Value Creation for society - My personal lockdown story!
Updated: Sep 7, 2020
Pandemic had been disruptive in all terms .Even for online enterprises which had their supply chain operations disrupted due to mobility constraints.
Now let me bring your attention to only the education sector in India. We have seen colleges and universities in India expediting their transformation into virtual spaces to keep the academics in pace which is appreciative. That wont be a challenge with UG /PG students who already have the dexterity to handle such platforms unless one cant afford a system or stable network from the remote areas where they live . Come to schooling part where we have the extravagant and ostentatious private schools competing among each other to display their redundant services because they are paying for the IT infrastructure . I have even seen certain schools introducing augmented reality into picture to level up their competition.
Well there is a category of students who might go unnoticed because they cant afford to pay for such services and they belong to a typical government school where above 70% of the families are financially vulnerable and send their children majorly to benefit from subsidies and perks from the government. .My story is about one such government run school in my locality where my mother is a teacher .One day during the lock down I overheard some voice clips from parents of her students expressing grievances on the future of their children .They were dissatisfied with the new system of learning and yearning for some stimulus to motivate the depressed kids. I believe that was the same day when I read the news of a child from the near district who committed suicide due to depression from her disrupted classes.
For at once I took a firm decision to support these kids , with whatever resource I possibly could. I spearheaded into that moment with an offer for online exams .I requested the teachers to mail the questions along with answer keys. Since then until now around 5 to 6 weekly exams have been successfully conducted. I made it possible with the power of google forms making it as much as interesting as I could with GIFS , JPEG added to the "match the following " , One word and MCQ questions.I could also limit the time of paper with a special add-on called timify from G -suite .But then half the students never had a gmail which was again a challenge to activate such plug-ins. Nevertheless , I controlled it using manual feature and then automated the exams by adding the answer keys into it.The following were the values i believe have imparted into their lives:
The kids had their first online exam since 3 months after lock down.I could impart happiness into atleast 400 families who were excited to see their kids attend their first online exam. through their phones.
The submission of their exam followed a scorecard along with answer keys which helped the students to get a live feedback on their performance.
The students had their first appearance for MCQs , which will enable them with confidence for competitive entrance examinations .
A detailed summary analysis of the examination was sent to each parent which included details like the questions which had highest errors made which would help the kids to focus on the important concepts.
The experience kept motivating them to yearn for more learning and they awaited every week with excitement for the next exam since then.
My immense gratitude towards the G-suite applications enabling individuals like me with power of value creation for the community surrounding me through robust and user friendly tools.I'm also glad that I have gained dexterity over them.
The intention here is to convey that sometimes or may be most of the time we are ending up working or innovating something new to meet the needs or challenges that we come across . But look around us , we are redundant with tools and technologies that can solve or make surviving in this pandemic easier. Also , there are really people who might need a little help in getting acquainted to these tools. Support them, help the world in its digitalisation roadmap!
We should definitely work harder for our organisation which is in fact our second home! But also contribute independently through the skills procured towards imparting value to the society!
So tell me , How did you save the world during this lockdown???
