Innovation in education gets EzVidya mBillionth South Asia Award

CHENNAI: Chennai-based education research and service provider EzVidya bagged the mBillionth South Asia Award for their attempts to bridge the digital divide in the country.The organisation received the juror’s distinction under the m-education and learning category for its ‘BridgeIT India’ project from among 60 nominations.EzVidya representatives were given the award for their innovations in reaching out to government schools to share improved teaching methodologies using mobile phones. Preloaded content on phones were attached to televisions in 89 rural and urban government schools.As many as 45 schools run by the Chennai Corporation and 44 schools belonging to the Andhra Pradesh Residential Educational Institutions Society benefited from the BridgeIT India project.Founder and CEO of EzVidya Chitra Ravi said, “The mBillionth jury considered some key parameters including content, impact, strategic value, sustainability and quality of implementation for the award.” EzVidya shared the award with Nokia, for granting open source technology, and Pearson Foundation, for content.As many as 150 government school teachers from BridgeIT schools have been tagged as ‘Teachers with High Quality skills’ in the last year. Matthew Wennersten, head, Scalability in Education, EZ Vidya, who anchors the BridgeIT India project, said, “The Project has successfully overcome some key challenges facing Indian school heads and teachers within the teaching-learning segment, like helping students pick up 21st century skills.”He added that results of the project included 31% improved quality teaching in BridgeIT schools, and student-centred teaching instead of traditional lecture style pedagogy in classrooms. Project coordinators saw a dramatic improvement in listening and speaking skills of students and found that students secured more marks in BridgeIT India schools when compared with control schools.