Role Of ICT In Mitigating Social Problems

In India children from poor families get enrolled in free government primary schools. However, due to poor quality of schooling majority of them drop out without completing primary education. To address this  problem the present research explores the use of ICT to provide web based quality teaching by developing and also customising already available teaching materials in the internet. The project also aims at identifying potential teachers from among the aged who otherwise suffer from loneliness as their grown  up children are either pre-occupied with their work or live away from their parents in their place of work in other city. Elderly people those who are  willing to take part in the proposed web based teaching are provided training in web based teaching with the help of materials developed for the same. Along with providing a low cost solution for improving school quality and checking drop out, this would also improve the quality of living condition of the aged by helping them to overcome the problem of loneliness and spending meaningful time by teaching disadvantaged children, without moving out of their homes. Through this  initiation of using ICT to the elderly people,  we also aim at enabling them  to make use of ICT  to meet their some other needs ( by using email, Skype, net based purchasing and availing of other needed services)

We have made trials in web based teaching making it very interactive, in a tribal boarding school for girls, with very positive results which is discussed in the paper. After few more trail runs we will arrange for regular supplementary teaching to deficient schools to improve the teaching quality and asses the learning outcomes and aim at replicating this model for wide impact.