The Virtual Classroom initiative of the Sundargarh District is one of the many initiatives by Sh. Nikhil Pavan Kalyan. The Virtual Classroom was designed for access to education by the High School students during the Pandemic. The Virtual Classroom consists of studios where the teachers record their classes using state of the art equipments and upload the same recordings on the website where the students can log in and attend the classes. The website also has academic and non-academic books uploaded on it making it a complete solution for accessing education remotely. Before the COVID-19 lockdown, in 2019 Sundargarh district administration had launched the programme. As a part of this project, 70 schools had been connected through V-Sat. Smart classes had been set-up in these schools. Through this facility, a single teacher can reach and teach students of all these schools.

The key objectives of the virtual classroom is to increase knowledge assimilation and retention amongst school children of Government High Schools and harness the use of technology for improving the overall reach and quality of education in schools, where this is a significant dearth of skilled teachers.

Sh. Nikhil Pavan Kalyan is a B.Tech graduate from the prestigious Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur. He has worked in Microsoft, TCS and Adobe India prior to joining UPSC. After joining UPSC, he has worked in Balangir, Ganjam, Keonjhar, Dhenkanal and Sundargarh District of Odisha at various capacities. He has not only worked towards education, but also in the field of Sanitation, Drinking Water, Skill Development, Housing, Connectivity, Healthcare and preservation of Environment.

The virtual studio has several other possible applications. This system will be very helpful in telemedicine, conducting training programmes, interaction of government officials with general public etc. Some of the other projects he has launched in the direction of education is “Sundargarh Bahi Padha”, 5T Transformation of High Schools and Bala Anganwadi. Under “Sundargarh Bahi Padha”, the administration has built libraries and has been conducting programmes to encourage reading amongst children.