How Tech Enabled 160,000 School Kids In Delhi To Attend Virtual Classes

When COVID-19 completely took over our nation, everything changed for us. Whether it was something as simple as stepping out of our homes to shop for groceries or even our office work that we were now forced to do from home.?

This caused a massive shift in the education field too, with kids studying from home, attending school on their laptops or their parent's phones.?

Representational Image: Google

A need for a streamlined platform arose where institutions could be connected to one central hub for resources and content, especially those institutions -- like government-funded schools -- that couldn't afford a setup of their own.?

Educating kids from home

For this, Delhi’s Department of Education which had already teamed up with Intel on several projects in the past seeking a solution for this. Later they brought onboard an EdTech startup that is known to teach professionals online dubbed Career Launcher,? that had a solution dubbed Aspirational.ai, backed by Amazon Web Services or AWS.?

But Career launcher didn’t have resources to take onboard 160,000 students. That’s where Intel came in and provided their cloud computing infrastructure, collaborating with AWS to help educate students across the National Capital Territory of Delhi.

We got to interact with Prakash Mallya, VP and MD – Sales, Marketing and Communications Group at Intel India as well as Rahul Sharma, President – Public Sector, India and South?Asia, Amazon Web Services to understand the challenges and experiences they faced in this joint venture.?

The need for a quality tech-powered experience

With so many students and teachers, and other school users, signing in every day onto the platform, the load on the service would have been immense. This is where mission critical software and services merge with a robust hardware-software system to pull it all off without a glitch.?

Prakash Mallya explained, "Academic institutions around the world are responding to the pandemic with a shift to digital learning. Schools and colleges have adapted to technologies like video conferencing, instant messaging tools and more, to keep students and parents engaged. From uploading video lectures, students chatting with teachers on WhatsApp, group classes held on Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, to educational forums, tech has begun to bridge the education gap virtually. Cloud is becoming a service model; the network is being transformed from fixed-function to open standard, and innovation at the edge has the potential to recast access to education.”

He added, “For underprivileged children, affordable, accessible and holistic EdTech solution enablement could become a great equalizer. This, however, requires a solution mindset in the industry at large. Public-private partnerships to enable end to end innovation across content, teacher training and IT infrastructure are critical to ensuring that the children of India don’t miss out on education during times like this and elevating learning outcomes in the longer term.”

Reuters

A glimpse into the backend

We were curious to know what goes on behind the scenes on the technology backbone that educates 160,000 kids every day. Intel's Mallya explained, “The Department of Education of Delhi engaged Career Launcher to find a fast-scaling solution to not only ensure educational continuity but to also serve as a platform for long-term educational transformation. Career Launcher enlisted the help of Intel and Amazon Web Services (AWS) and together we worked with educators to adapt aspiration.ai, Career Launcher’s learning portal, to address the needs of Delhi’s schools.”

He added, “Aspiration.ai is built on AWS Cloud, which offers scalable performance and built-in artificial intelligence acceleration with Intel Xeon Scalable processors. AWS scaled up quickly and seamlessly while offering a wide array of services and delivering the needed performance for very large groups of users. For intensive workloads that involve video, analytics, AI, and more, Intel’s Xeon Scalable processors deliver extensive compute headroom to cost-effectively scale platforms like aspiration.ai to meet the future learning needs of students.”

How this approach is unique on scale

One of the most unique elements of CareerLauncher’s platform is the ability for a child to go back and see a missed session.?

Mallya shares, “To ensure that the special connection between teachers and students could continue, Career Launcher is using cloud technology to offer live streaming of classes as well as archival and replay of past recordings. By offering both synchronous and asynchronous learning content, the program is inclusive of students who have limited access to broadband internet. While these students are unable to stream the?lessons live, they can view the content on-demand when they are able to get online—often via a parent’s smartphone.”

What’s interesting is the access to advanced analytics for teachers to help them track the child’s progress and help him/her should they require special attention, with the help of key indicators that they can track and provide a 360-degree approach to education.?

Making a solution for students in India

Prakash Mallya shares the challenges they experienced for making an India-centric solution, and how it enabled them to make something that could really help better the lives of Indian kids and parents in future, “Today, the use of technology in the education sector remains limited and fragmented. Even with budgets for implementation, educational institutes are often stuck with piecemeal applications resulting in the creation of silos. As a result, technologies used by teachers, students and parents rarely interact with each other. The big opportunity lies in connecting all these strands.”

He added, “Can students, parents, teachers and other parts of the education ecosystem be given a more holistic view using technology? School operations such as admissions, reservations, transport, classroom learnings, examination, class notes, assignments, timetables, exams and academic records can all be wired to improve education and learnings. In fact, for the less privileged, a technology-powered education experience has the potential of reducing dropouts and improving their chance of building more fulfilling lives for themselves.”

Getty Images

Rahul Sharma from AWS too shared his experience while creating a solution while overcoming challenges in India, “Building an online education solution has many aspects such as virtual live classrooms, online assessments, and learning management systems (LMS). Important elements here include developing the relevant education content, delivering the learning through an LMS using text, voice and video, and delivering the LMS at scale to lakhs of students through the power of cloud computing. A single organization cannot address this challenge at scale, and multiple stakeholders need to collaborate to effectively enable and deliver effective online education.”

He added, “CareerLauncher, AWS and Intel have come together to address the need for continued education for students in government schools in Delhi. The collaboration between these organizations and the initiative taken by the Delhi government is a strong example of how technology can be an enabler during these difficult times when the education sector is looking to continue with the teaching and learning process. We are seeing many more such instances across the country.”