Krishnagar, April 16: The Krishnagar Public School (KPS) authorities, who launched online classes for Class I to XII on March 25 due to lockdown, have come up to provide eBooks for the students so that they can go through the text contents while attending virtual classes.
When students of many schools despite undergoing online classes have been suffering due to the absence of books, the CBSE affiliated premier English medium school in the town, had urged the publishers to provide e-books for all students as per the booklist. The school could not provide hard copies of enlisted books for the session to the students due to the nationwide lockdown aimed to fight Covid. School authorities were elated when the publishers agreed to send the eBooks for all students.
Principal of the school, Sankar Prasad Dutta said, “We begun online classes within three two days since lockdown was announced. But, eventually, we found that online classes alone are not enough without ample support textbooks and study materials. The eBook versions of the NCERT’s textbooks are available on its web site. But to arrange the same for the supplementary books, I individually emailed the publishers so that they could help the students”.
“We are very happy that all the publishers agreed to supply eBooks of all the enlisted ones in the PDF file format. This has enabled our students of all the classes to consult course content in text form while undergoing online lessons from their class teachers”, Dutta added.
Krishnagar Public School, which has at present 1100 students from class I to XII, completed the selection of books and admission process for the new session by March 16.
“We found that conducting online classes alone was not enough. The students are needed to be provided with ample supporting materials since they are without books” – Sankar Prasad Dutta, Principal, KPS
“We are all set to begin the new session in April. But, the nationwide lockdown announced by the central government to fight the Coronavirus disease unsettled the schedule. So once the lockdown was announced we decided not to waste time and begun online classes”, a teacher of the school said.
The teachers, however, eventually realized that online classes only will not able to create coveted interest among the students.
“There were several challenges as the school caters to students from various socio-economic backgrounds. We found that conducting online classes alone was not enough. They needed to be provided with ample support materials and other guidance as most of the students were without books”, the teacher added.
“We discussed the issue with our Principal and the management, when the Principal took the initiative to approach
the publishers to provide the eBooks. We, however, had obtained requisition from the students and ensured that the publishers to supply the hard copies once lockdown is withdrawn”, the teacher added.
Principal Dutta said, “The publishers provided the eBooks for students from Class I to XII as per the booklist. These eBooks will be extremely helpful to the students until and unless the publishers are able to supply the hard copies of the books”.
“We have heard some school authorities are also providing soft materials of the course study to the students downloading from different web sites. We too can do that. But, it may lead to a problem when the students would get the enlisted books as by the time they were habituated to certain other materials. So we specifically tried to get the eBooks of those which we have selected for the session”.
“Moreover, many students often fail to access online classes due to poor data speed. So studying a eBooks along with watching the recorded video and audio clip of the class lectures of their teachers shared to them later will also benefit them largely”, the Principal added further.