Ahmedabad, Gujarat

When Jatin Rathor first heard about the ‘smart class’ he was worried. The 17-year-old student of class eleven is visually challenged and studies in Andhjan Mandal school, in Vastrapur, Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

It is the first school in the state to conduct smart classes for visually challenged students, who now use electronic gadgets instead of books to study. 

“We know how to use the mobile and the computer, but had no idea what a smart class was and how the teacher would teach us now,” Rathor told Gaon Connection. 

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Students from classes nine to twelve will now study in the smart classroom, a technology enhanced classroom that is integrated with digital displays, tabs, whiteboards, assistive listening devices, and other audio/visual components that make lectures easier, engaging, and more interactive. 

“There are three kinds of students here. Those who can’t see anything at all, those who are just able to make out shapes, and those whose eyesight is fifty per cent,” Sumit Patel who has been teaching these students at Andhjan Mandal, told Gaon Connection. 

“We use different technology and gadgets to enable each of them,” he explained. Many of these students have parents who are visually challenged too, Patel added.

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While the initiative at Andhjan Mandal was launched in March last year, the pandemic slowed it down. But with the intensity of the pandemic coming down, the classes have begun again.

Sixty students are availing of the smart class facilities at Andhjan Mandal to learn.

Smart decision all around

The apprehensions that Rathor had about the smartclass have been laid to rest, he laughed. “It has turned out to be an even better option for us. Not only do we have audio lessons, we also have gadgets such as the Orbit Reader and Writer that allow us to learn effortlessly,” the 17-year-old student said. “We learnt to use other gadgets too in the smart class,” Rathor added. 

Earlier, the visually challenged students had to depend on books written in Braille available to them in libraries, but not anymore, Rathor said. The students have all the resources they require available to them in the smart class. 

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“I feel like any other student, no different, when I study in the smart class,” Mahendra Darji, a 16-year-old student studying in class eleven, told Gaon Connection. 

A school app has been made available to the visually challenged children through which they can access all the lessons from classes one to twelve. They can listen to the lessons being taught or, through the orbit reader, ‘read’ them too.

Enabling technology

“It is the twenty-first century where everything runs on technology. It was logical therefore to enable our students to use technology,” Manu Chaudhry, principal, Andhjan Mandal school, told Gaon Connection.

Chaudhry was particularly pleased that the students now did not have to make several trips to libraries to find books in Braille that they could study from. “Studying has become so easy for students using technology on their mobile phones and computers,” he said. “Now their appetite for learning has gone up,” he added.

Read the story in Hindi.