Review cum Refresher Workshop at Gopalpur Dec'2012

A Review cum Refresher workshop has recently been organized at Gopalpur from 26th Dec 2012 through 28th Dec 2012. A team of thirteen members including the Operations Director, AIFT, Odisha, presided over the meeting. The 1st day of the meeting was spent in discussing about the MIS report of  team members that was followed by a presentation made by the Operations Director, on "How we Learn" (Cognitive Science). The same presentation continued for the second day and was concluded with immense enthusiasm among team members as everybody had an opportunity to cite thought provoking questions and relevant instances. The presentation threw light on scientific nuances related to latest research and developments that has emerged in teaching learning process. The teaching aids developed by the Trainers and Monitoring Experts were presented there after followed by activities incorporated, that added much enthusiasm and led to active participation that continued through the last day and concluded successfully. 

4th Resource Group Team Workshop Sambalpur and Bargarh Dist

The 4th Resource Group Team Workshop for Sambalpur and Bargarh Dist was held on 09th Nov 2012 and 08th Nov 2012 at respective zonal centers. The trainer, PMIASE, Sambalpur, had designed a teaching aid  based on "Respiration" that was demonstrated to the participants as an example towards demonstration of effective integration of technology. The same was supported by a lesson cum micro lesson plan and was designed aesthetically, so that the same procedure could be adopted for integrating technology at school level by the participants having expertise on the concerned subject. The participants had a chance to design teaching aids (TLM) in groups and came  forward to demonstrate the same once it was over. The meetings seemed quite interesting, as lots of questions were posed and answered with passion and zing.

7th Resource group team workshop of Ganjam & Gajapati Dist.

The 7th Resource group team workshop of Ganjam & Gajapati Dist, was held on 16th Nov' 2012 at DPIASE, Berhampur. The participants included a total number of six teachers from selected schools having expertise in Geography. The Operations Director, AIFT, Odisha attended the meeting presided by Sri Prasad Kumar Rana, AAO, office of DEO, Ganjam.  The meeting was organized with an objective to demonstrate effective integration of technology along with key concepts selected based on hard spots pertaining to "Rotation and Revolution" for students of grade 6th . The presentation was followed by a lesson plan and Micro lesson plan on the same topic. The meeting happened to be quite eventful as we faced a lot of questions and riddles though the same set of teachers, who were teaching the topic for near about a decade. The basic nuances of the topic were discussed that would be really difficult to explain students in the absence of technology said the teachers. Taking it forward a link has been generated and has been sent across to the respective members who participated in the meeting to post their queries through Google groups so that things can be made simple yet meaningful for making learning fun!   

Indian Schools lacking teachers and textbooks are turning into khan academy for their survival

There is an interesting link to be shared with the readers to make them aware about the Indian Schools turning into Khan Academy. The detailed information can be gained from the link below.

http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/lacking-teachers-and-textbooks-indias-schools-turn-to-khan-academy-to-survive/.

Munmun Singh.
Training Coordinator, DE.
AIFT.

Baijayant Panda visit to DCC, Stewart School.

Baijayant Panda, Hon'ble Member of Parliament, paid a visit to Stewart School Bhubaneswar on August 2^nd of 2012. This was planned as part of a documentary shoot on his life. He is now the active 15^th Loksabha MP from Kendrapada and partner for IMFA. He did his schooling from Stewart School, Bhubaneswar. He also paid a visit to the CB and Pushpa Jain Centre for technology, admired the effective usage of the lab and inquired as to how the lab has been helping the teachers in understanding the cutting edge advantage of techno pedagogy in teaching learning process. He interacted with students, if they enjoy doing projects in the lab to make learning simple and fun. He was exulted with the feedback received and appreciated the state of the art technology being used to develop the 21st century skills among children.

Teacher's Day Competition

To commemorate teacher's day in the DE Schools spread over all the six districts, AIFT organized an essay competition, focusing on the various aspects of "What do DE School students think about their teachers and the perception of Teacher's day". The essay competition was open to students belonging from 6th to 10th grade. The total number of schools that took part were 96, out of which, 42 are Upper Primary and 52 are Higher Secondary. Among the participants from different classes, 1/2 best performer were evaluated and were given the opportunity to read their write-ups in the assembly.

