Cloud Telephony

In an effort to monitor meal planning within schools, one global organization has implemented the use of cloud telephony. The Union Human Resource Development Ministry has devised a plan that it hopes can track whether or not students in schools run or aided by governments are given meals. The new program is expected to be up and running by April or June of this year.

According to a report in the Deccan Herald, cloud telephony will help the organization send out text messages to principals to get an accurate number of meals served to students at each particular school. Other information, like what food was served, will also be accounted for in captured data.In addition to using cloud telephony within the schools, the school will use technology to play an important role in interacting with the parents as well. Messages will also be sent asking parents to confirm if their child ate a meal at school.

In Uttar Pradesh, government schools have implemented a similar monitoring system for cloud telephony. On a daily basis, calls are made to the schools to get a count of the children who have eaten a meal. Officials in Uttar Pradesh have found a lot of success with an IVRS-based telephone call. Their program is so beneficial for keeping an accurate count of mid-day meals that other states have considered adopting it in their own environments.

The Union’s Minister for Human Resource Development, Kapil Sibal, has also launched a website, www.mdn.nic.in, to further enable users of the new cloud telephony system. Information from each of the state’s schools will be uploaded to the new website. Sibal hopes presenting every piece of information on the program and how cloud telephony is used to obtain funding information and its purposes will give transparency. 

Those who access the site will also be able to learn more about how cloud telephony plays a role in the program, its guidelines for implementation and how the government is ensuring it is ran appropriately. If users find irregularity in how meal counts and planning are being accounted, the site has the capabilities for them to issue a complaint.

Sibal is taking the process a step further, creating a web journal to track how teachers bring awareness to the meal planning and the effectiveness of using the cloud telephony system. Besides basic writings on curriculum reform on the state level and professional teacher development, “Voices of Teachers and Teacher Educators” entries contain other information from the Institutes of Advanced Studies in Education, Colleges of Teacher Education and District Institutes of Education and Training.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Juliana Kenny