Sir,
This has reference to the news item’Prez launches three digital initiatives in education sector (DE, July 10, 2017).It is heartening to read that President Pranab Mukherjee has launched two programmes named’Swayam’ and ‘Swayam Prabha’, conceived and executed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, to take education to the remotest corners of the country with the help of technology.While under Swayam,courses would be offered through digital classrooms with online study material available free of cost in videos and the students who want certification will have to be registered and then offered a certificate on completion of the course, under Swayam Prabha, a person can instal a dish antenna for DTH service, for about Rs 1500 to have access to 32 digital educational channels run by the HRD Ministry, with new content being available everday for at least four hours to be repeated five times a day so that students can choose the time of their convenience.
The President also launched ‘National Academic Depository’where verfied educational records would be digitally stored by Universities/Boards to counter forgery.All these initiatives launched on the eve of Guru Purnima will go a long way in expanding the frontiers of quality education across the country by making education more accessible in far flung areas.President Pranab Mukherjee, who started his life as a teacher, has always emphasised on quality of teaching and learning process in instituitions of higher learning in his speeches made during convocations of various universities and plugging the differences in quality of education in urban and rural areas and pleaded for inclusion of Indian universities and instituitions of higher learning among the best such institutions across the world.The fact that the speeches delivered by the President during convocation of various universities would be compiled in various languages and distributed in the varsities, will definitely help in spreading his ideas across the country.The Ministry of Human Resource Development deserves appreciation for starting these revolutionary initiatives in Education Sector.
Yours etc…
Ashok Sharma,
Housing Colony, Udhampur.