Kerala govt's 'First Bell' initiative crosses 1,000 classes

The Kerala government's 'First Bell' initiative has now crossed 1,000 classes. It was introduced by the state education department's KITE (Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education) VICTERS channel on June 1, as an interim arrangement in the backdrop of schools remaining closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As many as 604 classes were aired through the channel in addition to 274 Kannada medium classes and 163 Tamil medium classes through these programmes that were telecast through local cable networks in the state.

Apart from the viewership of classes through the channel mode, the web-streaming platform of KITE VICTERS (victers.kite.kerala.gov.in) also saw a good response with 442 TeraByte data been reported from 141 countries. The monthly views of the YouTube channel 'itsvicters' is 150 million (15 crore).

The average daily viewership of the classes on the YouTube channel is 54 lakh, which translates to a whopping 5 lakh hours a day. Despite limited advertisements, the advertisement revenue stands at an average of Rs 15 lakh per month. The classes are also broadcast live through the Facebook page of the channel 'victerseduchannel'.

"Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, several places in the state including, the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram has been made hotspots restricting the movement of people, which impacted the classes and to tackle this crisis, KITE made arrangements for preparation of classes from different districts. To supplement this decentralised process, KITE planned to provide necessary support through the 2000+ schools where Little KITEs units were been set-up," said K Anvar Sadath, the Chief Executive Officer, KITE.

At present, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are being used, which would be expanded in due course. The schools would be making use of the free software applications to develop the classes to be aired through the KITE VICTERS channel.

New classes of general nature, apart from regular subjects that include sports, would be ready from August.

( With inputs from ANI )