School Textbooks Shall Soon Consist of QR Codes

The world of today is a technology driven world. Technology has made its presence immensely visible in all fields of the present day world. Just like technology has taken over in almost all sectors and fields, the education sector is no behind.

Lately the state government has announced that the school textbooks that will be supplied by the state government for classes 6 to 10th will consist of QR codes. This shall help the students, teachers and parents to download the study material digitally. This new initiative has been taken by the Department of State Education Research and Training (DSERT). It will be implemented in the present academy year itself. It is speculated that the QR code will be present on the textbooks of mathematics, science, English initially. This way the students will be able to refer to additional text to understand and learn the subject in a better way. These QR codes will initially be introduced and printed only in English and Kannada medium. Later on textbooks in all languages shall have these QR code scanning facilities. In order to support this initiative, the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development MHRD has come up with a new mobile phone application known as “Diksha”. This application will be used to scan the QR code. The students would be required to scan the QR code printed on the textbooks with the help of the phone which contains the downloaded mobile application. After scanning the code, the mobile app will itself take the user to more information and detailed information on a particular subject. The DSERT officials have informed that the study material will not be open only text -based information but will also include audio and visual study material. Teachers, students and parents all can make use of this application and derive its benefits. The teachers can easily make use of this application in order to teach and demonstrate a particular lesson or subject to the students in the classroom. The officials stated that there was an urgent need to upgrade the textbooks. This initiative of the DSERT is on the same front. The students of classes 6th to 10th who are following the NCERT syllabus can make use of this application. Indeed education is a very important need of our country. The DSERT is hopeful that this initiative will benefit the teachers, students and the parents to a great extent.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/bengaluru/2018/oct/29/school-textbooks-to-turn-smarter-with-qr-codes-from-this-year-1891393.amp