Tag - Online Primary Education

The phrase "Use of technology for driving education" has acquired a ubiquitous status today. Suddenly, on-line delivery of syllabus, assignments, assessments, extra-curricular activities has become the most common topics of discussion amongst all stakeholders of the education landscape. A good look at the entire eco-system of education would reveal that this is not a new or a novel paradigm. It always existed in a variety of formats such as Distance-learning which was leveraged by several institutions,  including some Universities, for those who either wanted to add another degree, pursue a specialization in the field of higher education or were simultaneously engaged in another occupation.

The onset of a pandemic on a global scale, combined with its unrelenting impact in all areas of human endeavor, has indeed forced all nations to transmigrate to a system that allows all activities to achieve a near-normal status.  Technology does provide an answer. The mandates and rigour of social distancing ensure that human contact in a physical format is to be deeply frowned upon, and the only viable and sustainable way is to connect with each other on a virtual basis.

Living in virtual mode has become a hard reality, at least for the last six months, for most of us. Future seems uncertain, or till there is a significant breakthrough in the development of the most cost-effective vaccine and a durable cure for this lethal virus.

We need to analyse the situation, and evolve a consensus on the measures that need to be taken to drive education in an unhindered manner. Surely, this cannot wait and the problem is further compounded by the fact, that every year the number of aspirants for seeking education is on the increase.

Technology has reinvented itself to the changing needs of delivering education, with diverse and a broad-basedcontent on a remote methodology.We have seen the proliferation of some very robust and smart platforms, that facilitate a seamless and an interactive ways of establishing connect between the school and the students.

It is indeed heartening to note that several schools especially in the urban conglomerates have taken up on-line teaching with remarkable ease like a fish to the water, after a few initial hiccups. But these are early days and we must wait for the final verdict on the long-term suitability of this model of teaching. Already, some voices of concern are being heard from the parents, social activists and even teachers about both the physical and emotional strain the new paradigm is causing. We have to take note of that and take appropriate corrective measure before it is too late.

Another important area that all educationists, management and other stakeholders need to reflect upon, pertains to the quality of education, assessment and a whole lot of other scholastic and co-scholastic activities children used to remain engaged in while at school. Home environment, however warm and loving it may be, cannot be a substitute to the learning that takes place in a school.

Let us go back to the education practices of ancient times. If home was the right place for education, Kings and Emperors of the yore would not have sent their wards to Ashrams and Gurukuls. The rich people today, would have opted for getting the best coaches in all subjects for their children at home. That did not happen during earlier days and is not happening now. There is something about an organized school system, the open grounds, away from the disapproving eyes of the parents, discipline, peer connect, sports, music, dance, annual events, parties that hold an inexplicable fascination for the children and also ensures sound learning.

We will therefore have to devise and create a middle ground. Without sacrificing the imperatives of security and health issues, we will have to allow a hybrid system to evolve that continues to get students on a selective and rotational basis to the school, and complement their studies through home assignment, project work and access to some high quality links on a variety of subjects.

We are also witnessing a perceptible shift in the Indian Education paradigm, from rote learning to project-based learning that is practical and hands on. Experimentations, laboratories, Libraries and similar facilities in a school system shall have to reorient themselves to be delivered and shared in an experiential mode.

In this context, it is extremely important that our teaching community is sensitized and trained regularly to adapt to the needs and challenges that a new system will present. In an ever evolving situation, solutions will be found and many new challenges will also emerge. It is therefore absolutely essential that we create training and research institutions that continue to address these issues, adequately equip teachers to adapt, and deliver quality education. Saamarthya Teachers Training Academy of Research (STTAR), a training institute of repute was created essentially with this objective and mandate. In a short period of its existence, it has delivered some top quality training modules that have received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Its website sttar.in can be visited for further information.

The field of Education is dynamic in nature, ever evolving, and so is technology. The two shall have to continue to adapt and match the requirement of each other. The education and the stakeholders of the education system shall have to project the demand, and technology will have to provide acceptable and sustainable solutions.

