Skidos

Happened to meet some great young people who have developed SKIDOS aka Smart Kids Outstanding Students. They are into G-Learning or Games Learning. Games developed around subjects taught in the classroom. So, you may have a match the body parts game for biology and you could have some fun as well. There are similar games for Maths, Science and even English.

But the most exciting part for me was games on entrepreneurship, wherein you are given a sum of money to buy resources and execute your project. So, for a lemonade game you may be given Rs 2000 to buy sugar, lemon and water etc.

Visually appealing these games are pitched as revision games to schools by SKIDOS. Though right now its all about getting them on to the computer room's server...but it would be good if we could have kiosks in lobby areas of the school, where kids could play these games on their own.

Do visit www.skidos.com to check out.

Lately, I feel that these games are just examinations, which test information...may the next step for SKIDOS should be to create games which enhance learning rather than just enhance information. Now...thats the challenge.

Azim Premji University – Why not ESD?

One of the significant developments in the education domain in India has definitely been the setting up of the Azim Premji University by Mr Azim Premji, the head of Wipro, the IT giant.

I remember, in an article in India today, Azim Premji had written a page on how much importance he gives to meaningful education. The article was written along with the famous India Today – Education Initiatives survey of learning levels in top schools of this country. At that time, the thoughts which had gone across my mind were that its the usual CSR talk and may be Wipro is not as serious about it.

However, the setting up of Azim Premji University shows how serious he is about it. The most interesting part is that the university provides courses in only two subject areas Education and Development. Being an IT company at Wipro, a technology course could easily have been added ...but wasnt. That shows that the University is not just a set up to support Wipro. It shows the committment of Azim Premji towards Education and Development and he definitely sees education as driving development.

But this write up is not about Azim Premji or Wipro or the strategy behind setting up the university.

As a Education for Sutainable development (ESD) niche expert in India...I am most amused and interested by the two focal points of the university...Education and Development.
However, I am disappointed that the university looks at education and development as two seperate entities and has not yet seen the linkages between Education and Development especially with respect to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) .

The courses are either purely educational or purely developmental...no course works at the interface of education and development. How about ESD?

If the context of ESD is not created then the university will create great educationisits and great development practitioners working in thier own respective domains of education and development respectively... but not educationists who drive and inspire development. Azim's dream of education driving development would still be distant. In that sense the linkages between Education and Development have to be made clear.

ESD is an important issue for India as a developing country. Until development as a context is not set for education in our country...it would be difficult to see India as a developed country. Education has to happen in the context of Development for a country like India.

It would be a good idea for Anurag, the VC of the University to get in stakeholders like the UNESCO which have been trying to mainstream ESD for quite some time. The UNESCO Decade for Education For Sustainable Development (DESD) is going on right now 2005-2014. The Swedish Centre for Education for Sustainable Development (SWEDESD) based at the Gotland University in Visby could perhaps be another partner. Centre for Environment Education (CEE) the centre for excellence for ESD would be an apt partner in India. And there could be many more partners working on ESD.

Let Azim Premji University be the first University dedicated to Education for Sustainable Development.

(The above cartoon has been taken from Shankar Musafir's upcoming book on school education titled 'To The Principal...yours sincerely'. The book has an exclusive chapter on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in an Indian context. The book will be launched in July 2011)

Civics at Jantar Mantar - School students join Anna Hazaare's protest

It was heartening to see one of the Hindustan Times captions say ‘Teachers brought students to specially witness ‘a social movement’. Students from Bluebells school in Delhi were reported to have been present at the protest and I am sure there were other schools too.

Not only is it important for students to be a part of a social movement for a particular cause but it actually makes a lot of sense pedagogically as well. Speaking from an Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) point of view, school student participation essentially enhances the citizenship education perspective in the light of social sustainability.

Moreover, India being a developing nation, it is important for schools students to get exposure to democratic protests within the country under the umbrella of development.

The experience of the school children at Jantar Mantar cannot be evaluated with objective indicators but I am sure that the experience will have a deep impact on them and who knows…one of them may be leading some important social movements in the country and the world.

Peaceful protests are actually a good ground for learning to take place. One of the projects done by Millennium School in Noida took a bunch of students to Jantar Mantar in Delhi, where they witnessed protests by various political and civil society groups. Students interviewed protesters and found out their motives and questioned if protests actually benefit a cause.

