In view of closure of all public and private schools across the province due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Sindh Education & Literacy Department (SELD) has announced online classes for students of public schools. The department in a tripartite collaboration with UNICEF and Microsoft has established an online digital classroom platform for 6 to 12 graders, according to a notification issued to this effect. “This is a contemporary distance education mechanism built with the purpose to facilitate online continued teaching & learning process across the province,” it reads. As of now, a core group of 75 master trainers has been trained to conduct online large-scale training of teachers for virtual classrooms in order to continue to impart education to students amid the lockdown. Moreover, the education department said, a pilot exercise has also been successfully conducted with 81 teachers, 1980 students of three public schools to gauge the viability of the Digital Classroom Platform. “To move forward on this, ELD is aiming to: a, collect district-wise, school & class-wise data of teachers and students to set up Digital Classrooms and create email IDs of respective Microsoft Teams (teachers and their students); b, conduct large scale online training of teachers through the trained MTs,” the notification read.
