Here's the prediction: conventional classrooms, in-flesh teachers, and tiny-print text books are on their way out. Solving math problems online, and catching up on missed lessons on a course management software curiously called Moodle, Indian kids are experiencing a teaching revolution. SOWMYA RAJARAM meets the men and women who are working to make the chalk, duster, maybe even the teacher, obsolete
Here's the prediction: conventional classrooms, in-flesh teachers, and tiny-print text books are on their way out. Solving math problems online, and catching up on missed lessons on a course management software curiously called Moodle, Indian kids are experiencing a teaching revolution. SOWMYA RAJARAM meets the men and women who are working to make the chalk, duster, maybe even the teacher, obsolete
Ten year-old Aditi Singh doesn't sit in class for an hour, listening to the monotonous drone of her Math teacher, while sheu00a0 explains the painful concepts of addition and subtraction that they say you can't get through life without. Addy, Share Singh, Malta, and their shopping trips to the market to buy apples, do it for her. 
Kids use a Spiderman chessboard in class. Chess is a part of the
learning curriculum at GEAR in Bengaluru. PICS/ Satish Badiger
If you are wondering who Addy and the friends are, they are all characters from a story that is used to teach mathematical concepts to students like Aditi at Tridha, a secondary school in the suburb of Vile Parle in Mumbai, that follows the Steiner system of education. Present ma'am!
What started in 2000 with just 20 students, is now one of the most sought-after innovative education centres in the city with over 250 kids. Run by The Indian Education Revival Trust, it's inspired by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner's approach that emphasises the role of the imagination, developing thinking that includes a creative as well as an analytic component.
Tridha isn't the only one. Across the country, an experiment is brewing, with thousands of educators and parents working towards steering clear of chalk-and-exam learning, and looking at everything from jazzy technological tools to ancient Indian toys, to give learning a different kick.
Toys are becoming tools
Comet Media Foundation is a 25 year-old Mumbai-based organisation that, as co-founder Chandita Mukherjee says, "makes learning accessible". "Knowledge is bundled into little parcels: math, science, history and so on. At Comet, we believe in emphasising the interconnectivity of things." As an example, she quotes a child who wanted to know why horses wore 'shoes'. "The answer is not a matter of one subject. Everything, from biology to economics will have to come together to give the kid a holistic reason for the existence of horseshoes. That's the idea. We want to encourage a play of ideas and knowledge."
Comet has been doing this fairly effectively by functioning as an intermediary of sorts between schools, educational institutions and innovators in education. The latter could be NGOs publishing experimental books or creating unique learning aids that reinforce traditional Indian arts, craft and concepts.
A visit to their Lamington Road office is enough to help you discover just how deep the commitment to wholesome knowledge-seeking is. There are rows upon rows of learning aids and books, all designed to encourage curiousity.
Her aide Suresh Dhadve says, "The idea is to generate employment for NGOs across the country, create novel teaching aids, and revive traditional Indian handicraft, games and concepts." So, you have puzzles made in Kolkata sharing space with toys that teach muscle and hand-eye coordination, and a wooden, organically painted Tic Tac Toe set made by Eklavya, an NGO from Madhya Pradesh.
The aids are made available to schools across the country, and used in workshops that Comet often holds for educators.
GEAR up for e-learning
At Gifted Education And Research (GEAR)u00a0 Innovative International School in Bengaluru, online study is a major driving force. In a six-day school week, students follow the prescribed CBSE curriculum for just four periods lasting half an hour each. The rest of the time, they are allowed to use various scientific apparatus and online research to expand their knowledge base.
GEAR founder M Srinivasan is unequivocal in his support of technology for learning. "The question is not how intelligent you are, but how are you intelligent. The use of technology can bring out a genius in any child as he/she gets a chance to be more creative."
Every year, classes six, seven and eight are given one project on a destination, person and machine respectively, which the students must submit at the end of the term. At the end of the year, they create a website on their individual topic, based on the research and interaction they have been involved in online, with their foreign counterparts.
Let's Moodle
Like GEAR, the Don Bosco Institute of Technology (DBIT) in Kurla, a suburb of Mumbai, allows its students to access information that the teacher didn't have time to share in restricted time. A course management software (CMS) called Moodle comes in handy. Gunashekhar Nandi, Systems IT Manager at DBIT calls it "a stable, robust and effective tool for taking teaching and the learning process beyond the four walls of a classroom."
Moodle was chosen because lecturers often fight against time. What if they want to add something more that's relevant to the subject? What if a student has not been able to clear his doubts in half hour or is absent that day? That's where Moodle steps in. Lecturers can upload extra notes on the online forum, which students can then access, download and discuss among themselves, and later with the teacher. Tests and quizzes are also conducted using Moodle," says Nandi.
Add the fact that it virtually eliminates the need for a tutor, and it's easy to see why the response has been "tremendous", as Nandi puts it. Today, at an initial cost of Rs 3 lakh for a server, Moodle at DBIT effectively caters to a total of 1,500 users, and 200 simultaneous users.
Making the classroom tech-savvy
Innovation companies are obviously excited. Educomp is an education solutions provider that offers schools with teaching aids and tools to assist classroom teaching. Smartclass helps teachers use digital resources like graphics, animation, 3D images and video clips in addition to chalk-and-talk. Used across 4,000 schools in India, Smartclass runs on a repository of animated lessons to be used by teachers as audio-visual additive elements to an otherwise boring classroom session.