That is the best way forward.

VINOD MALHOTRA
Chairman
Academic Council, STTAR

The year 2020 is proving to be a watershed, an inflexion point in the lives of the entire mankind in all areas of human endeavour and activities. Suddenly an invisible tiny monster appears from nowhere and brings the entire humanity to its knees. Everything stops and everyone is pushed indoors, and waits for some signs of that monster relenting in its pursuit of an unprecedented wave of virulent infection and killing spree.

Great minds from the scientific and medical world are completely bewildered and cannot find an easy solution, or cure to the phenomenon,  that has assumed a pandemic character in a short span of time. All economic activity, in practically all parts of the world has come to a standstill, barring those that are essential for ordinary sustenance.

One sector, however that stands out and has taken the challenge head on is the sector relating to knowledge acquisition, its dissemination, and notably the profession of teaching.  It would not be an exaggeration to state that a teacher today is the busiest, the most wanted entity who had to reinvent himself/herself to respond to a situation that had no parallel in the history of any paradigm, relating to the evolution and delivery of knowledge.

The mandates of social distancing, compulsory lockdown and inability to step out of their respective homes posed an altogether different challenge. The only option was to resort to distance-teaching (as against the practice of distance learning), create an experience of a virtual classroom and deliver content and syllabus without actually seeing who you were delivering to. These experiences were earlier shared by the same teachers in the form of fairy tales. Now they had to get into that role in real-time measures.

It is interesting to observe how the methodologies of delivery of knowledge and teaching, have undergone such drastic changes in different era. We are familiar of Gurukul traditions of teaching and learning, wherein the disciple/learner had to stay in the austere habitats owned by the Guru.  The commoner and royalty were treated alike by the Guru and his household,  and they would spend formative years of their life in pursuit of knowledge on a model that was based upon the dictum- "serve and learn". Interestingly, this model of education was complete and holistic, and covered practically every aspect of human growth, including knowledge, skills, sports, fine arts, warfare and everything that had contemporary flavour.

Guru-shishya  Parampara now survives only in a few disciplines such as classical music, dance and a few crafts which demand life-long engagement and dedication.

With the passage of time and expansion of spaces, infrastructure and population, Gurukul system gave way to a more organized and structured system in the form of schools, colleges, universities and other institutes of specialized learning. The oldest existing and continuously operating educational institution in the world is the University of Karueein, founded in 859 AD in Morocco.

Available records also suggest that the oldest university in the English-speaking world is Oxford, founded sometime in the later part of eleventh century and continues to be one of the most prestigious institution of learning.

In the Indian context, there is adequate archaeological evidence available that  points towards the existence of Universities such as Taxila and Nalanda in the BC era.

But that is as far as the historical narrative goes with respect to education and its evolution over several centuries.

In 21st century however, the narrative is very different. In fact, the education story of the first 20 years of the 21st century was just an extension (with minor modifications) of the story that was being in practice for little over a millennium.  The new-age teaching model with respect to the mode of delivery, pedagogical systems, assessment and examination will undergo a paradigm shift,  and the entire teaching community shall have to reinvent themselves to stay relevant.

Some of the essential features of the new paradigm will be as follows;

