Students take a break from answer sheets, use tablets instead

Speaking to DT Next, the headmistress of Vallal Pari Municipal Middle School, T Esther Veni, said that Tamil was the first exam that the students of Classes 1, 2 and 3 took. She added that the examination was conducted out of 60 marks, of which, the students wrote in answer sheets for 40 marks and completed the rest on the tablets where they had to select the right answers.

This was the first time that the students were given the tablets so while some struggled a bit with it, others completed the exercise in less than five minutes,” said Veni.

One tablet was used by five students consecutively. The headmistress said that every student was given a separate login details based on their name and questions were uploaded in a specific app loaded in the tablet, named ‘TNPILOT’. 

“After a student completed the test, the tablet was passed to another student with a different login. Even though the students answered the same set of questions, its order varied from one student to another,” said Veni. 

This follows the state government’s move of distributing tablets to select government schools on a trial basis as a part of its initiative to help students get familiar with new technology and to reduce dependence on traditional books and notebooks. According to the new method named, Simplified Active Learning Method (SALM), the schools were given tablets where each of the gadget would be used by five students. 

Depending upon the success of this experiment, the government would implement it in schools throughout the state,” said Veni.