Mark Zuckerberg recently took his multi-billion dollar company and renamed it to the much catchier “Meta”. He made yet another decision and announced that he is going to partner with the Central Board Of Secondary Education (CBSE) in order to provide a curriculum on digital safety, online well-being and augmented reality for 10 million students and 1 million teachers in India.
This is a whole new step in the progress of the quality of education that will be offered at the high school level. It is also a step towards better implementation of resources to help teachers in expanding their knowledge and offer a new mode of education that has not been seen in the country before.
What Are Things You Should Know?
In an enlightening chain of events, Mark Zuckerberg, the internet entrepreneur and philanthropist as well as the co-founder and CEO of Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly known as Facebook, Inc.), announced that Meta Platforms Inc. will join in the government’s vision of universalising education and provide curriculum on digital safety awareness, online well-being and augmented reality for 10 million students and 1 million teachers.
In addition to this, Meta and CBSE will help democratise education by allowing students to access it through online modules present on the official CBSE website.
The partnership aims to empower students and teachers with tools that will help Generation Z and Generation Alpha grow up to become responsible digital citizens over the course of the following three years.
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“I am really excited about this partnership and I think it is a huge opportunity to [invest in] this entrepreneurial spirit and bring some of these tools around the metaverse, [AR], and training to the education system here in India,” Mark Zuckerberg said at Meta’s “Fuel for India, 2021”.
Meta and CBSE aim to collaborate on content curation and development of curriculum integrating immersive technologies like AR and Virtual Reality (VR) that are relevant for evolving in the current digital landscape in alignment with the National Education Policy(NEP).
Biswajit Saha, the Director (Skills and Education), CBSE says, “This partnership will help equip our teachers with requisite skills to effectively use online tools for student engagement.
Understanding that the era of ‘Digital India’ has begun, we aim to build responsible digital citizens with the introduction of digital citizenship and augmented reality in the curriculum, along with providing quality educational content for all.”
The initial phase of “Facebook for Education” was launched in June of 2020 with the aim of providing training to prepare a safe online environment and learning experience for the future of work. It witnessed over 500,000 students show interest in digital safety and online well-being and around 14,000 teachers applied for further training in AR.
What Are The Further Developments?
This endeavour is one of its kind for Meta as they have never collaborated with a country’s central board of education before for a brand new, high-tech curriculum.
In a statement to the media at Meta’s virtual event, Mark Zuckerberg said to the press, “We are investing in other growing areas like education and commerce through Unacademy and Meesho, which are important use cases as we think about the future that we are building.
We want to continue to partner in all of these areas as we accelerate the development of the fundamental technologies, the social platforms, and creative tools that are going to be necessary to bring the metaverse to life.”
In another turn of events, Meta has also reported that they are taking an active role in the protection of women on the various platforms they own.
They have announced that they have made it a priority for women to be able to freely access information without the threat of sexual harassment hanging over their heads. The company has also launched their very own Women’s Safety Hub which will be available in 12 Indian languages including Hindi and many other regional languages.
Image Sources: Google Images
Sources: National Herald India, Navjeevan Express, Times Of India +more
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This Post Is Tagged Under: Mark Zuckerberg, multi-billion dollar company, Meta, Central Board Of Secondary Education, (CBSE), curriculum, digital safety, online well-being, augmented reality, India, education, Meta Platforms, Facebook, online modules, Generation Z, Generation Alpha, Fuel for India 2021, content curation, AR, Virtual Reality (VR), National Education Policy(NEP), ‘Digital India’, “Facebook for Education”, high-tech curriculum, Unacademy, Meesho, metaverse, Women’s Safety Hub
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