1. Technology will play a pivotal role in the dissemination process.
2. There will be a proliferation of technology platforms driven by the varying needs of learning models. Needless to mention that it will have to be secure, fast and user-friendly.
3. Rote learning and didactic practices will have to give way to the experiential format.
4. Education will be imparted in a mode of active learning and on a PBL format.
5. Education will have to reorient itself to establish close nexus to real-life situations.
6. The emphasis therefore will shift from acquisition of knowledge to acquisition of skills. Teachers will have to get appropriately skilled to pass them on to their students.
7. Students of the 21st century are smarter and this is an oft-repeated statement. They are smarter not on account of any superior genetic reengineering, but because of an independent access to huge amount of data and information. But whether they are more knowledgeable or wise is a debatable proposition. Teachers will have to take on a new role of Information/data analyst to guide the children in right direction.
8. Education will have to be redefined and the curriculum/syllabus will have to be restructured to become more meaningful, relevant, relatable and user friendly.
9. Education will also become trans disciplinary creating a judicious mix of science, philosophy and liberal arts.
10. Study of Nature, natural phenomena, environment and maintenance of ecological balance will become an integral part of the course content. These areas of study will have a strong experiential bias.
11. Every educational institution will create a structured curriculum for imparting socio-emotional learning. Academic and character building will run as parallel streams with hands-on activity and purposeful engagement.
12. Teachers and schools will also be called upon to create a pattern of differentiated learning. "One size fit all" will not work.
13. Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning , cloud computing and Data analytics will become important tools that will be used extensively in the education space. Children will have to become adept in writing computer programs, coding and algorithm for multiple usages. Teachers will have to keep pace with these developments.

These are formidable challenges and the entire teaching community shall have to take a serious note of these changes and prepare themselves appropriately.

VINOD MALHOTRA
Chairman
Academic Council, STTAR

One of the most fascinating areas in the journey of progress and development of India has been its education sector. The magnitude of sheer numbers of stakeholders associated with this sector directly or indirectly, is awe-inspiring. If you were to add the number of parents whose children attend schools, the total count will dwarf the population of practically all countries of the world, save a few like China. Another noticeable feature of this sector is the remarkable dynamism and a prudent flexibility to  keep on improving. There has been some paradigm shifts in several areas in terms of content, pedagogical innovations, and introduction of project based learning, as distinguished from the didactic style of learning.

Another thing which probably has influenced this process is the impact of multi-cultural ethos and international curriculums. There has been some kind of fusion and eventually the Indian education system has benefited. Changes have been happening over time but the one that have taken place in the last three months have been absolutely tectonic.  There has been a complete overhaul, a complete change of perspective by which we used to look at education, educational institutions, education managers, promoters and most importantly, teachers.

24th March - the Prime Minister announced the lockdown - and after that, 25th March onwards, everything in this country was shut. The shops were shut, restaurants were shut, so were the malls and cinema halls. Pilots were grounded. Taxi drivers could not move out of their homes. Government offices were not functioning.  But, one particular institution did not shut shop and that is the Institution of education. It continued. In fact, it continued with greater vigour because they really had to reinvent the entire process by which they were delivering. Children were at home, teachers where at home, and they could not connect with each other on a real time situation.  But, students and parents community wanted education to continue as if nothing had changed.

How do you imagine reinventing the entire process, the content, pedagogical situations, the means of delivery to students whom you could not even see? But, as they say,  necessity is the mother of invention. Suddenly, you found a large number of technological platforms mushrooming. Zoom came into operation. We had Microsoft  teams, we had Google Hangouts and whole lot of other platforms which were there  leveraged by  the teachers and that had to be done with a lot of imagination. It could not possibly happen otherwise because some of them, in fact a large majority of them were not conditioned or used to that mode of teaching.

It was a great responsibility and I have no hesitation in saying that the teaching community in India, took on this responsibility with such great elan, aplomb, and tremendous amount of excitement. It  seems to me that teachers are one of the greatest treasures that we have in this country. It would not be an exaggeration to state that our teaching community is our  national treasure. We need to preserve that treasure with all our strength, with all our commitment.

Here is a great opportunity for us, for our country when we can see that the normal economic activity like the manufacturing, services and many others that contribute to the overall economy, will probably take much longer time to begin again. But, the world, as we all understand, is now moving heavily towards knowledge economy and I think that this is a great opportunity for a country like India to harness its intellectual capital, in the form of knowledge economy. I think there is no reason why we cannot become world leaders.

