to be trained to make the system meaningful but this is not the case, he said. In some instances, lessons are repeated so often on TV that pupils get bored.
Thirdly, there are more than 100 students in one class in some schools. But the TV screens are small and students sitting at the back cannot hear and view the lessons clearly.