All this happened as part of the Independence Day Project in the school as Indian Independence is a lot about protests. (read my other blog entry on the entire project). The students later juxtaposed present day protests with those in pre-independence times…and explored the journey from ‘marches with mashaals’ to candle light vigils - Mashaalon se candle light march tak ka safar.

Not to let down the cause for which Anna Hazaare is protesting - corruption is a serious issue and may be its time for school students to skip the civics class and make a visit to Jantar Mantar. There is more civics to be learnt at Jantar Mantar.

PTM dressing for parents

General magazines and fashion magazines have carried dozens of pages of models posing with varied dresses for different occasions. The occasions usually range from beach dressing to formal parties and business meetings to Friday dressing. But how would you react if the occasion is a PTM or Parent-Teacher Meeting? I could never imagine it to be a category. And…here I find the latest edition (March 2011) of Outlook carrying a ‘Women’s Day Special Supplement’, which apart from other categories like night out and meeting with clients also includes ‘Parent-Teacher Meeting’ (see pic) As an educationist it amuses me to see a ‘PTM’ to be hot on the couture circuit. After all do we really care what we wear to a PTM as a parent. On second thoughts…it very well could be an established category. Was sharing this with a friend of mine and she shared an incident, where at an admission meeting with parents, she felt out of place as she wasn’t dressed for the occasion as others were. As more and more schools are created and parents take their kid’s education seriously with PTM dressing, I wish… they also spend some time on thinking ‘what would add more value to the education of their child…apart from clothing?’

School Advertisements

Last year there was one full page ad of a school in a Delhi newspaper, which triggered a edit page mention on school advertisements. But really the debate wasn’t about school advertisements but more about what was being said in that ad (something to the tune of a child learning from a domestic help).

Anyhow, school advertisements have intrigued me for a while now. Never has India seen so diverse advertisements of schools. Ad agencies must seriously be thinking of ideas as is clear from the advertisements.

A look at the ads will tell you that each school is unique. As an educationist I feel swayed by what the schools claim themselves to be. ‘Learning beyond the Classroom’, ‘Be what you want to be’, ‘The science of education’, ‘Opening minds, Opening avenues’…so on and so forth. Long call from the times, I used to be in school. But I wonder if all the uniqueness in the ads translates into classrooms. This answer to this question merits a comprehensive survey.

If the India Today survey of top schools of the country (done a few years back) is anything to go by…there is little learning happening in schools. I don’t know if Education Initiatives(EI)
is taking on the initiative further.

Nevertheless, the purpose of this note is not to delve into learning and serious matters. It is just to have a look at the advertisements.

Sitting in educationist circles, we have often lamented the fact that parents rule the education and school world. Moving on, the parents don’t want a change in the education system and want the schools to concentrate on serious academics rather than experiment with experiential learning and project based methods. In fact, parents want conventional schools with good infrastructure.

This is directly in conflict with my deduction of the school advertisements. The fact that the school ads are claiming to be opening minds and being non-conventional actually means that the end consumers i.e parents actually want the schools to be non-conventional.

I don’t know what to make of it, but I am happy with the advertisements at least.

Another truth about the advertisement scenarios is that only the new schools need them and not the old ones. So, the stalwarts like DPS, Modern, Mothers and Bells don’t require it. I am yet to see an ad of these schools. Does it mean that once a school is established it doesn’t need to promote itself? So, once the admissions in these new schools is full house…they will stop advertising. Cool business.

I cut out advertisements of some of these schools, and showed it to a friend of mine (who is currently hunting a school for her child). She said that all schools want the words ‘Global’ ‘International’ and ‘World’ in their names and interestingly in their logos as well. Quite a few school logos have a globe in them.

Well…if the vision is global…then I guess, we will see much happening private schools soon.

As far as the advertisements are concerned…they will grow and innovate. More will come soon. With Birla, Manipal, Career Launcher, Educomp, S Chand and many others opening school chains…the sector will see more action.

No wonder then…school advertisements may muster a lecture or two at top B schools.

But I still think that school advertisements are a matter of research. You cant be selling education just like shampoos and soap. Can we?

P.S - Advertisement of hospitals is another interesting segment of research…Fortis, BLK, Columbia Asia et al

- Dr A P J is seen in every school these days.

Contextualising Republic Day Celebrations

CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGE AND READ

Contextualising Independence Day Celebrations in Schools

While different schools celebrate annual days in different manners…its not the same for Independence Day.