And at just Rs 145 a month, we can't see a downside. "Textbooks are littered with abstract concepts. Something like Smartclass helps students actually see and visualise concepts," says Abhinav Dhar, Director K 12, Educomp Solutions Ltd. At the moment, Educomp has 32,000 digital lessons that it has aggregated and created over a period of six years.
More than 700 Indian schools have also signed up for Bhartiyavidya, India's first Curriculum-Specific Digital Classroom Teaching Aid. A set of multimedia capsules that incorporate a variety of globally searched resource material, Bhartiyavidya is meant to help supplement both, the teacher and other teaching tools.
ADVERTISEMENT
Coming up
A fest that encourages kids to criticise cinema
Comet Media Foundation's commitment to education doesn't end with innovative learning aids and books. Come April 2011, Filmi Chashma, a children's film festival will take their efforts one step further. "Kids these days watch everything from saas bahu serials to gratuitous violence on television. And though parents may think they can distinguish reality from games that they play on their Playstations and on TV, it does tend to have a damaging effect on their minds," feels Mukherjee.
Filmi Chashma therefore, is an attempt at showcasing cinema and getting children to appreciate and criticise it, instead of being mute spectators. To be held in Delhi, Kolkata and Pune, the festival will include films made by final year post-graduate students of media. "The idea is to tell teachers that movies can be used in the classroom ," she says.
Read more at www.filmichashma.org
Trend forecast
Textbooks will be obsolete
"With time, we will have individual-negotiated curriculum, since the role of the school will change. One teacher who will be available online will be the one instructing hundreds of students across the globe, based on individual capabilities. With the advent of line education, eventually, students will stop using textbooks."
M Srinivasan, founder, GEAR Digital tools will become indispensable
"I see a radical change in classrooms in the coming years. Schools without digital tools won't exist. Digital teaching aids will soon replace blackboards across schools in India."
Abhinav Dhar, Director K 12, Educomp Solutions Ltd
Innovation in education for the underprivileged
Chalta Phirta School
Nine-year-old Rekha doesn't go to school. She doesn't have to, because it comes home. School for her is a bright yellow bus that parks itself every day in a south Delhi parking lot. A mobile school that reaches the doorsteps of those who can't afford to go to one, Chalta Phirta School launched under the government's Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, targets street and working children in slum communities, and is run by Butterflies, an NGO working for child rights.
Thanks to its mobility, it has been successful at barging into previously inaccessible bastions. "Slum dwellers are skeptical about sending their children, especially girls, to a traditional school, but when the mobile school comes to their backyard, they are fine," says 28 year-old Moushmi Baruah, a teacher.
The bus is equipped with a television, laptop, and a library.u00a0 "So far, more than 195 students aged six to 14 have been inducted into formal schools, since this initiative began in 2008. We still have a long way to go, but it's a success story," smiles Sujata Khanna, Mobile Education Coordinator of Butterflies.
In Africa, students read books on cellphones
Steve Vosloo, a researcher working in the field of technological innovation for education in South Africa, focuses on mobile learning, digital games and learning (particularly alternate reality games) participatory culture. In his own words, "Mobile phones, games and digital media are the future of Africa's education. I want to use Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the hands of youth to enable their participation."
And so, on August 22 this year, he helped launch Yoza, an m-novel (mobile novel) library, which uses cellphones to support teen reading and writing in association with the Shuttleworth Foundation as part of its m4Lit (mobiles for literacy) project.
Available on www.yoza.mobi and on MXit on all WAP-enabled cellphones, as well as on Facebook (search for Yoza Cellphone Stories), the stories are meant to encourage literacy among African students through their cellphones. According to Vosloo, "For the foreseeable future, the cellphone, not the Kindle or iPad, is the e-reader of Africa. Yoza aims to capitalise on that to get Africa's teens reading and writing."
The goal is get young people to read and write, and in the book-poor but cellphone-rich context of South Africa, the phone can be a viable complement, and sometimes, an alternative to a printed book. The m-novels are written in conventional language, with txtspeak only used when a character is writing or reading SMSes or instant message chats. Prescribed school reading that is in the public domain, for example, Macbeth, is also included.
Books are scarce and expensive for most South Africans. Statistics show that 51 per cent of households in South Africa do not own a single leisure book, while an elite six per cent of households own 40 books or more. Only seven per cent of schools have functioning libraries. But 90 per cent of urban youth have their own cellphones.
Hole in the wall
Who would have thought a hole in a wall could be an agent of change? Well, it is. A wall on the NIIT premises in New Delhi, adjoining a slum, has been fitted with computers. The joint venture between NIIT and the International Finance Corporation has more than 450 learning stations across Asia and Africa, and operates in 12 states in India. Formally called Minimal Invasive Education, this tool has proven that it doesn't always require the physical presence of a teacher to impart education. "Today, any child can approach the kiosk and learn things on his own," says Abid Ali, manager government relations, Hole-in-The-Wall Education Ltd (HiWEL).
These computers have become learning wells for the slum kids. "I enjoy seeing my character take a tour of the solar system, sitting on a rocket. Reading about it in books is boring," says 11 year-old Sabina.
The team behind the project now aims to go a step ahead. "We are planning to add software that will help differently-abled children too," says Suhotra Mitra, senior manager, government relations, HiWEL.
Will the iPad replace the textbook?
This fall, as part of a year-long study on e-readers, students in the The University of Notre Dame's Project Management course will use the Apple iPad for reading, note-taking and research.
u00a0
From conducting research on the iPad to seeing how far apps go to help them study, the project will study the impact of the iPad on learning. The iPads will also help students manage real-world projects. For example, one team will help South Bend's Center for the Homeless establish a guest-run coffee shop.
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
