The Chennai based NGO, Tapas Trust has launched a Digital Education Program (DEP) for NIOS Board students recently for Classes 1 to 10. Tapas Trust has partnered with 11 NGOs and implemented the DEP in 19 schools in Tamil Nadu , Kerala, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, benefiting more than 1000 students from different communities, free of cost .
The Course Director and Managing Trustee, Shri S.Lakshminarayanan, explained the special features built into the content design and development, and the centralised delivery and monitoring system. This DEP covers 8 subjects and 2500 hours of core content plus revision hours covering classes 1 to 10 delivered in Hindi and English complying with the NCERT curriculum for NIOS Students. S.Lakshminarayanan, a Chartered Accountant has conceptualised and designed this program and compressed Classes 1 to 10 in 5 years, so that dropouts and children in the 9-11 age group who are not sound in the basics could start afresh and still complete Secondary education when they turn 15.
L.Shrinivaasan and L.Bhuvaneshwari have quit their formal education and have taken up this task pro bono and contributed video lectures for the 8 Subjects. The maths and science classes are delivered by L.Shrinivaasan and the languages & Home Science by L.Bhuvaneshwari .
Classes will be accessible by the Students from any part of the Country through internet using a customised LMS Application designed by the Trust. Teachers will be available online to clarify doubts, evaluate answers and provide feedback.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr C.B Sharma, Ex Chairman NIOS lauded the efforts of Tapas Trust in digitising the classes 1-10 and appreciated the quality of the content besides the utility to Students in remote areas.
Dr Uma Sivaraman, Retd. Dy Commissioner, KVS appreciated the techniques used in the content design and the focus to serve the poor girl child.
Dr C.L Ramakrishnan, Ex CBI Director, Ex DGP commented that this program is especially useful during the corona epidemic. He also appreciated the approach taken to teach languages by re- sequencing the steps and the enormous exercise of translating one million pairs of sentences in Hindi to English and vice versa.
Shri Madhavan Warrier, Chairman , Warrier Foundation one of the NGOs in whose two Schools at Kerala, where this program was launched today, profusely thanked TAPAS TRUST and also had very positive feedback of the program already implemented in their Vedic School at Panvel,Mumbai on 20th June this year.
Tapas Trust is in discussions with various NGOs to make this program available free for several lakhs of children especially in rural and hilly areas in the North , East, West, North-East parts of the country given the easy implementability and scalability.
Trust can be contacted at 9967894104/tapastrust@gmail.com.
