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.