SRISTI

Ranjitsinh Disale

Ranjitsinh Disale is a Teacher at Zilla Parishad Primary School, Paritewadi Tq. Madha, Dist. Solapur, Maharashtra. He is known worldwide for the implementation of creativity and integration of technology into the field of teaching. After analyzing the gap between infrastructure available to the Government schools & private schools, he decided to bridge this gap with technology as the tool in his arsenal. QR Coded Textbooks He came up with the idea of using QR Coded Textbooks. He began with creating a digital resource bank of videos and PPTs in local language. Over the last nine years, he believes to have developed a large digital resource bank of 140 GB in Marathi. The digital resource bank is made accessible through the QR codes added to each lesson in the children’s book. These codes required smartphone and internet connection. In 2014, the experiment was first conducted on eight students from Class I. Today more than six million children in Maharashtra are using the QR coded books Government of Maharashtra implemented the project for all curricular books in Maharashtra. He has registered copyrights of this innovation under his belt. NCERT too has decided to implement the idea by 2019. Microsoft has honored this venture by awarding the ‘Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert’. In the World Education Council, March 2017, Canada, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed with 11 countries to implement the project.

Skype as a means to learn beyond the textbook

Skype in classroom is another project to enable the students to go beyond the textbooks and have an experience of the outside world. It began with a ten minutes’ interactive session with schools in the neighboring villages and now has advanced to session comprising of Virtual Field Trips to laboratories and science parks, marine water resources, monuments etc. Students are connected to teachers and experts through skype. This not only enhances their knowledge but also helps them develop skills for communication, questioning and verifying information, and conducting discussions. Over the past two years, students have interacted with teachers from 152 schools in 87 countries. Since 2017, these kinds of Virtual Field Trips have been initiated as a worldwide experiment. With Skype, students have started to understand the elements of the textbooks more effectively. Ranjitsinh’s efforts in the field of Education are recongnised by various organisations across the world: Government of Maharashtra, Ministry of HRD for Government of India, Microsoft Corporation, British Council, The Teacher App Foundation, SIR Foundation etc. He is bestowed with ‘Microsoft Innovative Education Expert’ (MIEE) twice and ‘Skype Master Teacher’ by Microsoft Corporation. He was also awarded the Best Blogger by ABP Maza.