Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
A 7D VR lab. An AI-powered learning app. A mobile science laboratory. A virtual mathematics classroom.
These may sound like facilities from a well-funded private school or a university campus. But they are not.
They are part of what teachers across India’s government and rural schools have built to change how children learn.
Among the 82 educators who were conferred the National Teacher Award 2026 by President Droupadi Murmu on Saturday are teachers who have taken technology far beyond smart boards and PowerPoint presentations.
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They are using it to tackle a much older problem: how to give students access to learning experiences that were once out of reach.
FROM ONE SCHOOL TO MILLIONS OF TEACHERS
Few examples are as striking as Rajesh Kouluri, a teacher from Andhra Pradesh.
His Hello Dhruthi AI-based learning app, built with interactive lessons and educational games, has helped more than 15,700 students across 2,574 schools.
His WhatsApp Quiz Bot has supported another 21,000-plus students.
But the bigger number comes from the digital ecosystem he created. RAJCLASSROOM has reached more than 2.5 million teachers, while his digital pedagogy programmes have trained over 2 lakh teachers.
This is no longer technology being used by one teacher for one classroom. It is technology being used to multiply what a teacher can do.
A 7D VR LAB IN A TRIBAL SCHOOL
Then there is Nitinkumar Mahendrakumar Pathak in Gujarat.
At Rangpur Primary School in Vansda, he helped turn a resource-constrained tribal government school into a technology-rich learning space.
The school has a 45-computer IT lab, a 7D VR/AR lab, an offline school server called the Rangpur Server and a student journalism studio called R NEWS.
The interesting part is not simply the equipment.
It is the idea behind it: students in a government primary school should not have to wait until college, or until they move to a city, to encounter technologies that can expand how they learn.
WHEN SCIENCE LEAVES THE CLASSROOM
Ravi Jaiswal, a science teacher in Chandigarh, has taken a different route.
He created a CV Raman Dome Theatre, a Mobile Science Lab on a cart and an outdoor Science and Knowledge Park using recycled materials.
That changes the question from “How do we teach this chapter?” to “How can students actually experience this concept?”
Similarly, Anil Kaushik from Haryana built a Mathematics Lab containing more than 40 original teaching-learning models, along with a 12-section Virtual Mathematics Lab featuring interactive puzzles and O-Lab activities.
For students who struggle with abstract equations, the difference can be substantial: mathematics becomes something they can see, manipulate and investigate.
DIGITAL CONTENT THAT TRAVELS BEYOND ONE CLASSROOM
Technology can also solve another problem: a good lesson should not disappear when the school bell rings.
Vartika Gulati, a Mathematics and Science teacher in Rajasthan, has created more than 200 e-content modules for platforms including DIKSHA, PM eVidya, Shiksha Vani and Shiksha Darshan.
Her classroom innovations are similarly low-cost. Algebra can be taught using groundnuts. Geometry can involve kites. Digital content becomes another tool rather than a replacement for the teacher.
And in West Bengal, Palash Chowdhury has taken digitisation even further, introducing biometric systems, app-based parent communication, smart classrooms and AR/VR at his primary school, while even helping make open-source educational software available in Bengali.
THE TECHNOLOGY IS ONLY HALF THE STORY
What makes these teachers interesting is not that they use AI, VR or digital tools.
It is where they are using them and why.
They are putting sophisticated tools into classrooms where students may otherwise have limited access to technology, laboratories or specialised learning resources.
The National Teacher Awards are therefore recognising something bigger than digital teaching.
They are recognising teachers who looked at what their students did not have and asked a different question:
What can we build so they can have it?
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
