Ms. Anita Gupta taking a Computer Science class in Samsung Smart Classroom at Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Faridabad

Samsung, India’s most admired brand, has introduced its new flagship global citizenship program Samsung Smart School at Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (JNV) schools across the country. The CSR program, part of the Samsung vision of ‘Together for Tomorrow! Enabling People’, aims to create young leaders of tomorrow by giving less-privileged students in India access to the benefits of digital education and its own transformative innovations.

The program is being piloted at 10 JNV schools in its first year. Samsung Smart School have been set up in JNV schools in Varanasi, Gwalior, Raipur, Udaipur, Kangra, Sambhalpur, Faridabad, Dehradun, Patna and Dhanbad. Many of these schools are located in remote rural districts around these cities.

Every Samsung Smart School has two smart classrooms each of which is equipped with the latest digital infrastructure, including an 85 inch Samsung Flip interactive digital board that replaces the traditional blackboard, a 55 inch Samsung Flip that students can use to participate in lectures, quizzes, classwork and project work, and 40 Samsung Galaxy Tabs for students to use for self-study. In addition, the classrooms also have a printer, a server PC, a tablet charging station and power backup.

Through the Samsung Smart School program, students will be able to improve their learning abilities and understanding of critical concepts in the classrooms through interactive digital teaching methods that teachers have been trained on. The pilot at 10 JNV schools will cover over 5,000 students, of which 40% are girls, and around 260 teachers.

“We are very happy to have Samsung as our partner under CSR for digital education. The smart classrooms, as part of the Samsung Smart School program, are helping improve student participation and engagement. I am confident that a program like this will bring a positive impact in the society and become a benchmark for digital education for the future,” said Mr. Vinayak Garg, Commissioner, Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti.

“Samsung helps young people around the world gain access to better educational and learning opportunities. Samsung Smart School program strengthens our commitment to our vision of #PoweringDigitalIndia. This global citizenship initiative is closely tied with India’s development agenda and implemented in close partnership with the government to ensure wider reach and impact among less-privileged students,” said Mr. Partha Ghosh, Vice President, Corporate Citizenship, Samsung India.

Apart from the infrastructure support, Samsung Smart School will also enable digital learning for students in these schools through multiple touch points such as teacher training, providing meaningful and relevant educational content and equipping these schools with solutions for interactive and participative learning.

Samsung has provided digital content for all classes from Grade 6-12 as per CBSE curriculum to enable teachers to use these classrooms more effectively and enhance student learning through an interactive and immersive learning process.

As part of the program, regular teacher training has been built in to enhance the skillsets of teachers and to help them prepare a better plan for delivering textbook content in a digital, interactive learning format. These teachers, who are the flag bearers of the Samsung Smart School program, are making teaching fun, engaging and participative for students.

Under Samsung’s global citizenship vision of ‘Together for Tomorrow! Enabling People,’ Samsung seeks to empower the next generation to achieve their full potential and pioneer positive social changes. Samsung believes in using innovation to positively transform communities and create a better life for people through its citizenship initiatives. Empowering youth through education is one of the best ways we can prepare our young people to boldly face the world of the future.

Samsung Electronics runs three citizenship programs globally – Samsung Smart School, Samsung Innovation Campus and Solve for Tomorrow – through which it is empowering the leaders of tomorrow and equipping them with the tools they will need to realize meaningful change.

A JNV school teacher teaching in one of the existing Samsung Smart Classes running under the Samsung Smart School initiative.

Samsung India has announced that it is adding smart classes to 80 new Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (JNV) schools as part of its global Samsung Smart School initiative, providing digital education to less-privileged students and fulfilling its vision of #PoweringDigitalIndia by empowering the next generation of young India. With this addition, smart classes set up by Samsung will be available at 625 JNV schools and 10 Navodaya Leadership Institutes in 835 classrooms across the country, impacting close to 5 lakh students.

A majority of the new smart classes are being set up in very remote rural districts such as Kupwara in Jammu & Kashmir, Dahod in Gujarat, Sukma in Chhattisgarh, Darjeeling in West Bengal and Baksa in Assam. These new JNV schools are spread across 17 states.

JNV schools are run by the Ministry of Education, Government of India to make modern education available to talented children from rural India. There are currently 661 JNV schools in the country.

The first smart class by Samsung, as part of the Samsung Smart School initiative, was established in 2013 in association with Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti and the program has so far benefitted over 4.3 lakh students in the country. An additional 50,000 students will benefit from the new smart classes being set up. The program will also continue to support training of teachers. So far, over 8,000 teachers have been trained on how to use interactive technology to teach effectively, improving the quality of teaching and building capacity at JNV schools.

JNV students studying in one of the existing Samsung Smart Classes running under the Samsung Smart School initiative.

Every smart class set up by Samsung is equipped with an interactive Samsung Flip, Samsung tablets, a printer, a server, power backup and digital learning content.

“NVS has had a very strong and fruitful relationship with Samsung. The Samsung Smart School project that has been running since 2013 has allowed our students and faculty to leverage technology at a time when the world is going digital. JNV students are among the best performing students in the country, and their access to the latest technology through this program has been a strong advantage for them. This will become even more important in the current times,” said Vinayak Garg, Commissioner, Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti.

“Samsung helps young people around the world gain access to better educational and learning opportunities as part of our citizenship vision of Together for Tomorrow! Enabling People. The addition of 80 new smart classes at JNV schools as part of the Samsung Smart School initiative strengthens our commitment to our vision of Powering Digital India. This citizenship initiative is closely tied with India’s development agenda, and implemented in close partnership with the government to ensure wider reach and impact among less-privileged students,” Partha Ghosh, Vice President, Corporate Citizenship, Samsung India, said.

Samsung is committed to harnessing its legacy of innovation to positively transform communities and create a better life for people through its citizenship initiatives. Samsung Smart School, the company’s flagship citizenship initiative in India, aims to bridge the digital divide between rural and urban India and provide equal opportunities for quality education to children from all backgrounds.

With the help of Samsung Smart School, students are taught Mathematics, Science, English and Social Science in an engaging and visually appealing manner, helping them learn better and improving retention. Teachers and school principals at JNV schools have provided feedback that smart classes set up by Samsung have increased student participation, familiarity and comfort with technology such as smartboards, tablets and printers.

Additionally, teachers have also said that students learn complicated concepts more easily and that the digitally interactive environment encourages shy or hesitant students to participate better in classroom discussions.