Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan inaugurated White Board, a project for preparing study material for children with special needs; online classes for Tamil and Kannada medium students; and VHSEeVIDYALAYAM YouTube channel for making available online classes for Plus Two vocational higher secondary students, here on Wednesday .
White Board is being implemented in association with the Samagra Shiksha, Kerala. As part of the project, study material suited to each category of differently abled children will be prepared.
The Tamil and Kannada medium classes are a new milestone in the State’s FOSS (free and open source software) initiatives in public education, a statement from the Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) here said.
FOSS software
All videos for the Tamil and Kannada medium classes are prepared using Kdenlive, a FOSS videoediting software that comes pre-installed in the 1.2 lakh laptops deployed in schools by KITE. The videos were shot using DSLR cameras deployed by KITE in 4,578 high-tech schools and ordinary mobile phones too.
A group of 15 teachers, led by M.P. Rajesh, KITE Kasaragod district coordinator, shot and edited the videos. Seventy teachers helmed the classes for Kannada medium, of which 50 classes are ready for telecast.
The Tamil medium content was prepared by a 30-member team led by V.P. Sasikumar, Palakkad district coordinator of KITE. Sixty classes are now ready for telecast, for which the services of 50 Tamil medium teachers have been utilised.
All the activities were undertaken in association with the Kasaragod, Palakkad, and Idukki units of the Samagra Shiksha and academic support from the respective District Institutes of Education and Training.
It is a remarkable achievement to complete these activities within a mere 10 days’ time, the statement said.
“KITE has charted out a plan for providing FOSS-based videoediting, animation, and sound recording training for all teachers on an online platform, as done in the case of KOOL (KITE’s Open Online Learning) for teachers,” K. Anvar Sadath, Chief Executive Officer, KITE, said.
The Tamil and Kannada medium classes are available on the YouTube channels www.youtube.com/drcpkd and www.youtube.com/kitekasaragod respectively. Local cable networks in those locations have expressed their willingness to telecast these classes.
Earlier, KITE had provided specific training on making videos using mobile phones to a group of teachers by making use of the services of digital media expert Sunil Prabhakar.