Review-Cum-Refresher at Gopalpur, Sept,2012

A three day review cum refresher workshop was held in Gopalpur on 21/09/12 through 23/09/12. During the workshop MIS analysis of the DE Odisha team members was looked upon. The workshop was organized in the Pelican conference hall of Swosti Palm Resort, Goplapur. A presentation based on the updated status of the DE program was made by the respective zonal representatives as part of the 3 day meeting. The primary focus of the meeting was to design teaching aids to demonstrate effective integration of technology while executing lesson Plans that could be worked out at school level. In order to achieve the objective, team members worked in groups on topics selected from the updated syllabus for the month of October, in a bid to bring standardization, in the quality of outputs indicators at the school level. Eventually some of the high quality teaching aids and lesson plans were presented by the team members. Asst. Dir. MIS, SSA, Sri Prabhat Mishra and District Project Coordinator, SSA, Ganjam, Sri Aswini Mishra presided over the workshop during the final day and  expressed their consent as far as the serious and ideal steps being taken to impact the students learning outcomes in a positive way at the school level.

District Level Steering Committee Meeting for the month of September

The District level steering committee meeting for all the six districts (three zones) was organized during the month of Sept'2012. The meetings were chaired by the respective DEO's/ AAO's. A status update on training at resource centers and performance on the output indicators at school levels were provided by the DE team members as part of the meeting.

AYV Workshop

A workshop on Adobe Youth Voice was organized in Govt. Secondary Training School for Women, Berhampur on 18/08/12. The training session covered the theoretical as well as practical aspects of "Documentary Movie Making". The focus was on camera handling and making stop motion animation. The selected teachers showed enthusiasm during the training process and prepared a stop motion animation. The stop motion animation highlighted the necessity of taking precautionary measures while lighting crackers.

Resource Group Meeting

Resource group meetings were held recently in all the three zones. The selected teachers who have demonstrated effective use of technology in teaching learning, were invited to attend the workshops. These workshops catered to the technical needs of the star performers as far as technology integration in teaching learning is concerned. These workshops were taken through extensive discussions on effective implementation of the DE program at school level, in which both the teachers and the monitoring experts participated there by taking steps in identifying hard spots, which formed the basis for designing teaching aids with an innovative approach as part of these workshops. The central zone workshops, was held in Kendrapada and Cuttack Dist respectively, where in a hardware training was organized as part of these workshops. This training basically focused on identifying minor hardware problems and rectifying them at the school level - thereby preventing delays as far as repair and maintenance is concerned. There was a focus on the preventive measures such as scanning of virus, defragmenting hard disk, registry cleaning etc.

What makes a Leader

Recently a three day workshop was organized in the state office on "what makes a leader." The basic proposition on which the entire discussion hinged was "are leaders born or made." "What distinguishes great leaders from merely good ones." In conducting this three day hands on workshop which involved a number of evaluative exercises, focusing on increasing one's level of self-awareness and understanding one's emotions, I focused on the "Covey time management matrix," "the 360 degree evaluation based on the seven emotional intelligence indicators" and the "Jungian personality types." 

It was a very interesting experience for me in trying out the 360 degree evaluation on the EI indicators (emotional intelligence)  and I do sincerely feel that I tried my best to make my team members peel apart the hardened layers of social conditioning in trying to understand their own emotional make-up and thereby how they act and react to different events and circumstances in their day to day life - understanding one's emotions, strengths and weakness, needs and drives and their effect on others. It was a lot easier for the team members than under normal circumstances as they have worked together for a sufficiently long period of time. The workshop also focused on the physiology of the brain - especially mirror neurons, spindle cells and oscillators and how they determine one's actions and reactions. Great leaders are those whose behavior powerfully leverages the system of brain inter-connectedness. The main point I wanted to drive in was that "emotional leadership isn't just putting on a game face every day. It means understanding your impact on others - then adjusting your style accordingly."

