Delhi govt trains principals, teachers to handle social media

Ringing in technology in the education sector, Delhi government today launched a mobile app for assisting the newly-appointed estate managers in state-run schools while teaching the basics of Facebook and Twitter to the principals, in a bid to help them in "peer learning".
The mobile app, developed by a private entity, will enable the estate managers, who have been tasked with looking after maintenance of schools, to send their inspection reports to the department, letting the principals to focus strictly on education.
The app will be integrated into the system in such a way that top officials in the department and Education Minister Manish Sisodia himself will receive the reports everyday.

"In three months, the public will also be able to access the app...All the government schools in Delhi are being built in line with the 'pilot' schools, 54 of which have been developed in the first phase," Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said at its launch in Thyagaraj Stadium here.
Addressing the gathering of estate managers and school principals, Sisodia said, "We are training our teachers and principals in social media so that they can do peer learning and share their experiences with teachers from across the world through Facebook and Twitter."
AAP social media head Abhinav trained the principals and teachers at a session here.

In his speech, Kejriwal touched upon the issue of private schools, a few of which have recently expressed concern over AAP government's attempts to regulate them. The CM said some of the private schools were being run as "businesses".

"It's not that we have anything against private schools. But we want to dismantle the system where we take for granted that rich kids will go to private schools and poor kids to government schools.
Sisodia said that even videos can be uploaded through the
mobile app, developed by 'Mindtree', who have earlier implemented the model in Gujarat and Rajasthan.
"In the pilot phase, being used for the last five weeks, as many as 7,320 cases have been solved using the app out of which 3,492 pertain to maintenance, 2,151 to sanitation and the rest 1,677 to security," an executive of 'Mindtree' said.

However, during the interactive session with the CM and deputy CM, many estate managers complained that the issues flagged by them have not been looked into.
Kejriwal asked the estate managers to prepare a list of all the issues in the next 15 days, which he said, the government will try to resolve.
"Most of the estate managers are drawn from the forces. I want them to treat schools as another border where their services are required," Sisodia said.
The estate managers, who have been recruited on a contract of one year, are being paid Rs 25,000 per month.
Kejriwal said it was perhaps the first time where principals were given a free hand to recruit estate managers for their schools.

"Now any sort of excuses won't be entertained," he said.
Sisodia added that technological interventions and investment would go waste if students were unable to read or write properly.
"It's but a fact that in many schools, students of class seven, eight, nine and even ten can't read textbooks. During a recent visit to a school, I found that 20 per cent students of class ten could not write the spellings of 'vidyalaya' (school), brahman and 'aap ki' (mine)," he said.