Fourteen-year-old Jhanvi* accidentally fell off the roof of her home two years ago, suffering a traumatic brain injury that took away her ability to read and write for many months.
Fearing that she couldnt catch up with the pace of her syllabus, Jhanvi refused to go to school and stayed at home, helping her mother with chores.
But last year, she got a chance to take up her studies again from where she had left as she discovered a Digital Learning Centre in her own neighbourhood in Uttam Nagar in west Delhi.
These centres have provided opportunities to girls like Jhanvi, who have dropped out from school for various reasons, to learn at their own pace, free of cost.
An initiative by NGO Plan India, the learning centres make use of technology to provide education to adolescent girls living in urban slums across Delhi-NCR, in their own backyard, overcoming the challenge of limited mobility.
How do these centres work?
A resource hub is located in Dwarkas Kakrola area from where lessons are taught by teachers and messages are passed on in the form of video to 15 different centres in Holambi Kala, Rangpuri, and Uttam Nagar. Each centre has a learning facilitator and a microphone through which children can clarify doubts.
The teacher writes the lesson on a digital white board with the help of a computer which then is accessed by students across the centres. The teacher can monitor live feed from all the centres.
Besides the dropouts, a large number of government school students come to these centres after their regular classes in order to "understand concepts better", as Neena* a class 10 student, puts it.
"When I first came to know about it, I was confused what exactly is a smart class. But now I think, I learn more here than in school," she said. She attends the Uttam Nagar centre daily after her school. The two-hour module covers a different subject everyday - from English, Social Studies and Science to topics like personality development and career options after class 12.
Vibha*, a class 10 student at a government school, says her queries on some topics are mostly ignored by her class teacher in school. But at the learning centre she can ask questions with the help of the microphone anytime.
The aim of the initiative was also to provide learning facilities within the communities so that girls dont have to travel far.
"In our surveys we noticed that girls face mobility issues and families dont prefer to send girls somewhere outside their neighbourhood to study. Also, these children cannot afford private tuition after school. That is when we thought how to use technology to address this and use digital medium to impart education in their backyards," said a Plan official.
Fearing that she couldnt catch up with the pace of her syllabus, Jhanvi refused to go to school and stayed at home, helping her mother with chores.
But last year, she got a chance to take up her studies again from where she had left as she discovered a Digital Learning Centre in her own neighbourhood in Uttam Nagar in west Delhi.
These centres have provided opportunities to girls like Jhanvi, who have dropped out from school for various reasons, to learn at their own pace, free of cost.
An initiative by NGO Plan India, the learning centres make use of technology to provide education to adolescent girls living in urban slums across Delhi-NCR, in their own backyard, overcoming the challenge of limited mobility.
How do these centres work?
A resource hub is located in Dwarkas Kakrola area from where lessons are taught by teachers and messages are passed on in the form of video to 15 different centres in Holambi Kala, Rangpuri, and Uttam Nagar. Each centre has a learning facilitator and a microphone through which children can clarify doubts.
The teacher writes the lesson on a digital white board with the help of a computer which then is accessed by students across the centres. The teacher can monitor live feed from all the centres.
Besides the dropouts, a large number of government school students come to these centres after their regular classes in order to "understand concepts better", as Neena* a class 10 student, puts it.
"When I first came to know about it, I was confused what exactly is a smart class. But now I think, I learn more here than in school," she said. She attends the Uttam Nagar centre daily after her school. The two-hour module covers a different subject everyday - from English, Social Studies and Science to topics like personality development and career options after class 12.
Vibha*, a class 10 student at a government school, says her queries on some topics are mostly ignored by her class teacher in school. But at the learning centre she can ask questions with the help of the microphone anytime.
The aim of the initiative was also to provide learning facilities within the communities so that girls dont have to travel far.
"In our surveys we noticed that girls face mobility issues and families dont prefer to send girls somewhere outside their neighbourhood to study. Also, these children cannot afford private tuition after school. That is when we thought how to use technology to address this and use digital medium to impart education in their backyards," said a Plan official.