Coming to the strength that we have - I think the teaching community really has to be given tremendous amount of respect which is overdue. We don't pay them well. We do not provide them with the facilities that we should be doing like the western countries. According to our old tradition, Guru Brahma Guru Vishnu Guru Devo Bhav etc., but in real practice, do we do that? I think that  we need to restore all that.

Imagine, the way the teachers have  completely reorganized, reinvented. They were not familiar with the situational challenges that they were going to face. Around 40 to 50 students sitting in their own respective homes, along with the parents sometimes. And parents have become the watch dogs. Parents keep on saying all kinds of things, criticising the pronunciation, accent, concept clarity, etc. Teachers got to face all that and then make adjustments. In such circumstances, it is not possible to see the   body language of the child. The teacher is not even aware what the child is doing or whether the absorption is happening or not. But despite all these challenges,  he or she has been performing with absolute commitment.

I know lot of teachers who used to earlier work for about 7 to 8 hours and now working for more than 12 hours. My heart goes out to them. My salutation to all the teaching community in this country. I think it is time that we started respecting this great national treasure.

I would also like to mention that lot of parents keep on making certain statements now since they have the opportunity to sometimes sit next to the student - the child - when simultaneously listening to what is being delivered.  They make certain comments. I would like to mention this to these parents.  Parents - you are not a trained teacher,  you may be a trained parent at the most, but you are not a trained teacher. The person who is talking to your child is a trained teacher. He or she knows the art of teaching, knows what to say, when to say, and how much to say. So, please respect her word. There are certain issues - I am sure these can be addressed.

I would also make a strong  case for teachers, the management of the schools and would personally request all parents to make sure that the sustenance part of this program or teaching does not get jeopardized. I am sure they want the child to keep on studying every day, day in and day out. Moreover, as of now, a lot of add-on and co-scholastic activities are happening. The teachers are usually busy, hugely occupied in trying to deliver the best. So, it is the societies' responsibility that if you want your child to continue being engaged in a fruitful, productive educational paradigm, you got to support that. You have to pay the fees in time. At the end of it all, the teachers' sustenance depends upon no other source, except the one which is given by you on regular basis.

Today, fortunately,  our expenses on other activities like fast food,  malls, cinema halls  etc.  is coming down.  Spending on education is a much better option than spending on material objects, since education is going to stay with you for a much longer period of time.

Again, my profound appreciation and felicitation to all teachers and the teaching community in this country. You have done a fantastic job and my salutations to all of you! What has really happened is that India has discovered a new category of teachers -  highly motivated, very strong, technologically very grounded. India has discovered them and I think teachers have also discovered themselves - the kind of potential they have.

VINOD MALHOTRA
Chairman
Academic Council, STTAR

One of the most profound statements that we hear especially from the Educationists the world over, refers to "Education" as the most powerful means of empowerment. In simple words, it should mean that an individual after getting educated, is in a position to lead a meaningful and productive life, and is fully equipped to face and indeed, solve all challenges that life brings. It, therefore, presupposes that "Education" that a person goes through during the formative years of his life, has a strong connect with real-life situations and that he acquires the necessary skills to handle them.

We all know that this is far from the truth. The paradigm of education currently is structured only to score marks, prepare for competitions, and is essentially directed towards facilitating better livelihood.

Let us objectively examine the possibility of bringing in certain specific

interventions/changes that will make "Education" more meaningful.

