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Facebook partners with CBSE to offer AR, Digital Safety & Online Well-Being Programs in its education push in India

Kanishka Sharma

Jul 22,2024
2 min read
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Facebook has partnered with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to launch a curriculum and training in Augmented Reality, digital safety & online well-being for students and Augmented Reality for students and educators, Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ announced on Sunday.

This partnership is led by Facebook for Education, a global initiative by Facebook to build diverse learning communities.

According to Ankhi Das, Director, Public Policy, India, South and Central Asia, “the current global pandemic is the most severe health and humanitarian crisis that the country has seen, with far-reaching impact on our lives. We recognise the disruption it has caused to traditional pedagogical methods, necessitating a shift to virtual modes of learning the most."

"Through our Facebook for Education programme in India, we wish to support the educational agencies in the country in enabling lessons on fostering safe online experiences, addressing online well-being as well as sharing easy toolkit for parents, educators and students to promote resilience and learning in the current environment," Ms. Das said.

“Besides, the AR curriculum offers an opportunity for young learners to explore emerging technology for the first time as part of their curriculum,” Ms. Das added.

The training will take place in two batches. The first batch will include 1600 teachers, whereas the second batch will accommodate 8400 teachers. The course’s timeline is three weeks. Online certificates will be provided to those who successfully complete the program.

The AR course is offered by the School of Innovation from Facebook and it focuses on upskilling participants on the ground breaking technology of the future, Augmented Reality. The course content introduces fundamentals of Augmented Reality and captures ways to utilise Facebook's software, Spark AR Studio, to create augmented reality experiences. The objective of the programme is to give participants an opportunity and platform to learn how to conceptualise, create and brand their own AR experiences. Here, participants will learn how to use Spark AR Studio and publish experiences on Facebook thereby becoming a part of the Spark AR ecosystem. To be part of the programme, one needs have access to a computer/ laptop with Windows 10 and above installed and internet connection.

Applications for Facebook’s AR course starts today and ends on the 20th of July. The organizers will notify selected candidates through email by 3rd August. The first batch starts on 10th August and ends on 7th September. Similarly, the second batch starts on 25th September and ends on 16th October. You can sign up here if you’re interested.