Google today announced that it has partnered with CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) to help create a ‘blended learning experience’ with help from over 1 million teachers across 22,000 schools by the end of 2020.
Under this program, Google aims to train over 1 million teachers to combine their old traditional methods of offline teaching with online learning. This will create a blended learning experience with the help of free tools, such as G Suite for Education, Google Classroom, YouTube, and more the company will provide them access to.
The company did not dwell on the details. But, a program like this will certainly come handy at a time like this, where most students are cooped up at home – learning over Zoom or Google Meet video calls. The schools in India have been closed ever since the lockdown started back in March earlier this year.
In its official blog post, Google further adds that it will attempt to reach students that do not own a smartphone or lack Internet services using other mediums such as radio and TV. The company also expands the reach of its ‘Read Along’ app (formerly known as Bolo) to 180 countries to help users learn reading and comprehension skills in nine languages.
The company has also announced a $1 million grant for India’s Kaivalya Education Foundation (KEF) under its Global Distance Learning fund. As per the blog post, the foundation will partner with the ‘Central Square Foundation and TeacherApp to train 700,000 teachers to deliver virtual education’ to children (who are from low-income households) that would otherwise be devoid of education during these tough times.
