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.