COVID-19 has affected our lifestyle in every front. In current times access to education solely depends on the access to the internet, as a result, not everyone is able to enjoy their right to education.

People with poor or no internet connection and no access to smartphones or computers are the one facing the most difficulties.

A simple solution for solving the scarcity of smartphones is self paced classes, instead of live classes. Self paced classes are those classes where the students can attend them at their own pace.

Currently, all colleges and schools are using video conferencing tools like Skype, Zoom, BigBlueButton, etc to conduct live classes.

Drawbacks of live classes:

1. Usually the timings of live classes match. Hence, Families with a single smart device but multiple school/college going children are affected. In such cases, many times, boys education is given preference over the girls education or elder sibling's education is taken more seriously.

2. Power cuts and network issues are another example of hurdles faced by children while accessing online education. Self paced classes can solve all of these issues.

Benefits of self paced classes:

But, what if YouTube declines? Then we can mirror the content and upload it on other ads free platforms, like LBRY or PeerTube. This won't be considered as a copyright infringement as we will be using these videos for educational purposes.

Many schools and colleges have their own websites. Designing websites without ads, JavaScript and trackers will help reduce data consumption and the sites will load faster.

What if we use audio lectures Instead of video lectures?
Audio lectures as stories, which motivates the students to imagine?
Streaming audios consumes fewer data than streaming videos.

The same 16 minutes long video, as an audio only consumes 18.08 MB data.

The real world usage may differ, but it gives us a rough idea that on average, videos on YouTube with ads will take 2.1 hours to consumes 1 GB data. Videos without ads will take 2.9 hours to consume 1 GB data. And on the other hand, audios will take 14.1 hours to consume 1 GB data.

With the help of audio lectures multiple children can access online education in that 1 GB data.

A study by Smile Foundation found that, about 56% of children have no access to smartphone for e-learning. For this study 42,831 children were surveyed across 23 states in India.

And out of those 56% of children without smartphone access, 43.99% had access to a basic phone and 12.02% had no access to any phone. Access does not mean that they can use it at their own convenience.

If we use audio lectures instead of video lectures, those audios can be broadcasted over radio. Majority of basic phones have inbuilt radio receiver.

There are many state sponsored educational radio channels operating, but in remote regions.

The same study found that out of 42,831 children, only 68.99% has access to TV.

Open Culture is a website with collections of thousands of e-books, audiobooks, movies and online courses for free of cost.

Exportable Explanations is another great website where students play different games to learn new skills. Right now there are 179 different fun activities on this website covering all major subjects.

These websites can be used to help students study from home, at the same time after the COVID era, these can be used in schools to complement the classroom experience.

This is an example from the website 'Exportable Explanations', this is a simulation to understand how like-minded people get together over the period of time. And how a more open-minded society will like is compared with a less open-minded society.

This is an another example from the same website. This simulation explains the emergence of phantom traffic jams, and how speed variations may trigger different levels of congestion.

Every game or simulation on Exportable Explanations has its own dashboard from which you can change different variables which will affect the end result.

With this the child can interact with these simulations and play different games to understand important concepts and to learn new skills.