More than 4 lakh AP students set to receive personal tabs with hi-tech educational tools

Chintapallii (ASR district): Celebrating his birthday in the tribal region with students, chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy formally launched the distribution of educational electronic tablets to Class VIII students on Thursday.

Addressing a large public meeting of schoolchildren and their parents, the chief minister said that the children are our future and the State government has been spending huge amounts on educational reforms to turn students into global products.

Tabs to have AI help

The distribution of tabs worth Rs 620 crores to 4,34,285 students will take place for the next 10 days across the State and MLAs, school teachers and Education Department officials will oversee the distribution in every mandal.

He said that each tab is worth Rs 33,000 including Byju’s content worth Rs 15,500 and reiterated that investment in education is a productive investment in future human resources. “The study material-loaded tabs would guide the students as tutors and change their future for good,” he said.

The tabs would contain useful applications like AI (Artificial Intelligence)-aided doubt-clearance and learning foreign languages apps, he said, stating that they would work like teachers and help students improve their knowledge.

Dismissing reports that the students are going astray with the tabs, he said that parents would be able to track the way they are used by their children.

This is the second consecutive year that the tabs are being distributed to the students of Class VIII, and so far, the government has distributed 9,52,925 tabs worth Rs 1,306 crores.

Bid to meet global educational standards

CM Jagan said that the distribution of tabs is also one of the programmes taken up as part of reforms being implemented in the educational sector aiming at improving the standards of students and making them globally acceptable products with knowledge of emerging technologies.

The digitalisation of 62,097 classrooms from Class VI and above would be completed by the end of January and it would help students become the best in the world, he said, observing that the facade of education and the job market would change in the next 20 years.

In tune with the changing world, the government will introduce future skills like training for students of Class VIII and above from the next academic year so that they will learn advanced subjects like cyber security, virtual reality, AI, machine learning, augmented reality and data and robotic analytics along with IB (International Baccalaureate) syllabus and efforts are on to appoint tutors and train them.

“With TOEFL training being given to students from Class III onwards, the introduction of bilingual textbooks and more and more students joining English medium schools, government schools are competing with corporate schools,” he said, adding that pro-educational welfare schemes like Jagananna Vidya Deevena, Amma Vodi and Vasathi Deevena are also giving desired results.