The "Jungian dichotomy" was used in evaluating one's personality type while the "Covey Matrix" revealed how effectively we spend our time in the course of a day - especially by realizing in which quadrant we are - true emergencies, personal pro-activity and power, fire fighting and waste.

Subrat Sarkar, Operations Director,
American India Foundations Trust.

 

Review cum Refresher workshop on Personal Effectiveness/Effective Leadership

A two day workshop on "Personal Effectiveness" and "Effective Leadership" was recently held in Gopalpur-on-Sea. The workshop focused on personal effectiveness leading to effective leadership through self-awareness. The Jungian theory of personality types was extensively discussed and used for mapping and self-assessment. The wind, surf and sea provided an extremely relaxing atmosphere for the team members and facilitated self-introspection and deep diving within. A quick interaction with selected team members showed that the workshop was extremely helpful, timely and more such workshops are needed in future. A detailed feedback form will be administered to all the participants and based on their feedback the next workshop, will be planned. I do sincerely hope that the team members will consciously try to implement the learning's at least in a piece meal manner to start with - because by bringing about small changes, one can ultimately bring about the overall change that one wishes to see in oneself.

Subrat Sarkar, Operations Director DE Odisha.

Personal Effectiveness/Effective Leadership Workshop - Gopalpur

A two day workshop on "Personal Effectiveness" and "Effective Leadership" was recently held in Gopalpur-on-Sea. The workshop focused on personal effectiveness leading to effective leadership through self-awareness. The Jungian theory of personality types was extensively discussed and used for mapping and self-assessment.  The wind, surf and sea provided an extremely relaxing atmosphere for the team members and facilitated self-introspection and deep diving within. A quick interaction with selected team members showed that the workshop was extremely helpful, timely and more such workshops are needed in future. A detailed feedback form will be administered to all the participants and based on their feedback the next workshop, will be planned. I do sincerely hope that the team members will consciously try to implement the learning's at least in a piece meal manner to start with - because by bringing about small changes, one can ultimately bring about the overall change that one wishes to see in oneself.

Subrat Sarkar

Operations Director, DE Odisha

Meeting with the Director TE & SCERT

A Meeting was held with the Director, TE & SCERT on 16^th June 2012 where, the DE team was present.  A presentation was made by Operations Director, DE Odisha, on the current status and future directions of the DE Program. Director TE & SCERT suggested a midpoint evaluation of the DE program through a third party agency. There was a stress on transitioning from Procurement model to an output oriented model as far as computer aided learning is concerned.

An Interactive session with External expert at SCERT

A one day interactive training session on “Question Bank” was held on 08^th June 2012 for DE team members at SCERT, Bhubaneswar. The training was imparted by Chandrika Nayak, Sr Teacher Educator, DIET, Nayagarh. The objective of the workshop was to educate the team members on the methodology to be followed in preparing a Question Bank.

The two and half hour lecture focused on the following aspects:

• Teaching learning process - objective, learning experiences and  evaluation
• Instructional objective - Cognitive, Affective and Psychomotor
• Type of questions with examples
• Question bank in classroom.

Before winding up the session evaluation questions were asked to participants by citing instances of real life events.

WORKSHOP ON CONSTRUCTIVISM AT SCERT

A one day workshop on “Constructivism” was held on 24^th May 2012 for DE team members at SCERT, Bhubaneswar. The workshop was conducted by Dr. Rajendra Nayak, Sr Lecturer in Education, Ravenshaw University, Cuttack. The objective was to indicate the paradigm shift in education that can be brought in near future and the feasibility of the same from NCF 2005 point of view by focussing on constructivism as highlighted in the said document.

DE/ AYV Event held on the 23rd of May 2012, in Bhubaneswar

A combined DE/ AYV event was held on the 23rd of May 2012, in Bhubaneswar. Hon'ble Minister, School and Mass education, graced the occasion as the chief guest and distributed Projectors to twenty four selected DE Schools (Schools where Digital equalizer program is been implemented by AIFT). As part of the event six schools which had participated in the DE contest for the year 2011 were awarded with printers, the teachers and students of the three schools where the AYV program has been implemented were honoured with Certificates and mementos. Twenty scholarship cheques were distributed to students of graduated DE schools. Seven AYV projects including documentaries, PSAs and stop motion animations were screened for the audience. More than 100 people including Headmasters, teachers, students and people from the media attended the event. J.Sundara Krishnan, Acting Country Director, AIFT and Subrat Sarkar, State Program Manager, AIFT, Odisha, attended the event. The event was preceded in the morning by an interactive session, organized for the DE team members with the Acting Country Director and State Program Manager, which focused on critical issues related to the DE Program.

