SHIKSHA Initiative team visited Department of Basic Education, Uttar Pradesh on April 24, 2019. During the meet, Dr. Sarvendra Vikram Bahadur Singh Director, Department of Basic Education (DoBE), Ms. Lalita Pradeep Additional Director, DoBE, Mr. Amrendra Singh – Additional Director, DoBE, Mr. Robin Sarkar Project Director, SHIKSHA Initiative along with other team members of SHIKSHA Initiative were present.

On March 8, 2019, meeting was held between SHIKSHA Initiative and Mr. Balveer Bhati, former Head of the Block, Sikandrabad with an objective to apprise him about SHIKSHA Initiative. He was well-versed about SHIKSHA Initiative, ICT based education along with SHIKSHA* programme by Mr. Lalitendra Bhartiya, Deputy Project Manager (DPM), SHIKSHA Initiative.

Here we go with the story of SHIKSHA, which changed the conventional method of teaching in rural areas of the district Sitapur to an ICT enabled teaching.

Development programs are designed in a way which can bring the change in the outcomes like improved learning, raised incomes of poor, better health & hygiene and so on.

SHIKSHA Initiative is soaring high and expanding its dimensions day-by-day to achieve the goal ‘Eradication of Illiteracy’. Moving to newer districts and adopting new modals along with operating SHIKSHA⁺ centre at Gautam Buddha Nagar District Jail is one step forwards the goal.

At the very basic level, differentiated learning is the efforts of teachers/instructors to respond to variance among learners in a conventional classroom. Teacher/instructor reaching out to an individual learner or small group to vary his/her teaching in order to create the best possible learning experience, it can be defined as teacher’s differentiating instruction/approach.

Importance of the same is being explained scientifically by Dr. Mary Kalantzis (https://fr.coursera.org/learn/elearning/lecture/k1a4A/recursive-feedback-part-4a-why-feedback-matters). For organization like SHIKSHA Initiative it become more important to have the recursive feedback, which become more important to develop Digital content more effective for the effectiveness of the program.

Developing any eLearning content is a multidisciplinary effort and requires synchronized skill set from different expertise. SHIKSHA Initiative content follows a stringent and state-of-the-art development process to benefit its target audience in every possible way. Delivery manager, works closely with various verticals of development team and stakeholders from SHIKSHA Initiative.

SHIKSHA Initiative has entered into a new phase in the dawn of this month. The hyper-scale model of SHIKSHA⁺ got approved by the apex leadership making us committed to reaching out to 5000 adult learners in the running fiscal year. This way SHIKSHA family will also expand considerably by coming quarter.I personally felicitate individual team member, who toiled day and night to convert this dream into reality. At the same time wish for the best of planning and execution of this prestigious responsibility.

Roshni Nadar Malhotra, a Trustee of the Shiv Nadar Foundation visited government primary schools (P.S.), namely P.S. Kamlapur, P.S. Kasmanda I and SHIKSHA⁺ Centre of village Narayanpur on February 28, 2018, wherein ICT enabled education has been introduced by SHIKSHA Initiative. While interacting with the school principal and teachers, Roshni laid emphasis on the importance of teacher’s training and their regularity.

SHIKSHA Initiative organized “Microsoft Office Training Program” for its employees in both the locations- CoE (Dadri) and Expansion (Kasmanda). Basic and Advanced training was imparted to the employees post assessing their need in daily operations and identifying their current skill level. The training was organized in four batches – three (two basic and one advanced) in Dadri and one batch of basic training in Kasmanda. In total, training was attended by 100 participants in SNU and VidyaGyan, Sitapur campus respectively.

Happy new year to you all. I hope you celebrated the start of 2018 in good spirits with family and friends. As we welcome New Year, I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the past year, the journey we’ve taken to get to where we are and the plans we have for an exciting, bright future in the New Year.

To tap the hidden talents of our little champs, SHIKSHA Initiative celebrated Baal Diwas on 14th November 2017. The celebration started with a drawing competition followed by recitation competition for Grade I students. During recitation competition, the students were singing rhyme with actions. The adorable actions and drawing skills of our tiny tots left the audience amazed.

SHIKSHA Initiative has signed an agreement with Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow to conduct in-depth impact evaluation study of SHIKSHA elementary. The study will be conducted in the primary schools of Kasmanda block of Sitapur District in Uttar Pradesh. It will explore and investigate the introduction of ICT in schools, in order to understand the potential impacts on various stakeholders i.e. students, teachers and parents.

Active learning can be defined as a teaching method involving active participation of learners through numerous techniques of learning. It can range from conventional techniques i.e. reading, writing, discussing to modern ways of teaching i.e. ICT, project-based learning, gamification, or interactive learning methods.

Roshni Nadar Malhotra, a Trustee of the Shiv Nadar Foundation and Sundararajan Mahalingam, Chief Strategy Officer, Shiv Nadar Foundation visited government primary schools (P.S.), namely P.S. Patara Kala and P.S. Mohanpur on 21^st August 2017, wherein ICT enabled education has been introduced by the innovative SHIKSHA Initiative.

SHIKSHA Initiative has strategically intensified into adult literacy approach entitled as SHIKSHA⁺ that uses an ICT based methodology to teach the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic skills to illiterate adults who have not attended a formal school. With this objective, SHIKSHA⁺ was initiated in Kasmanda block of Sitapur district. Prior to implementation, social mapping was done to encourage and help community to get directly involved in their development and to identify centre locations. Also, focused group discussions were held with an objective to sensitize community on adult literacy.