1. The syllabus for all classes is too large and unwieldy. It has a lot of widths and by the time you move on to the last chapter, the earlier ones have been forgotten. So what is important is the depth on the subject and not the width. Shorter and meaningful content would ensure better assimilation and encourage critical thinking. Syllabus should be structured in such a way that it has pace, progression and challenge.
2. We need to move a filter over the content in all subjects and discard the peripheral and inessential components. This would require some application but is worth the effort. The content should be relatable to real life challenges and culturally relevant.
3. Every school must carry out a comprehensive exercise in curriculum progression and alignment so that subject specific content, moves from one class to the next in a seamless manner. A detailed exercise in curriculum mapping should be undertaken and to ensure that it becomes outcome driven.
4. While teaching and all associated pedagogical practices must focus on learning as the primary focus, a parallel assessment protocol must be put in place to ensure that learning is, indeed happening. Our neural system is structured to be a trifle repetitive to store information for a longer duration. Hence revision of what is being taught and learnt is strongly recommended.
5. As mentioned earlier, every subject has a strong symbiotic relationship with real life situations. Integrating that aspect should be an essential part of the content and pedagogy.
6. The teachers in the present context must act as facilitators, guiding students for concept clarity and analytical thinking. Information and data is available aplenty on the digital platforms and is easily accessible. Teachers must build up their own high order thinking and analytical skills to create right perspective for their wards.
7. Strong learning happens only by doing. Lectures and discussions on the topics should, wherever feasible be followed by project work related to the subject. Teachers need to innovate. Project based learning is gaining greater relevance.
8. The syllabus/course book writers and publishers also need to do some research with a view to incorporate real life connect at the end of each chapter. It will then become easy to remember and co-relate all the learning with real life situations. You will not easily forget that.
9. The future of the world be largely driven by a combination of knowledge plus skills. Technology will continue to be a powerful tool for achieving tasks with greater precision and efficiency, but problem solving skills will have to become an integral part of the education process.
10. The most important component of education will necessarily fall within the domain of Socio-Emotional learning. People will have to learn to be kind, compassionate, sensible and sensitive to one another, to society, environment and to the world at large. Without this, the entire education edifice of great intellectual or scholastic content will become meaningless.
11. We also need to develop suitable Algorithms with the help of Data Analytics and Artificial intelligence to determine effective pedagogies, student learning and identify areas of improvement.
12. Education is becoming trans-disciplinary. Study of science and arts need not be in separate streams. Both complement each other for creating a paradigm of holistic education. For instance, Music is not limited to be a hobby which is just an add-on. It can be the basis of a fulfilling life-long profession, and also help a student in understanding principles of science and mathematics. (Some of the greatest scientists in the history have been great musicians. Artists and painters understood, maths, geometry, dimensions and astronomy as good, or even better than mathematicians and astronomers.) There is no reason why these can't be started at the school level.
13. It is quite evident that education is not complete unless it is supported by a sound and a structured curriculum for extra-curricular activities.
14. It is also not advisable to overemphasise the relevance and importance of soft skills. These must necessarily become an integral part of the holistic and wholesome education. Soft skills can be learned, imbibed and practised at an early stage of one's life. Later in life, it is a bit too hard to learn them, leave alone practice them.
15. We are all equal , but we are all different. Our upbringing, our cultural ethos, sensitivity, habits, span of attention, and all other factors that have an important bearing on learning are vastly different. We need to consciously start working on creating differentiated curriculum to address the needs of individual students. The concept of "One size fit all" in the context of education is an anachronism.

It is time to revisit and redefine EDUCATION so that it becomes more relevant, relatable and user-friendly.

VINOD MALHOTRA
Chairman
Academic Council, STTAR

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought great disruption across the world including in the education sector. At the onset of the lockdown, the teaching community was rudely shaken by this sudden shift in curriculum transaction. While there were doubtlessly some hiccups at the beginning, but initial apprehensions and hesitation to adapt to the electronic mode rapidly made way for innovative methods and experiences in delivering their lessons.

Amidst many other changes –some good, while others not so good – the current situation has brought about a great transformation in teaching and learning processes.

It has been quite some time since educational institutions have remained closed, and with uncertainty looming on the horizon, leading educationists the world over are still in a state of quandary. No one can predict with certainty what the future of the educational landscape post this pandemic will look like, nor can its negative impacts be reasonably quantified. However, the view that garners consensus is that education will be propelled by technology and blended learning will become a reality across all educational sectors. In other words, new technology-driven changes in teaching and learning are inevitable in the coming years.

