First-Ever On-Line NISHTHA Program Launched by HRD Ministry

The Union HRD Minister and the Minister of State for Human Resources Development have launched the first online NISHTHA program for around 1200 Key Resource Persons of Andhra Pradesh. While 23000 Key Resource Persons have already been covered along with 17.5 lakh teachers in the country under this program, it is the first time that the training program is conducted online, due to the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic.

This online program will be conducted through DIKSHA and NISHTHA portals by the NCERT. Andhra Pradesh is the first state for which the online program has been launched. These Key Resource Persons are expected to mentor the teachers in the state, who will be covered later on DIKSHA at a later stage. This program will include multiple approaches for interaction with students. It comprises of text modules with videos, live sessions by the National Level Resource persons on DTH Swayam Prabha TV Channel. Apart from that, the Interactive Voice Response System will also be used for interaction with the teachers.

National Initiative for School Heads’ and Teachers’ Holistic Advancement (NISHTHA)

It is the largest teachers’ training program of its kind in the whole world. The objective of this is to motivate the teachers to teach in a way that will inculcate critical thinking habits in the students. In this initiative, standardized training modules have been developed for all the states and UTs. The main features of this program are:

• Activity-based modules including games and quizzes
• Social-emotional learning
• Motivational interactions
• Team building
• Preparation for school-based assessment
• In-built continuous feedback mechanism
• Online monitoring and support system
• Training need and impact analysis during the pre and post-training stages respectively

DIKSHA Portal

The Ministry of Human Resource Development, in association with the National Council for Teacher Education, has launched the DIKSHA portal to help the teachers and the students to continue their studies as usual, even during the lockdown. The tagline of this portal is – “National Digital Infrastructures for Our Teachers, Our Heroes.” This portal is expected to cover the whole life cycle of the teacher – starting from when they are enrolled as student teachers in Teacher Education Institutes to after they retire as teachers. Apart from the government, the private sector and the NGOs are also allowed to join this initiative.

Swayam Prabha

It is a scheme of the Ministry of Human Resources Development to provide 32 high-quality educational channels through DTH across the length and breadth of the country on a 24×7 basis. This will cover various disciplines and will have curriculum-based content. The main objective is to make quality content available in all the remote areas of the country as well.

Month: Current Affairs - July, 2020