In a rare example of collaboration between schools and corporate sector, over 300 top schools throughout the country could start using television sets as a teaching aid. The DTH player Tata Sky in an innovative measure to promote its interactive educational services has tied up with 300 schools across the country.
“The top schools were given free Tata Sky connections with a package comprising of educational services developed by the company bundled with a few other TV channels.,” said Vikram Mehra, CMO, Tata Sky.
The schools with which the DTH player has tied up include Modern School, Army Public School, GD Goenka World School in Delhi and Sohna, Le Matinere School, Loreto House in Kolkata, South Point School in Guwahati, Bishop Cottons, Sri Kumaran Childrens Home, Baldwin Girls School in Bangalore, DAV Boys School in Chennai, JB Petit School, Campion School ,Bombay Scottish ,Green Lawns School in Mumbai etc.
Apart from this, the company has also tied up with two Pre-School chains- Shemrock Group and Eurokids.
Amol Arora, managing director, Shemrock Preschool chain said, “The process of installing TV sets has started. We evaluated the content and found it suitable for children. It is a good substitute for CDs as the content is refreshed at regular interval. We have also sent letters to the parents endorsing the content. This seems to be an alternative to cartoon channels. It may help reduce the cartoon channel addiction among kids.”
“Actve Learning, an educational quiz based service for 6-12 year old children, with syllabi-based questions, Actve Wizkids, an educational service for preschoolers with 15 new learning games daily and Actve Stories that replicates a stories from Panchatantra, Jataka Tales and Hitopadesh on TV with over 720 stories featuring a year are the flagship educational services available on the Tata Sky platform,” said Mehra.
When contacted, an official at Modern School, Barakhamba Road, Delhi cofirmed that the educational channels of Tata Sky have been bundled up with channels like National Geographic, Discovery and Animal Planet and the service was offered free of cost to the school by the DTH company. The DTH player is in talks with more schools to replicate the model. “Through our School contact programme we have contacted over 800 schools and 25,000 parents,”said Mehra.