Principal Secretary visits DPIASE, Berhampur

As part of his 3 day official trip to Berhampur – The southern revenue divisional headquarters, to have a first hand look at the various activities the Department (S & ME), the Principal Secretary, Rajesh Verma, IAS, visited the AIF Zonal training centre, in DPIASE, Berhampur. He spent some time interacting with the AIFT trainer, Santibhusan Padhi posted at DPIASE, Berhampur, and showed a lot of interest in understanding the technicalities of the 18 day techno – pedagogy training being imparted to Teachers and Head masters of selected secondary schools spread over Ganjam and Gajapati Districts. He enquired about the total number of secondary schools spread over in Ganjam and Gajapati Districts from the respective District Education Officer (DEO) and desired that additional Schools be added as part of the Program so that more number of teachers can undergo the training, so as to equip them with 21^st century skills.  

Project evaluation – Western Zone

A three step filtration process was followed in selecting Projects from 30 Sec & UP Schools spread over Sambalpur & Bargarh Districts. Initial selection was done at the school level and the selected Projects were evaluated at the Zonal level in PMIASE Sambalpur,  by the Zonal level Project Evaluation Committee. The 78 projects finally selected by the Committee and presented to the state level Project Evaluation Committee in SCERT, Bhubaneswar. Although all the 78 Projects/ Teaching aids were of high quality, 24 were finally selected by the Committee for content coverage and technical brilliance.

Review-cum-Refresher / Satpada

A four day review-cum-refresher meeting was held for the DE team members in Satpada. The meeting focused on the following:

Thematic plans

Designing effective teaching aids

Understanding what effective integration of technology in teaching learning means/through demonstration

NCF 2005

Methodology followed in doing projects in DCC schools

Swati Jha, Program Manager, DCC attended the meeting and shared some very interesting projects and assessment rubrics followed in DCC schools. Team members did learn a lot from the interactions and have planned to graft the learnings from DCC into the centralized model currently prevalent here.Especially the discussion on competency mapping for teachers and the rigour with which the processes are adhered to in making student projects proved to be very helpful.

The session on NCF 2005 proved to be a very interesting one and Sangita did a good job in planning out this session. The topics for group discussions and presentations led to some very animated and sometimes heated arguments among participants.Especially the discussion on the curriculum framework proved to be a very interesting one.

Satpada proved to be a very refreshing experience for the team members and it's idyllic setting gave an opportunity for recreation and fun.

Subrat Sarkar

SPM, DE Odisha.

Bardol TOUP School-Trip Report

Bardol TOUP School

Bargarh

23rd February 2012

Collaborative Project: Light

 


Observations

There are 3 teachers in this school, set in a very interior rural location. All of them are undergoing training in techno-pedagogy as part of the DE Program in DIET Sambalpur. Each of them have undergone 9 days of training as of now. There are 63 students in this school comprising of classes 6 and 7 only. Parvati Sahu is the HM of this School and is the one who carried out the collaborative project today. The other teachers Ranjita Sahu and Radhika Sahu are excellent examples of teachers who have effectively integrated technology in teaching learning.

The day started with a warm up activity with the students, where the students sang a beautiful song composed by the HM. This was followed by some questions posed by the teachers through which she indirectly introduced the topic. She had a lesson plan as well as a micro-plan ready, which she followed all through. Simple questions like what makes us see and why is it difficult to see in darkness. She also asked a very interesting question - when we switch on a torch light and aim it upwards, the lower part remains in darkness / why is this so? Students were made to think and they did give a lot of correct answers.

