Kerala govt begins online lectures for school students on Victers Channel; check schedule on victers.kite.kerala.gov.in

For school students in Kerala, the 2020-21 session began on Monday but in a different fashion. The students started their academic year with online classes from their homes. The virtual classes will take place from 8.30 am to 5.30 pm from Monday to Friday on the Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) Victers Channel. The Victers channel comes under the control of the State General Education Department. The programme called ‘First Bell’ will comprise classes for standards 1 to 12, except for Class 11. Students can check out the day-wise schedule of classes from the official site https://victers.kite.kerala.gov.in. The classes will be streamed online on YouTube and Samagra portal as well. The classes will be held as per the modules prepared by the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), KITE, Samagra Shiksha Kerala (SSK) and the State Institute of Educational Technology. According to a report by NDTV, around 1.2 lakh laptops, more than 7,000 projectors and nearly 4,545 TV sets have been made available for the school students for the first week of online classes. “We have entrusted the class teachers and school headmasters or principals to make sure that students have access to a television or a smartphone or a computer and internet for the classes. If not, they should find an alternative for the students to attend the online classes either in real time or later,” Director of Public Instruction K Jeevan Babu has said. Students can also attend classes by using public libraries, and Akshaya centres in the state will remain open for the needy students. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan also delivered a message to students where he said that online study was the new normal for education. He also promised that every child will be able to avail the services. The online classes can be accessed through the Victers channel on cable network, or direct to home (DTH) services. The classes will be available live on the Facebook page of Victers as well.