With schools following certain protocols after reopening, as will be mandated by the government, the education ecosystem in schools will undergo a change too. In order to maintain social distancing, classes will have to be sparser and will probably run in shifts. Schools would then be compelled to adopt a” hybrid” approach to teaching in and outside the classroom.

Although the present situation has provided opportunities for digital transformation, the prevalence of factors such as fear and anxiety cannot be ignored. Given that the situation is likely to persist in the short-to-medium term, schools and educationists need to be mindful of the mental health issues affecting the students and staff. Another grim picture that has come to light is the digital inequality in education. Students from the poor strata of society have no or little access to online education platforms, nor do children with special needs who have been severely affected by non-inclusion in the electronic learning processes deepening the digital divide. These issues cannot be ignored and must be dealt with great care and focused planning in order to ensure that the marginalized youth are not deprived of their right to education.

Interestingly, there has been a huge makeover in the profiles of students and teachers as the education world continues to grapple with the new normal. Students are now becoming needs-based learners since they are overwhelmed by the large volume of information made available by the digital media. Teachers, from being knowledge providers, are now transitioning into facilitators and counselors. As the role of the teacher is changing, so are their skillsets. For this reason, teacher preparedness needs to be an area of focus since they would require to be well-equipped in competencies to deal with the rapid shifts in the education world.

Online training sessions for teachers for building new skill-sets are the need of the hour. Certain training programs like ICT in education, personal effectiveness, NLP for teaching, Socio-Emotional learning, etc need to be made compulsory for teacher training during these times to strengthen the human relationships between teachers and students. To tap the much-needed affective domain of the students, teachers need to offer them powerful learning experiences so as to groom them into conscious and competent individuals who will blossom both scholastically and emotionally.

(Observing the paradigm shift in education, STTAR a premier teacher training institute in Ghaziabad has begun offering short online courses to teachers to enable them to acquire new skills and competencies based on extensive research to adapt to the new normal)

Ms. Sushma Raturi
Member Secretary
Academic Council, STTAR

As we all know, teaching is one of the noblest professions across the globe. If students are to achieve success in their future, it is the teachers that hold the key. However, recently educators have discovered that education is not solely about coursework but a lot of it depends on communication and interpersonal interaction. Hence, Neuro-linguistic programming has been at the forefront of the education sector and a tool for teachers to become even better.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP for short, is a methodology developed in the 1970s which, put simply, helps individuals understand the way they take on board information in every form, be it what they see, hear, taste or feel. They discover how the way they process that information influences their actions and, in turn, various outcomes that affect their lives.

Every student has a different learning style and for a teacher to be able to understand each method efficiently and get positive results requires them to know NLP. NLP not only helps the teacher as a tool to understand the learning behavior of students but also helps them deal with challenging behavior that a student may possess.

*A paper submitted at the European Conference on Educational Research presents a discussion on how the neuro-linguistic programming approach is useful to teaching and learning. Among the many parallels mentioned between teaching and neuro-linguistic programming techniques are the following:

• In a dynamic teacher-learner relationship, the meaning is achieved through mutual feedback.
• All communication potentially influences learning. Teachers’ language and behavior crucially influence learners on at least two levels: Their understanding of the topic in question and their beliefs about the world, including about
• Teachers’ awareness of their behavior and choice of words, and how sensitive they are to the influence of such words and behavior on learners, are vital to making the teaching and learning processes effective

NLP in the education sector aims to give teachers the tools they need to make changes to the thought processes of students and turn them to their advantage in order to achieve better results; and this is how it helps one to become a better teacher.

At Saamarthya Teachers Training Academy of Research (STTAR), we are organizing classes on 'NLP for effective teaching' on 19^th September and 26^th September 2020. For more information, visit https://sttar.in/academic-calendar/