Smart schools need smart technology

Nashik: Although 82 out of a hundred municipal schools have been transformed into ‘smart schools’ by spending around Rs 50 crores through Smart City, these schools however are facing technical difficulties to run digital classes.
There is a technical problem as the power supply from the old electricity meters in the schools is not enough to run the new electrical equipment. This is causing obstacles for digital classes in schools. As a result, the smart school programme is getting hit.
Schools have been made smart so that municipal students can get facilities just like private schools. The smart school has state-of-the-art facilities like digital classrooms, computer rooms, and CCTV. However, the digital board, computer, fan and other items installed in the smart school are suffering from the low power supply. As a result, smart school classrooms are being run in a phased manner without giving the students the benefit of all the digital classrooms at the same time.
Since the last few years, the number of students in municipal schools has decreased due to the increasing trend of parents towards private educational institutions. To change this mindset of parents, students should be taught lessons of knowledge through digital curriculum along with handling computers. For this, the concept of smart school emerged.
Although a total of 82 schools have been made smart so far, there is a technical problem in starting them at full capacity.
Schools earlier had old electricity meters while smart schools have installed various electrical equipment in classrooms. But for this, there is a problem of low electric pressure.
Students will be given training in IT (information technology) and ICT (information communications technology) along with digital labs in schools. As the labs have computers and internet facilities, students will get knowledge about computers and internet usage.
Municipal teachers were trained last month on how to use technology. Due to the digitisation of municipal schools, students will get all the facilities that are provided to students in national and international schools.
Digital classrooms will also make it easier for teachers to teach students. However, due to low power supply, smart schools are facing technical hitches to run digital classrooms.