The academic year that is drawing to a close was one that saw many changes for students of Classes I, VI, IX and XI, who had to tackle a new curriculum implemented by the Tamil Nadu School Education department. With textbooks equipped with QR codes and ICT activities, data available with the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) show that there have been over 2.1 crore QR code scans by students and teachers from these books over the last one year.

Students with the revamped curriculum had been encouraged to access extra digital content created by the School Education Department and hosted on DIKSHA, the national digital platform of the Ministry of Human Resource Development. The access was provided through QR codes in their textbooks, a first-of-its-kind initiative.

Audio, video content

“Students have been extremely welcoming of the digital content made available. While the new curriculum will be implemented in phases for the rest of the classes across the next two years, we will be wrapping up all content creation by the end of April 2019,” said a senior official from SCERT. For the year 2019-20, the new curriculum is set to be implemented for Classes II, VII, X and XII. As was done the previous year, the SCERT is coming up with audio and video content for various lessons for the four classes. This year, the numbers lesson from the Class VI mathematics textbook has received over 41 lakh scans and is the most popular online resource as per the data available.

S. Arumainathan, State president of the Tamil Nadu Students Parents Welfare Association, said that the education department should invite feedback about the accessibility of content.