This was followed by a very interesting activity whereby the teacher made a table in the black board in the following format as shown below:

Item	Transparent	Translucent	Opaque

Names of Things like black board, chalk, duster, glass etc. were mentioned by the teacher in the first column and students were invited by names to come forward and fill in the right category under which they need to be classified - transparent, translucent, opaque etc. This was followed by a second activity in which a candle was lighted and the teacher made students view the lighted candle through a plain spectacle, a piece of paper etc. A question was even asked as to how can a piece of paper which is opaque be made translucent so that the lighted candle can be viewed through it. One of the students said that by soaking the same in oil and this was immediately done by the student by rubbing the paper on his hair. A second student gave a very creative solution in that he made a hole in the paper by tearing a part of it.

A final activity/experiment was done to prove that light travels in a straight line. This was the card board experiment. A lighted candle was placed at the end of three card boards with holes in them aligned in the first instance as a result of which the students could see the light and not aligned/not in a straight line in the second instance as a result of which they could not see the light. They were also made to see the light through a straight tube and a bent tube to see the difference for themselves.

Critical Remarks

•  The project was done in a very systematic manner. A lesson plan and a micro-plan had been prepared and the teacher started with a warm up activity.

•  The teacher was very expressive and called each of the student by their name which made it all the more interesting.

•  Edu-Kit was used in a very effective manner to reinforce the learnings as a result of the different activities and experiments carried out.

•  A lot of questions were posed by the teacher as part of the project which the students answered very enthusiastically.

•  I did not find very many questions being posed by the students.

•  Groups formation was evident - but groups did not work in the way they should work. I mean the various aspects of group dynamics were not evident. May be this was because a minimum time lapse of a couple of days are necessary in this type of a project and we do not follow this as we try to complete the same within one or two periods. I can term this as engaged learning.

Demonstration Workshop organised at S & ME Conference Hall

Demonstration Workshop

A Demonstration Workshop was held on the 2nd of March 2012, in S & ME Conference Hall, Odisha Secretariat. The workshop was Chaired by the Hon’ble Minister, School & Mass Education, Govt. of Odisha. Other Senior officials of the Dept including the Principal Secretary attended the workshop.
Nine teachers selected from schools, speread over six districts, where the Digital Equalizer Program is currently operational, gave a demonstaration of effective integration of technology in teaching learning. They also shared their experiences gained as part of the Digital Equalizer program with the Hon'ble Minister & the Principal Secretary.

Zonal Level Project Evaluation Committee Meeting (For Schools of Ganjam & Gajapati District) organized at DPIASE

Project Evaluation Committee Meeting-Southern Zone

Zonal Level Project Evaluation Committee Meeting was held over a period of 3days- 29th February, 12th March & 26th March 2012. A Total of 83 teaching aids were presented to the committee for evaluation, out of which 36 were selected.

District Level Steering Committee Meeting (DLSCM) Ganjam & Gajapati Circle, Berhampur organized at DPIASE

District Level Steering Committee Meeting (DLSCM)-Ganjam & Gajapati Circle

A District Level Steering Committee meeting was held in DPIASE for Sec & UP Schools of Ganjam & Gajpati District on the 28th of February, 2012. Sri Prasad Kumar Rana, AAO, CI Office, Ganjam Circle chaired the meeting.13 HMs attended the meeting.

District Resource Team Workshop (DRTW) (For Sec. & UP Schools of Cuttack District) organized at RNIASE

    

     A District resource team workshop was held in RNIASE for Sec & UP Schools of Cuttack District on the 29th of February, 2012. 10 selected teachers attended the Workshop and 6 teaching aids and micro lesson plans were prepared as part of the workshop.

Internal Review/ Session with Dr. Mohit Mohanty - RNIASE

An Internal Review with the DE team members was held  on the 28.02.2012 in RNIASE, Cuttack. As part of the internal Review an interactive Session was arranged with Dr. Mohit Mohanty - an eminent educationist. Two video shoots of teachers taking routine classes by effectively integrating technology was shown to the participants and Dr. Mohanty shared his views on the same. He also interacted with the team members on how to design and carry out projects involving teachers and students and focusing on collaboration as a strategy for bringing the both together.