Delhi govt school teachers to use WhatsApp, YouTube as teaching tools

Nearly 500 government teachers and principals were sent abroad by the government to learn new teaching methods and gain leadership qualities

For his next class with Class 10 students on History and Geography maps, Tarun Bhasin, a teacher at a government school in northwest Delhi, is preparing a PowerPoint presentation (PPT) and collecting related videos to teach students.

Government school teachers are being motivated to use technology in a bid to augment the teaching-learning practices. (Burhaan Kinu/HT FILE)

Bhasin’s PPT may soon be uploaded on video sharing website YouTube and shared on instant messenger WhatsApp to motivate other teachers to use such innovative learning methods.

The idea to use such channels was suggested by the education minister Manish Sisodia and officials from the Directorate of Education (DoE) during an interaction with government school teachers last week, who had then come back from an educational trip from Singapore.

In the last two years, at least 500 government teachers and principals were sent by the government to the National Institute of Education, Singapore, Cambridge University, United Kingdom, and Indian Institutes of Management in Lucknow and Ahmedabad, to gain leadership qualities and learn new teaching methods.

This was done to initiate use of technology in government schools to augment the teaching-learning practices.

Atishi Marlena, advisor to the education minister, said that the government will start a YouTube channel soon for teachers to share videos of their lectures and other innovative classroom practices. “This will serve two purposes — one will be of peer learning as other teachers will get motivated and second will be for students, who can see these videos and learn,” she said.

An official from the education department said the dedicated DoE YouTube channel will start in a month or two. “There will be an editorial team, including tech-savvy teachers, to edit the videos and look at the content before uploading it,” the official said.

Sisodia also suggested that teachers should form WhatsApp groups to share their ideas so that others can use it in their classrooms. Sisodia told the teachers: “If someone starts sharing good morning and good night messages, just remove them. The focus should be on motivating others to adapt ideas that are working well with students.”

While the government schools are now thinking about using technology, many private schools in the capital have been doing this for years.

Students of Modern School at Barakhamba Road, New Delhi, are allotted a personal account and password where they can access videos and PPTs used by the teachers to explain a chapter.“This has allowed us to explain key words from any chapter with help of videos and hyperlinks. We have also digitised many NCERT books and students can access them even before lectures,” said Gautam Sarkar, computer science teacher at the school.