The ‘worst’ school in the country, with so called ‘ill trained teachers’ and ‘incompetent’ Principals, and the ‘best’ school in the country, with the most motivated teachers and the most innovative Principal, celebrates independence day in the same manner.

They hoist the Indian flag, sing some patriotic songs, may be do a fancy dress competition with kids turning out as Gandhi and Nehru. Some may go a step forward and do a proscenium play around Bhagat Singh. But essentially it’s the same…whether it’s a village or a city school, a non-progressive or a progressive school.

The small kid sitting in the auditorium or even the teenager is least moved about independence by all these. Despite the fact that the school has spent enormous amount of time rehearsing for that event. Over a period of time…we lost focus of the child and got involved in various other peripheral things.

The art teacher takes all the pains to do up the school with Indian flags and put up photos of Bhagat Singh et al on all the notice boards…to give the theme of independence to the school. The innovative art teacher puts saris of the tricolour all over the school (to impress the Principal) And that’s not it…we have become petty over a period of time. The Principal and her able staff often spends the entire afternoon deciding on whether the welcome of guest should be done with flowers or with a shawl. Whether the photograph of Bhagat Singh and Gandhi ji should be adorned with a fresh flower garland or the other ‘long lasting’ one. The music teacher is bothered about the fact whether the patriotic group song…would be sung wearing the school uniform or the more fancy ‘kurta pyjama’ of pre independence times.

Oh! And I forgot…the chief guest…the father of the Managing trustee. The Principal is relieved to know in time that the father of the Managing trustee is a diabetic and would hence have tea without sugar. Sugar free biscuits are then arranged.

Excuse me for getting sarcastic. But, as you see…everything has been taken care of…except the little boy sitting in the auditorium…Nobody thinks…what he will take home.

Does this Independence Day celebration give him any taste of the independence movement? It’s not difficult to answer the question.

Anyhow…I started off on my own journey to reinvent Independence Day celebrations. Started thinking on what do we relate to regarding independence…protests, freedom fighters, ‘Quit India’ movement etc. What remains of the independence movement now? What came to my mind immediately were the freedom fighters and I knew that there would be some in every part of the country. Why don’t my kids actually go and meet the freedom fighters?

Why don’t we call the freedom fighters over to the school for interacting with our kids? Then began my search for freedom fighters. I knew, it would be easy to find freedom fighters because most got pensions. But getting the list of freedom fighters from the pension office was a pain in itself…didn’t happen (can’t tell the story here).

So, finally I reached the Freedom fighters association of India office at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi and got the contacts of a few freedom fighters in Delhi. Must mention their names here as they blessed this project of mine. Subhadra Khosla was 13, when she got arrested in Lahore taking part in the Quit India movement. An old lady…she was the first person to actually give me the energy to go on with the project. To my surprise…she was more than eager to meet the kids. Same was the case with Mr Hari Ram, who was 90 years old and an Indian National Army veteran. The interactions of these people with the children were amazing. The children didn’t ask many questions as I had expected but they were visibly moved and so was the entire staff of the school…which wanted to meet these freedom fighters. I don’t want to write much about that interaction…you can imagine it. When was the last time…you (the reader of this book) met a freedom fighter? Another thing which I did was that I took the kids to visit Jantar Mantar…not the monument but the road next to it…where people from all walks of life gather everyday to …’protest’. People sing songs, shout slogans, go on aborted marches to the Parliament, just sit there for a ‘cause’. Interestingly everyday there is one or the other protest happening there. Since, independence movement is also a movement of different forms of protest…I decided to give a taste of the same to the kids as well. The kids were left at Jantar Mantar in groups and asked to interact with the protestors with a few questions in mind – Why are you protesting? What’s your issue? Do you think this protest will have an effect? Why did you choose this form of protest?

So, the kids met the Bhopal protestors, some CPI (M) protestors against the Nuclear Liability Bill and a horde of protestors from BJP rallying against siphoning of SC/ST funds for the Commonwealth games.

It may be the case that still there were kids in the group, who may have found this exercise boring but I am sure the experience will remain etched in their minds for a while and may connect to some other experiences in life to create a learning experience.

In this entire exercise the teachers were not stressed with things and kids were completely interested in it. So, we managed to do a very nice school event with focus on the kid and without the teachers’ getting bothered about bouquets and saris. In fact a number of teachers walked up to me and thanked me for giving them that experience.

(The above is an extract from Shankar Musafir's forthcoming book on school education titled 'To,The Principal...yours sincerely' published by Leadstart. Look out for it at stores in July 2011)