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Bridging the Digital Divide- An initiative by Refai Public School, Boru.
The 'divide' here refers not just to the access issue, but the issue of affordability, quality of coverage and technical skills needed so as to get the children online. However, the issue of access is primary here in our case.
What makes Refai Public School a unique case is its set up in a remote rural place. We deal with children of daily wage earners and farmers who aren't capable enough of providing technological infrastructure for their children. Most of the parents have never been to school and don't possess sound technical skills like the parents in the urban areas do. We have a herculean task at hand to educate the first generation of English language learners of the village.
The school and its teachers are the only ones the children can fall upon for their learning and the pandemic obstructed this very link. With the school being shut for almost a year, our children fell prey to the technological divide.
The COVID-19 pandemic has starkly illuminated that access to the internet is a necessity, not a nicety. The school has been successful in understanding the barriers to bridge the digital divide. The foremost obstacle is that related to infrastructure. Second is the literacy and skill barrier and finally the economic barrier.
To overcome this, the management of the school with the suggestion and consent of the staff took a progressive decision to provide electronic tablets (Lenovo M7) along with sim cards with an active data plan to the students of classes 5th, 6th, 7th and the 8th so that these obstacles can be overcome.
The school took the initiative to train the students to use apps like Zoom and Google Classroom and how to use Gmail and Google search for effective research. Also, to monitor the student activity, the school made an additional purchase of a super sophisticated UEM software by Lenovo that can trace the location of the device and lock unwanted applications and forbid the access of inappropriate content on the device. We thank our donors for their support.

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