Empowering educators to Succeed in Digital Age

Bharti Foundation’s unique platform ‘TheTeacherApp’ empowers educators to learn and grow together, making a significant stride in the evolving education landscape

In the ongoing transformation of the education landscape, technology has become an essential tool for educators, children, and parents. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of online education, creating the need for preparing teachers for innovative teaching methods integrated with technology. Bharti Foundation’s app for teachers, ‘TheTeacherApp’ is a unique platform designed to empower the educators by providing them with high quality classroom resources, learning bytes and modules as well as a supportive online community to share ideas, and best practices with each other. TheTeacherApp also includes special features and tools for teachers to develop their skills, gain recognition for their contributions and achievements, and uplift their schools’ quality.

COVID-19 pandemic has radically changed the education landscape, driving educators worldwide to join the current technological transformation in the sector and adapt online teaching tools to re-ignite the thrill of learning in classrooms. We are witnessing the power of technology and how it is being consumed by educators and even parents for supporting children in better academic orientation. Now when children have returned to schools, the challenge for teachers is to rekindle the energy in classrooms and increase participation amongst students while continuing to integrate technology in everyday teaching and learning.

Technology can undoubtedly play a pivotal role in supporting teachers by providing them access to innovative activities, best practices and quality teaching-learning materials. Government is providing ICT labs, smart classrooms, mobiles and laptops to students, tablets to teachers, which are excellent initiatives of technological interventions in everyday teaching along with development of required skills in students. In addition, DIKSHA, an initiative of NCERT (Ministry of Education, Govt. of India), being one the largest digital infrastructure for knowledge sharing, hosts a variety of content for learners and teachers from all classes in 36 Indian languages. States/UTs are leveraging this platform to build their own solutions and programs for their schools leading to 5.24 billion+ usage with 2 lakh+ content contribution on the platform. Though government has taken the first pioneering step in this direction and state governments are immersing themselves in creating locally contextualized training content and learning materials, the need of the hour is to curate and ensure high quality resources for the teachers as well as students. Besides, for teachers in rural India, especially with limited resources and skills, navigating through the digital landscape can be daunting and therefore user-friendly digital platforms as well as short capsule trainings for teachers are also required.

Bharti Foundation is working towards creating such a platform with high quality, field-tested resources and an online supportive community for teachers through an app called ‘TheTeacherApp’ where the educators can learn from each other, share best practices, exchange ideas and resources and collaborate. With this easy to navigate platform, teachers can personalize their learning experience with the help of self-paced courses, workshops, webinars, trainings and get recognized for their contributions and achievements.

Teaching, in itself, is a self-motivating job and at times it requires teachers to come together, share best practices and support each other to improve the overall learning experience of students. They need resources that would support them in making their classroom teaching effective while reducing the time spent on administrative aspects. This app will help teachers, school leaders and educationists with engaging scholastic and co-scholastic content for improving overall school performance. There is also a need for more experienced teachers to share their expertise with the young generation of teachers and to those who are in far flung areas with limited access to resources, while the young teachers can help the former ones with tips and tricks about technology. Teachers are the fulcrum of every change that NEP is looking at, be it about quality in education, building life skills in children or preparing them for the future, TheTeacherApp can support educators to bring in the much-required transformation in schools in this digital age.

More innovative players like civil societies, NGOs, corporate foundations should step in to bridge the gaps in teaching, support educators with a supportive community, provide accessibility to high quality teaching learning materials & lesson plans and build a system for recognizing teachers while shining light on their good work. Bharti Foundation, given its extensive work in the rural communities, is assessing the need of educators in rural areas to delve on the possible solutions to make TheTeacherApp effective for the teaching community at large. The app, being one-of-a-kind, will enable the educators in learning and growing together thereby, making a significant stride in the ever-evolving education landscape. Its success will establish the power of technology in education and foster an online community that is always keen to learn and support each other in the growth process, regardless of location or socio-economic background.