Get Trained While You Teach

Karnataka

Meghshala began its journey in the home state of Karnataka. Beginning with a cohort of 29 schools with the state syllabus, soon our content made its way outside Bangalore to Mysuru and Balpa. As our numbers grew, we met the challenge of internet connectivity by taking the help of offline content service providers. With the launch of the Meghshala Android App Launch, we managed to achieve the scale we had always aspired for. When most of the country turned to the NCERT, we quickly set to creating e-lessons based on the new curriculum. With the help of several benevolent funders and CSR initiatives, we kept adding to the number of schools, both in Bangalore and Mysuru. Further accelerating our reach, we managed to translate our content into Kannada. Over the years, our educational work with vulnerable populations has provided deep insights into educational challenges and the lesson content is dealt with sensitively with issues that concern vulnerable communities such as 100 schools in flood-affected areas of Kodagu and 85+ schools across Karnataka. We identified the need in Kalburgi, the largest district in Karnataka and impacted close to 272 schools despite the challenges caused by the pandemic.

Meghshala has always gone where the need is the most and when we heard of the unique challenges of the North East we decided to overcome geographical barriers and implement across five districts of Manipur impacting nearly 500 schools. Hiring local implementation was our move to keep in constant touch with our teachers on the ground.   Local talent also came to our aid when we hired to contextualise NCERT-aligned lessons to the northeast region, which teachers and other stakeholders could then download for free from the app.. Our innovative solutions included an offline content box containing all 4000+ lessons. This was specially developed by Meghshala’s tech team to assist schools and teachers where there is no internet connectivity. Another innovation was the digital feedback form that collected feedback using a QR code scanning method thus reducing the use of paper.

Our implementation associates braved difficult terrain and in some cases Implementation team took hours and in some cases, they took more than a day to reach one school. 

Sikkim

Manipur gave us the much needed knowledge to further our intervention in the seven sister states and in 2019 we were invited to Sikkim. Inaugurating our program in the most beautiful of the northeast states was a pleasure. 

We signed on with  200 schools. Interactive and engaging sessions were held in four districts of Gangtok, Mangan, Gyalshing (Geyzing) and Namchi. The professionalism of the teachers; their punctuality and impeccable sense of style was a great motivation for us. In a completely new initiative, Meghshala engaged state government officials directly and trained 29 cluster resource centre coordinators (CRCC) from four districts alongside teachers on Meghshala content pedagogy. This was to incentivise governments to adopt new technologies into their processes to streamline, monitor and acquire accurate feedback from the ground.

When the pandemic slowed down our work, we came up with innovative solutions, to keep our teachers motivated. In two phases we provided  DIET faculty with online training guidance. . Our implementation team went into their neighbourhoods an spoke to parents, private tutors and other community members, encouraging them to use Meghshala for their children’s online education. Private tutors used the material for primary grades to assist their teaching.

The Sikkim team recorded Meghshala content of grades 1 to 8 for Math, Science and Social Studies. These grades and subjects were chosen as the content matched the textbooks. In total, 560 videos were recorded. Meghshala conducted in-person teacher training for low-income private school in Sang, East Sikkim. Our well-developed voice-over lessons,  uploaded it on YouTube for additional student learning support was a handy tool and we also started broadcasting lessons on state television channels.

Meghalaya

In the state of Meghalaya, our first intervention was in East Garo Hills District. Our project was all set to start, but within a few days, a nationwide lockdown was announced. However, we soldiered on and with the help of the education department, we connected with three Block Mission coordinators (BMCs). Once they understood our project, they helped us reach 80 schools and 160 teachers

Our major concern was our teachers in remote locations in Meghalaya and we tackled this challenge by distributing tabs and phones preloaded with Meghshala content which could be accessed offline. To ease the teachers into the totally new online mode of teaching, we conducted online training sessions on how to use the app, how to record Meghshala lessons for their Whatsapp class groups and provided lesson translations in the Garo language which we then made available on our YouTube channel.

When the state opened schools for 6th graders and above, we actively participated in 100 schools for a Teacher Enablement Project. This training introduced the Classroom Recovery Program which was newly uploaded on the app. As teachers were trying to complete the syllabus for the annual exams, the program was a just-in-time solution. Our team also walked them through the usage report and set small achievable goals for the teachers.  Post the first in-person training for education functionaries in East Garo Hills District, we extended our intervention to twenty schools in East Khasi Hills District. Our trained teams were on the field in both districts. We simultaneously conducted teacher self-assessments through online surveys. Currently, we have successfully implemented the Teacher Enablement Program in Meghalaya in 200 Government run schools. The impact that we are noticing is on the rise. We have directly impacted 10000+ students and 400+ teachers.

Delhi

Our latest intervention was in the capital city, thanks to Salesforce that heard about our work. In partnership with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi(MCD) in 2022, we adopted 50 schools under them and signed on with the Directorate of Education(DOE) and adopted 50 more schools.  

We now directly support 300 government school teachers with our preloaded content on hardware. Our content has been customized in the Hindi language to cater to Delhi's Hindi medium government schools.

Watch our documentary on Meghshala’s intervention in Sikkim and Meghalaya