July 24, 2013, 12:00 am
Now students can access to lab facilities sitting in their homes. With Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) new initiative on Online Labs-Virtual Experiments (OLabs), students would now be able to perform science experiments virtually and also many theoretical concepts in sciences in a better manner.
To understand these OLabs, ERNET (Education and Research Network) India appointed by department of electronics and IT would provide one-day training free of cost to teachers of all the CBSE affiliated schools region wise in two phases. In the first phase, ERNET will train around 1,250 master trainers who will in turn give training to other teachers in second phase. Two teachers per school will be trained and a total of 30,000 teachers will be trained under this project.
Schools have been asked to nominate two teachers for training of master trainers.
President Sahodaya group of CBSE schools, Bhopal and principal International Public School (IPS) Misrod, P S Kalra told TOI, "Topics like dissections of animals, which were previously a part of the science experiments, can be easily understood by students without having to actually do them. With the new virtual learning environment, any number of students can log in and perform all the science practicals and understand concepts as well."
"Even teachers can take it up as a classroom assignment in schools that have smart classes. Somewhere the modules are animated and others are interactive," he added.
He also informed that currently the e-learning project has been rolled out for students of classes IX and X for the science and maths subjects. Later, it would also be included for classes XI and XII.
However, another school principal expressed apprehensions about the efficacy of the programme in rural areas where there is no broadband connection.
