Lifelines India: Supporting Rural Teachers
From Shareideas
Lifelines India is currently adapting its approach to meet the needs of teachers in West Bengal. Through the service, educators are able to pose academic questions and receive answers via mobile phone and email, thus improving the quality of teaching in rural schools.
Story
An initiative of the OneWorld International Foundation, British Telecom (BT), and CISCO systems, Lifelines India is a service that facilitates the exchange of vital information using the power of voice as the primary means of knowledge dissemination. It aims at just the right mix of telephony and the Internet for knowledge delivery by providing connectivity, content, and capability via a phone-based service. In its initial pilot phase, Lifelines India concentrated on the agribusiness sector with considerable success. Now the same technology platform has been customized to provide critical academic support to teachers in rural areas.
The adaptation of the Lifelines India model for educational purposes is being carried out under the auspices of the QUEST Alliance, part of the International Youth Foundation’s regional initiative, Education and Employment Alliance (EEA).
Through an initial pilot phase launched in July 2007 in 116 schools in West Bengal, 600 elementary school teachers are now able to pose questions on academic matters via a normal telephone, the Internet, or mobile phone.
The service is based on an interactive voice response system. Teacher queries are answered within 24 to 48 hours - by phone or email - by a qualified panel of experts. Lifelines India thus helps link teachers with training resource persons, subject matter experts, and field level educational administrators. In the second phase of the pilot, LifeLines will reach out to more than 2,000 teachers in West Bengal.
Over the long-term, the system’s reporting module will help assess knowledge gaps within specific sectors, thereby fostering the development of corrective interventions. The service will also lead to the creation of a rich FAQ database that can be accessed by communities through information kiosks, village knowledge centers, or any Internet access point.
For more information, please contact a.sethi@iyfnet.org at the QUEST secretariat.
Technology used
Computer
Mobile phone
