India’s lockdown digital divide: How online classes are excluding poor and unconnected schoolchildren

In India, the children of families who do not have smartphones are being left out of online classes as educational institutions across the country continue to remain shut. In Goa, where I am based, many schools are foregoing Zoom sessions or “live” classes where the student has to be present in front of the screen for a fixed time each day. With erratic power supply and patchy network issues, we work instead with PDFs, videos, Google forms and WhatsApp. With the initial novelty of online…

from South China Morning Post https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3100138/indias-lockdown-digital-divide-how-online-classes-are-excluding