Ranjitsinh Disale (31- year- old), a teacher from Zilla parishad school in Maharashtra won the prestigious $1-million Global Teacher prize for innovation in teaching. This award is given by London based Varkey Foundation and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (Unesco). The winners were announced by actor-writer Stephen Fry in an online ceremony from the National History Museum, London, on Thursday. After winning the award, Mr Disale made the remarkable announcement that he will share his prize money with his fellow top 10 finalists. Then other 9 finalists will get US $55,000 each. For the first time, a winner has shared his prize money told Varkey Foundation. It also said Mr Disale has transformed the life chances of girls. In 2009, observing child marriages and school dropouts, he realised that students should return to school. And make them learning more interesting and teaching beyond textbooks. He bought technology to solve the problem. He used QR codes to understand the concepts in the textbook. He created QR codes and pasted them on the existing textbooks. These codes could be scanned with the help of mobile phones and additional resources on the topics would pop up. In 2015, the Maharashtra government had adopted his idea and made QR codes available in BalBharti textbooks. In 2018, the then HRD minister Prakash Javadekar had announced that all National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks will have embedded QR codes. From 2017,Mr Disale has been working on a unique project. To create a bond between students of India and Pakistan, he has been conducting online video sessions with them. He wants to ensure that each year, at least 5,000 students from the war-afflicted countries of the world are recruited into a ‘Peace Army’.
