About this app
Background
In the 1960’s, the multipurpose stadiums for football games, baseball games, and concerts were getting constructed. These were supposed to be sleek, modern, and broad enough to encompass the needs of every entertainment industry. They were designed to be all things to all people. However, the multipurpose stadiums weren’t designed with the fans in mind, which led to have half-empty baseball games where fans had horrible sight-lines. In football, athletes were losing traction on the baseball infield and slipping on the dirt. As for concerts, the stadiums were exciting but they lacked the sound quality of an auditorium or amphitheater.
This is the same challenge we are facing in hybrid learning. If we’re not careful, we can all too easily design lessons that don’t work for students at home or in the physical classroom.
Teachers in India are not a fan of teaching a hybrid lesson where half the students are at home and half the students are attending via video conference. When asked a teacher about the same he said “On a purely functional level, it works. But it doesn’t work well. It’s the instructional version of a fork. By trying to merge together two incompatible formats, you’re left designing lessons that lack the full range of options in either environment.”
He further said that “I made this mistake the first time I taught Calculus to class XII where half of my students were in person (after the governments’ order for instructing class IX to XII students in person) and the other half were at home. I ended up lecturing in front of my computer camera so that students at home could see me via Zoom. I then faced my web camera at the board where they were expected to look at the concept written over there on the board. Fortunately, I had uploaded my lecture notes to the LMS but still . . . it was bad. When students asked questions in person, I would repeat it to the students on Zoom. When they had questions, I would repeat it aloud for the students going face to face. I attempted to place students at home with small groups who were in person, leading to bad echoes. Eventually, I changed the grouping and modified the assignment. However, the lesson remained clunky and awkward.”
However, hybrid learning doesn’t have to be spork learning. After the discussion we left that first evening with the realization that we had to change our entire hybrid model. We couldn’t simply have students “Zoom in” to the physical course and expect it to work. We had to find a new approach that would maximize the benefits of both face-to-face and virtual environments. This discussion with that teacher, helped us in exploring different models the teachers can take with hybrid learning. And this lead to the basis of development of a completely indigenous teaching (hybrid teaching) module for all the time and we named it after one of the greatest teacher of all time Guru Dronacharya.
The Idea
The i-TEACHER App’s development is based on flexible five different models for structuring hybrid learning. Every model has its own implementations on situation to situation basis. At ONE PORTAL, we are strategic about which model is to be selected based on the needs of the hour. The flexible model based teaching platform the DRONACHARYA helps the schools and especially the teachers to operationalise their classrooms based upon the situation for effective and continuous learning outcomes for the sustainable growth of the children in all the times.
App Permissions
Allows an app to access precise location.
Allows applications to open network sockets.
Allows applications to access information about networks.
Allows an application to write to external storage.
Allows an application to read from external storage.
Allows applications to connect to paired bluetooth devices.
Required to be able to access the camera device.
Allows a calling application which manages it own calls through the self-managed ConnectionService APIs.
Allows an application to modify global audio settings.
Allows an application to record audio.
Allows an app to create windows using the type TYPE_APPLICATION_OVERLAY, shown on top of all other apps.
Allows using PowerManager WakeLocks to keep processor from sleeping or screen from dimming.
Allows applications to access information about Wi-Fi networks.
Allows an application to write the user's calendar data.
Allows an application to read the user's calendar data.
