Kerala education minister V Sivankutty releases audio books for Class 10, 12 students

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In continuation to the First Bell digital classes being aired through KITE VICTERS channel, the Kerala Education department on Saturday released 'audio books' for Classes 10 and 12. The audio books for the revision portions for both Classes 10 and 12, whose public examinations are just weeks away, was released by General Education Minister V Sivankutty in a function here.

The audio books, developed and made available in the First Bell portal -- www.firstbell.kite.kerala.gov.in -- by Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE), are designed in such a way that revision of all subjects of Class 10 can be completed within 10 hours, K Anvar Sadath, CEO, KITE said. The audio books for Class 12, with an average duration of 1.5 hours per subject, will be available from February 21 onwards.

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All revision classes in audio books, made available in the First Bell portal, shall be heard in an enjoyable way like listening to a radio programme and are easily downloadable and shareable in mp3 format, he explained.

The audio books can also be downloaded through QR Codes. KITE has issued directions to extend the broadband internet facility provided to schools as part of Hi-Tech school project for downloading the audio books for the needy students.

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Earlier, Free Software-based screen reading software ‘ORCA’ has been deployed in all laptops supplied by KITE to schools and in addition to that, all visually challenged teachers were given specialised ICT training by KITE. Visually challenged children are making use of the audio classes to an extent. However, the audio books, which are completely in voice format, would be highly beneficial for visually challenged students, he said.

Last year also, Kerala had taken a huge leap in ensuring digital inclusion by incorporating audio books for comfortable listening to all students with special emphasis to visually challenged kids along with sign adapted classes for hearing-impaired kids. First Bell has completed the telecast of over 10,000 classes till date, including the Kannada and Tamil medium classes along with the general medium and English classes, official sources added.