Google India has joined hands with the Maharashtra government to provide its digital classroom services. With this, it became the first Indian state to adopt Google technologies which would impact over 1 lakh schools that roughly cover over 1.23 crore students and teachers.
As a part of the partnership, the state government will provide each of the educators and students with their own G Suite ID. Announcing the collaboration, Bani Paintal Dhawan, head of education, India and South Asia, Google India, said, “ Google has also made a hub for educators named as ‘Teach from Anywhere’, in Marathi, a very popular language in the state.”
Google claims that over 20% of 7,00,000 total school teachers in Maharashtra have enrolled for its first teacher-training programs. Importantly, the partnership has come amid Maharashtra being one of the worst Covid-19 hit states.
India is one of the critical markets for Google, and its focus on the country has been deepening in the last few years. The company recently committed to invest $10 billion to accelerate the adoption of digital services by 2027. It infused $5.7 billion in Reliance-owned Jio last month.
As far as the education sector is concerned, Google-owned YouTube had launched a learning destination to supplement curriculum learning for students and also support general skill-building in April this year. In 2018, Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, had granted $3 million to Central Square Foundation and The Teacher App to bridge the learning gap in India.
Google recently partnered CBSE to enable million-plus teachers across 22,000 schools in India to deliver blended learning by the end of 2020. During March-April, it also collaborated with FICCI Arise to help teachers in 250 schools to learn remote learning techniques.
