My Field Trips

Recently, I have started to visit a number of schools in the Cuttack and Kendrapara districts. Though not without their bumps and rough edges, the visits have been interesting and informative.

I began the process a number of weeks ago by drafting a theory of change model with the staff (as a group). After making changes and finalizing the logic model, we settled on a process evaluation as the most appropriate type of evaluation for this stage of the program (given the fact that it is too early to carry out an impact evaluation). Last Saturday, I began systematic school visits.

At the schools, I am conducting focus groups and observing classes taught by teachers who have undergone training. One of the biggest hurdles thus far has been the language barrier during the focus groups. Since I unfortunately do not speak Oriya and many teachers are unaccustomed to an American accent, I spend several minutes simply trying to communicate the question. Thus, I have come up with a few strategies intended to make the focus group process a little bit smoother, such as translating questions in Oriya and handing them out to teachers.

Despite the communication gap, I have gleaned quite useful information from the focus groups.

Marina Yakhnis,

Clinton Fellow, (AMAT)

DE Orissa

DE Team Outing

A outing for the team members was held recently on the 9th of October in Kenduli. Marina, the AIF Clinton Fellow, accompanied the team members. 

The team visited Kenduli, located at a distance of 25 kms from Bhubaneshwar and spent a very relaxed day enjoying the delicious food cooked by Soumya and Sanjaya.

DE-MAST / Stewart School

A meeting between AIF and the Stewart School Management was held on the 14th of October 2011, in Stewart School. The meeting focused on the nuts and bolts of starting a DE-Mast Centre in the school premises, leveraging the DELL lab, which has been recently set up by AIF, with a funding support from the Jain family. 

The meeting was a successful one and concluded on a very positive note. It was decided that AIF will implement the MAST program in Stewart School and as a part of that will be implementing some of its well known and popular courses such as ITES, Retail, Plumbing, Fitter etc. The ITES course, which will make use of the high-end DELL lab will start in a months time and all the formalities such as the signing of the MoU will be completed,  by then. 

This will be the first MAST Centre to be set up and run by AIF in Orissa. The courses will be run by Aide-et-Action, our implementation partners.

Visit to Ghatipari High School, Ganjam

I had an opportunity to visit Ghatipari High School, located at a distance of about 25 kms from Berhampur, recently. Marina Yakhnis, AMAT supported, Clinton Fellow, DE Orissa accompanied me on this visit. The excitement in the atmosphere was palpable, due to the presence of a foreigner in their midst. Although the Headmaster was retiring the very next day and had a lot of tasks to complete - related to the transition, still he was kind enough to spend some quality time with us. I had the opportunity to interact with most of the teachers, who had undergone training in DPIASE, Berhampur (training center) and was glad to know that the training was useful and they enjoyed the entire time they spent, at the training centre. Shanti Bhushan Padhi, the trainer in DPIASE, got a lot of accolades from the teachers for his creative approach and interesting examples related to the training. 

The most interesting and gratifying thing to know from the teachers was that the training and the EDU-KIT provided by us motivated them to make a use of computers, once they returned from their training. I was even lucky enough to observe a lab transaction - a teacher teaching about the circulatory system using computers with the aid of EDU-KIT. An interaction with the students and the teacher proved beyond doubt that using animations, multimedia etc. were proving to be useful as far as clarity on fundamentals was concerned. Although like any rural school in India there were day to day problems to contend with, I felt that the spirit and enthusiasm which was displayed by both the teachers as well as the students, will make them overcome day to day problems as far as effective and appropriate integration of technology in teaching learning is concerned.

Subrat Sarkar
State Project Manager
Digital Equalizer Programme
Odisha

Project Evaluation Committee Meeting - Sambalpur

The project evaluation committee meeting for Sambalpur and Bargarh district, was held recently in PMIASE, Sambalpur. 

 

Selected projects from different DE schools, were presented to the committee for evaluation.The initial screening / filtering had been done at the school level, by the school level evaluation committee, comprising of selected teachers.

DE Review-Cum-Refresher

 

A two day DE Review-Cum-Refresher, was held in Gopalur-on-Sea, recently. It was attaended by all the team members, including the Clinton Fellow, Marina Yakhnis, who has joined the DE Orissa Team, as a monitoring and evaluation expert.

 

The meeting focused on monitoring and evaluation issues, apart from a status update from each of the district presented by the district teams, comprising of the trainers and the monitoring experts. A brain storming session, was conducted with all the team members, with the objective of developing a logic model for the DE Orissa Program.

DE Team Outing

Recently the Orissa DE Team had an outing and visited Kenduli, the birthplace of Jayadeva, the famous poet and author of "Geeta Govinda." 

Kenduli is located at a distance of 25 kms from Bhubaneshwar, and the drive is through exquisite natural surroundings.

For around 10 kms the drive is alongside River Kuakhai. Kenduli had long been considered as the birthplace of the poet Jayadeva, who had composed Gita Govinda in Sanskrit