First things first. Educomp smartclass is a flagship brand of Educomp Solutions, India’s largest Education company.
Born in 2003 and just 10 years young, Educomp smartclass has created shall we say, yet another divide of Have and Have Nots: schools that have Educomp smartclass and schools that don’t. Fortunately, with some 14,500 schools already embracing the system, and the number growing at rapid pace everyday, this divide is getting narrower by the day.
smartclass did what no one had ever thought of before, bring technology into the classroom. It brought an exhaustive repository of world class digital modules or lessons, (consisting of 2D and 3D animations, graphics, audio and video) on every subject in the K12 spectrum, which the teacher could easily access and project in the classroom that illuminated and explained abstract and difficult concepts with liquid clarity. The result was amazing. Knowledge flourished freed from the centuries old bonds of books and chalk and blackboard. A new light of understanding dawned on young awakened minds. And the classroom became a fascinating place to be in as a new generation of learners saw (instead of just being told and explained) for the first time how things happened. And the teacher smiled as she now saw not just one, two or three but a sea of hands go up every time she asked a question
Even as it popularity grew with school after school adopting it, as pioneers we realised that we needed to keep pushing the frontiers of technology, make it adapt to changing times, make it more user friendly, more versatile and more resourceful. Over the years, such upgrades and improvements kept happening on a continuous basis.
But the time was fast approaching for metamorphic and transformational change. For nearly 2 years starting end 2009, the think tank at smartclass has been at work devoting millions of man days to execute the most comprehensive re-engineering of its kind to make smartclass a truly 21st century teaching-learning. And the result is amazing new avatar of Educomp smartclass-re-christened befittingly as smartclass CTS(Class Transformation System)
Now, imagine a Science teacher explaining how a DNA replicates, a History teacher teaching a class about the Harappan Civilisation, or a Geography teacher teaching how Block mountains are formed. The best of teachers take pains to explain the concepts largely depending on their own abilities. The students listen to the teachers, try to decipher the figures drawn on the blackboard and read from their text books, take notes and try hard to visualize how it happens and remember. At the end of the class, the teacher asks a few random questions to assess how the class fared. Invariably a few hands (mostly of the same set of brightest students in class), go up, the answers are given and the class ends.