Artificial Intelligence (AI) cannot be a substitute for teachers : Hetalben Rana

Bharuch, Gujarat : In a government school in Gujarat, the green screen is not just technology, but a platform for daughters to learn English. Here, daughters speak, act and learn English with confidence.

In a classroom at Manubar Primary Girls’ School in Bharuch, daughters stand in front of a green screen and start speaking in English. A few minutes later, the same daughters are seen with cartoon characters or in a scene from a different location. All this has been made possible with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and video-making applications. And this experiment is being done by the school’s language teacher, Hetalben Rana.

For Hetalben, technology is not just a tool to make learning interesting. But it is also a way to overcome the shyness of children while learning English.

Due to this initiative of Hetalben, she has been selected for the Gujarat Government’s ‘Best Teacher State Award-2026’.

This honor is given to teachers who have done excellent work in the field of education every year on September 5. For Hetalben, this honor is the culmination of her two-decade educational journey. Her journey began with the inspiration of her own mother. She dreamed of becoming a teacher after seeing her mother.

Hetalben’s mother was also a teacher. Since childhood, she was influenced by the school environment. She especially liked the way the teachers explained to the children through pictures. Hetalben says, “I really liked the school environment and the teachers’ method of teaching through pictures.

This experience inspired her to dream of becoming a teacher. In 2007, she started her career as a teaching assistant in a girls’ school in Netrang taluka. Along with her job, she also continued her studies and obtained a postgraduate degree in English. In 2013, she joined the primary department as an English and language teacher.

For the last 12 years, she has been teaching at Manubar Primary Girls’ School.

Over time, her classroom has become known for new experiments in digital technology along with traditional education. With the help of AI, she experimented with fun with knowledge.

In one of Hetalben’s experiments, educational games have been prepared with the help of Wordwall and Artificial Intelligence. According to her, earlier it took several hours to prepare such a game. Now with the help of AI, a subject-based game can be prepared in just one minute.

The zone of this innovative experiment The selection has been made at the level and teachers and students in schools of various districts of Gujarat are using these digital games.

She further added that for children who have difficulty in reading and writing, he has also created FLN digital games based on the gujarati alphabets from ‘K’ to ‘Gya’. Since the ‘leader board’ facility is provided in these digital games, healthy competition has been encouraged among the students of various schools. In addition, while training the master trainer as RP at the diet level, this digital content of his is also proving to be very useful for other teachers. In addition, 3 inspiring articles on innovation in education have been published in the magazine “Jeevan Shikshan” published by GCERT and he has also contributed to the translation work of 4 books of the NCERT module MOTHERS OF DEMOCRACY. He contributed to the course team to prepare a course based on “Local Folklore of Bharuch District” in the online digital platform “Diksha app”, which is available for the teachers of the state today on the Diksha online platform.

Hetalben’s most unique experiment year Started in 2022-23. Their aim was to make students feel more confident in speaking English. For this, they turned a part of the classroom into a small film studio. A green screen was installed and the girls were encouraged to stand in front of it and speak and act in English.

Then, with the help of apps like Plotagon and Arloopa and AI, the green background was removed and replaced with cartoon characters or different attractive scenes. For the students, speaking English no longer felt like answering a question in the classroom. It became part of a small performance. With the help of this method, the girls found it easy to make sentences in English about people and places.

Hetalben believes that with the changing times, teachers should also keep updating themselves constantly. In her words, “Today is the era of AI. If with the help of technology, hours of work can be completed in just a minute, then we should accept it positively and enable the new generation for the future.

According to him, AI is not a substitute for a teacher. It is a tool that can make education easier, more interesting and more convenient for children.

Along with education, Hetalben’s work in the development of the school is not limited to the classroom. With the cooperation of villagers and villagers living abroad, she helped provide the facility of a water filter plant in the school.

With the cooperation of the Gram Panchayat, a block and a shed were also constructed in the school. Apart from this, she has also tried to preserve the environment by planting fruit trees in the school premises.

Due to her work, the staff of Manubar School, the villagers and the entire education family of Bharuch have chosen it has become a matter of her as their pride.

The ‘Best Teacher’ award received by Hetalben is the official recognition of her work. But her story is not just about an award. This story is about a change in the education sector, which is being seen in a classroom.

Due to Hetalben’s experiments, the daughter who sometimes felt shy speaking in English, today stands in front of the camera and presents herself in English and then can see herself as a part of a digital world. After the video is ready, the green screen disappears, but the confidence that the green screen has created, stays with the students.

For Hetalben, the purpose of bringing AI and technology to the classroom of a government school is not to replace traditional education, but to provide children with new ways of learning and to increase their confidence.

Report – Abhijit Tushar Bhatt (Political Editor)