Lok Sabha Question No. 4776 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2021-03-24
Subject: Promotion of IT Based Edication
Ministry: ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Asked by: Jagdambika Pal

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

## LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 4776

TO BE ANSWERED ON: 24.03.2021

## PROMOTION OF IT BASED EDUCATION

## 4776.   SHRI JAGDAMBIKA PAL:

Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS ANDINFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state:

- (a)  the steps taken/being taken by the Government to promote and ramp up information technology based education, especially in the background of extended shutdown of schools, colleges and other educational institutions; and
- (b) the steps taken by the Government to ensure efficient access to plans/programmes/schemes promoting IT based education by poor and marginalized citizens?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF STATE FOR ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI SANJAY DHOTRE)

- (a)  and  (b):    In  the  background  of  extended  shutdown  of  schools,  colleges  and  other  educational institutions  due  to  COVID-19  pandemic  the  Government  has  taken  following  steps  to  promote  the  IT based education in the country.
- I. A  comprehensive  initiative  called  PM  eVIDYA  has  been  initiated  by  Ministry  of  Education  which unifies all efforts related to digital/online/on-air education to enable multi-mode access to education. The initiative includes:
- i)  Online classes are being conducted by employing various digital tools in the form of DIKSHA portal (https://diksha.gov.in/),  SWAYAM  Portal  (swayam.gov.in),  SWAYAM  Prabha,  DD-Channel,  ePathshala  (https://epathshala.nic.in/),  NROER  (National  Repository  of  Open  Educational  Resources) portal (https://nroer.gov.in/welcome).
- ii) For the students do not have digital means, the medium of TV, radio has been used to promote IT based education. The learning programmes have being started in the form of offline learning tools in the form of radio, community radio and CBSE podcasts,  toll free numbers, missed call, SMS based requests for audio content, localized radio content for edutainment etc.. The steps taken by all the states are shown in report entitled 'India Report Digital Education June 2020' and the same is available at given below URL:

https://www.mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload\_files/mhrd/files/India\_Report\_Digital\_Education\_0.pdf

- II. Internet access under BHARATNET scheme has been made available to Government institutions. To improve the internet connectivity in rural areas the CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd (CSC-SPV) has been  assigned  the  task  of  providing  Fibre  to  the  Home  (FTTH)  connectivity  to  the  Government Institutions, including schools. This project is for providing Internet connection to Government schools in respective Gram Panchayats.

III. Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is implementing a project 'Online Labs (OLabs) for school experiments". The Olabs project is the online web based portal where Laboratory experiments  are  accessible  by  the  students  and  teachers  across  the  country.  Online  Labs  (Olabs)  is available for public access at www.olabs.edu.in. Under the OLabs project  a total of 173  experiments are available  in  the  portal with  interactive  simulators  and  videos  (i.e Physics -54; chemistry -46; Biology -36; Maths -25; English -12). The Content are aligned with NCERT/CBSE and State Board Syllabus from Class 9 to Class 12.

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