“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”
‐ Alexander Graham Bell
“आप जिस कार्य को कर रहे हैं उस पर पूरे मनोयोग से ध्यान केंद्रित करें। सूर्य की किरणों से उस समय तक अग्नि प्रज्जवलित नहीं होती है जब तक उन्हें केन्द्रित नहीं किया जाता है।”
‐ अलेक्जेंडर ग्राहम बैल
Government
Online Learning Platforms: Students can avail courses
as per their choice through the digital portal of the learning platforms. This
e-learning platform provides both undergraduate and postgraduate courses to the
students.
The e-learning initiatives of the
central government is a digital platform through which students can approach
the different-different course by sitting at their homes. E-learning has taken
a peak due to the pandemic. Pandemic hit the education sector worst. But this
platform emerges as a big opportunity for the students. It gives a new way of
learning and knowledge. The students can learn under a common platform.
The coronavirus pandemic has
shaken the entire nation as well as the world and education is one of the
worst-hit during this impending crisis. College and university have been closed
for more than 6 months to curb the spread of the pandemic. And it inversely
impacted both the teachers and students. Those who completely depended on the
traditional method of learning, suffering the most. In this concern, the government
comes in front to save our future. E-learning is a major setback for students
and teachers who can no longer access learning sources through the traditional
model of learning.
To overcome this crisis, the
government of India has taken several ICT information communication technology
initiatives through the Ministry of Education and the UGC University Grant
Commission to launch a free electronic learning or e-learning platform for
students.
These online platforms offer many
facilities to students, teachers, researchers, learners, tutors, where they can
interconnect with each other under the same platform. These courses are
available for both undergraduate and postgraduates students and conduct live
online lectures; contain course content, quizzes, online test, and multimedia
presentations to make them more interesting for students.
Here we are presenting the top
e-learning platform launched by the Indian Government and the Ministry of HRD
(Education Ministry).
SWAYAM was launched on 9 July 2017
by the Ministry of Education. It is an initiative under the Digital India
campaign was undertaken by the GOI in 2015. The platform has been designed to
give the best quality education to students, undergraduate, and postgraduate
students in India.
The portal offers free printable
and downloadable study materials, video lectures, discussion forums, and online
tests from over 1600 courses. After successful completion of the course,
students can get a certificate in exchange for a token fee.
Students
can access the website at https://swayam.gov.in or download the mobile
application from Google play store. You can register at the SWAYAM portal
through a valid email ID or Facebook or Google plus accounts.
This
portal accredited by:
AICTC
IGNOU
NCERT
UGC
CEC
NITTR
NIOS
IIMB
This portal has been initiated by
the Ministry of Education in September 2017 to facilitate advance digital
learning for teachers from classes 1 to 12. The digital portal has been mainly
designed for teacher education but is also available for students who want to
connect to the teacher’s community. DIKSHA offers training courses, worksheets,
lesson videos, curriculum, and assessment tests for teachers.
One
of the unique features of this platform is the QR code which can be scanned to
gain access to a platform of learning material and eBook. More than 80,000
eBooks are available for class 12th students in multiple languages. Android and
iOS users can download the application from the Google Store or iOS app store.
You can visit the official website for more details here disha.gov.in.
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Swayam Prabha was conceptualized
by the Ministry of Education the consists of a collection of 32 DTH channels
that will telecast educational channel 24×7 for students across India. Each
day, the channel will telecast a new content of 4 –hour duration
will be
shown 5 times a day so that students can select the time and watch the programs
according to their schedule. Contents are available for students of class 12,
Undergraduate and postgraduate. Students can visit www.swayamprabha.gov.in for,
more details.
Virtual Lab is a digital
consortium founded by the Government of India in association with the Education
Ministry under the NME-ICT initiation. The main idea is to provide remote
access to virtual laboratories for students from science and engineering
streams from both UG and PG level. This consortium is conducted by IIT Delhi
and has around 12 participating institutes. The project consists of more than
700 web experiments and lab facilities under the supervision of experienced
faculty.
E-Shodhsindhu
jointly planned by the Ministry of Education and the Government of India is a
digital library offering access to e-resources like journals, eBooks, factual,
bibliographies, citations, etc. for higher education.
This portal is offering services to all academic institutions like central and
state universities and colleges.
For more details, students can visit the official site at https://ess.inflibnet.ac.in/oes.
e-PG Pathshala is an online portal
for postgraduate courses started by the Ministry of Education under NME-ICT
(National Mission on Education Through ICT) and the UGC. Under this drive, over
700 eBooks in over 68 PG courses will be available for free for students.
The online portal is loaded with
high-quality text contents, videos, tutorials, documents, PDFs file, etc. There
are three quadrants under the e-PG Pathshala module namely:
e-Adhyayan consists of e-book and video
materials.·
MOOC (MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES) UGC
courses offered under the SWAYAM portal·
E-Pathya provides offline and
distance-learning courses for PG students.·
The
students who want to apply for the PG courses, this portal is a clear opportunity
to avail of all
the PG programs.
