Pathways World School cuts down the need for carrying heavy books and notebooks by going fully digital
SATISH PAPNOI
SARLA HOLDINGS (PATHWAYS GROUP OF SCHOOLS)
Talking about Pathways migration to Cloud infrastructure from legacy infrastructure, Papnoi says, We created a sample lab to test every combination and then decided to run the hybrid system for 15 days. Thereafter, we started migration in all the campuses at the same time and completed it in one go. Library systems' migration to Cloud was also done in one go without building two parallel systems.
Pathways World School, run and owned by Sarla Holdings is one of the smartest schools in India. There are few physical classrooms and the school uses Microsoft Cloud Campus that allows students and teachers to use applications without installing them on their laptops and allows access to save files from any computer with an internet connection.
The students of the school hardly carry books and notebooks as the Microsoft Cloud Campus provides students, teachers and staff with enterprise-grade communication and productivity services and audio and video communication within and outside the campus free of cost. Besides, the Cloud Campus ensures continuous data backup, robust disaster recovery and globally redundant data centres capabilities that helps in data protection.
The school went through a digital transformation under the leadership of Satish Papnoi, CTO, Sarla Holdings Private Limited. Starting from enterprise-wide security, internet bandwidth, web filtering solution, VPN access to VPN tunnelling, IPS and IDS control, BGP for multiple ISP connection, SSL VPN and SSL safe search, DMZ and WAN optimisation among others, Papnoi has ensured implementation of technology to create SMART classrooms.
Most classrooms at Pathways are fitted with multimedia equipment, projectors, robotics, iPads, laptops, and 3D printers for smooth interaction. Besides, it has biometric attendance system that allows tracking of staff work attendance, time spent, staff whereabouts and real-time attendance report at enterprise level. This helps ease employees’ management for the human resource department and reduces involvement of massive paperwork.
Not only are the classrooms equipped with technology for better learning but technology is used to ensure security of the students. CCTV surveillance and upgraded GPS-based Vehicle Tracking System (VTS) in school buses are routine hygiene at Sarla Holdings.
“The school encourages Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) concept reducing the cost of doing business as it changes the work habit of employees by allowing them to work anytime, anywhere from any device,” shares Papnoi, adding employee responsiveness and increased decision-making speed gets enhanced by letting people work remotely. It helps in saving costs as no major capital investment is needed on laptops, smart phones and other devices.
“With all above digital transformations, we observed the following intangible benefits: Users have options and can buy a laptop of their choice of any cost and they are not restricted to the laptop provided by the school. Employees get freedom, satisfaction and comfort,” says Papnoi. He adds that digital transformation has led to increased ownership and responsibility among the users as also reduction in physical damage, hardware failure, laptop slowness calls and other losses.
The organisation's long-term goal is to set up STEAM Labs (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) comprising 3D printers, robotic kits, laser-cutting machines, developmental software, iPads and laptops for integrated teaching and learning for all subjects. Development of Pathways app is underway for its existing customers/ parents and to convert the remaining 150 classrooms to SMART classrooms for smoother teaching and learning.
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