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Read: Best Websites For Free Online Education
The National Digital Library NDLI
developed under NME-ICT by the education ministry through NME-ICT is a virtual
repository consisting of academic contents in multiple disciplines from school
to post-graduation level. It is a multipurpose platform designed for the
consideration of students of all ages. This platform is also beneficial for
teachers, learners, researchers, librarians, professionals, and other users.
The
students and other users can avail of this platform at any time 24×7 and it
provides its services in more than 70 Indian languages. A wide variety of
learning resources are available including E-book, video, thesis, documents,
and manuscripts, etc. for the web version, users can visit https://ndl.iitkgp.ac.in.
NPTEL is another project funded by
the Government of India in collaboration with the Education Ministry. It was a
collective initiative taken by the Institute of Science, Bangalore, and 7 other
IIT Institute (Delhi, Kanpur, Roorkee, Madras, Bombay, Kharagpur, Guwahati and
Madras.)
The
online repository offers various courses in the field of engineering, science,
social science, and humanities. There are no course fees, however,
certification exams will cost an INR 1000 per candidate. For more details,
students can visit at http://nptel.ac.in
The online platforms have been
designed for the purpose of providing a better education environment at the
time of crisis. These platforms are playing a major role in today’s world of
the pandemic. It will help millions of users to avail of their course and
research work.
India is home to about 30 per cent of the world’s stunted children and nearly 50 per cent of severely wasted children under the age of five. Malnutrition remains the predominant risk factor for child deaths, accounting for 68 per cent of total under-five deaths and 17 per cent of the total disability-adjusted life years. Nutrition is not a peripheral concern. It is central to our existence. Increased food and nutrition insecurity severely weakens our immune systems and contributes to poor growth, intellectual impairment, and lowers human capital and development prospects.
COVID-19 has posed serious threats to children and their health and nutritional rights. According to recent estimates, even in the best possible scenario and accounting for changes in the provision of essential health and nutrition services due to COVID-19, India could have around additional 60,000 child deaths (around 3,00,000 in the worst-case scenario) in the next six months. Based on evidence from the field, there is a need to explore possible solutions and putting forward key policy and programme proposals for the integrated management of acute malnutrition and mitigating the impact of COVID-19.
Inadequate dietary intake and disease are directly responsible for undernutrition, but multiple indirect determinants exacerbate these causes. These include food insecurity, inadequate childcare practices, low maternal education, poor access to health services, lack of access to clean water and sanitation, and poor hygiene practices.
The lockdown disrupted access to essential services, including mid-day meals, which are not only a nutritional measure to supplement some portion of a child’s calorie needs but is also a tool to access education. Through a concurrent rapid needs assessment in its programme areas, carried out in June 2020 across 14 states and 2 union territories, and covering 7235 respondents, Save the Children found that around 40 per cent of eligible children have not received mid-day meal during the lockdown.
There is a steady and silent revolution taking place in the field of nutrition, with an ever-increasing political will on the issue. This should be sustained throughout the year and in the coming years. Since the pandemic has pushed back our efforts on ending malnutrition by a few years, here are some immediate steps that need to be taken to address the issues.
First, core indicators across the lifecycle should be prioritised and reviewed at all levels (national, state, district, and block). Second, for easy and sustained access to nutritious food, we need to bring the spotlight back on locally-available, low-cost nutritious food. We also need to maximise maternal, infant and young child nutrition actions.
Third, we need to strengthen take-home ration and mid-day meal service delivery strategies to ensure the continuation of services and coverage of the most vulnerable communities, especially in urban areas. Fourth, child-sensitive social protection schemes, like PMMVY, need to be implemented in a way so that they reach the last child.
Fifth, strict measures are needed to ensure that the PDS is accessible to all, especially the vulnerable population. Sixth, efforts to ascertain allocation and distribution of additional food supply to the most vulnerable population and to ensure food security under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojna (PMGKAY) for next five months, need to be undertaken urgently. Finally, the use of newer technologies in service delivery, data management, evidence generation and real-time monitoring will help this process.
Given the range of drivers of nutrition — spanning multiple sectors of agriculture, social protection, health, WASH, and education — tackling undernutrition demands a multi-sectorial response. Political, cultural, social, and economic factors also play a role. Nutrition interventions are not sufficient to tackle the problem of undernutrition: Even at 90 per cent coverage, the core set of proven nutrition-specific interventions would only decrease stunting by 20 per cent. Reducing under-nutrition requires effective implementation of both nutrition-specific and complementary nutrition-sensitive interventions, addressing the underlying and basic causes of undernutrition.
Antaryami Dash
The writer is head of nutrition at Save the Children.
Source: Indian Express, 25/09/20
“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
‐ A. A. Milne, author (1882-1956)
“नदियों को पता है: कोई जल्दी नहीं है। हम सब एक दिन गंतव्य तक पहुंच ही जाएंगे।”
‐ ए ए मिलने, लेखक (1882-1956)