Smart learning

Nostalgia is the last thing you might feel while visiting a modern school. Gone are the days of the blackboard and chalk, students trudging to school with heavy bags, and children scribbling notes as the teacher drones on.

If you visit a school in the city today, you will see none of these. With technology invading classrooms, iPads have replaced books, school diaries, forms and circulars. Blackboards, chalk and dusters have been taken over by white boards and smartboards. Teachers and students are using the latest technology to make teaching and learning easier. Schools are letting go of traditional methods of imparting knowledge by building an environment of easy interaction anywhere and anytime. 

School diary
Six-year-old Shruti Nair does not have to worry about being punished for forgetting to get her diary, or calendar, to school every day. Most schools are doing away with the troublesome plastic-covered book embossed with the school’s logo, filled with teachers’ remarks, homework listings, or, on a good day, a note from parent to excuse the child from swimming class.

Cloud computing technology such as Google Docs, Groups, Dropbox and online portals keep students posted about events, projects and homework. RN Podar School, Santa Cruz, is using the new technology to make things convenient for parents and children.

“Students do not need to carry that one extra book,” says Avnita Bir, principal of RN Podar School. “Children can no longer hide details about their homework as parents can simply log in and check. Once parents understand the usage, we are planning to discontinue the school diary.”

One of the major roles of technology in school life is real-time updates during heavy rains, accidents or other disasters. Last week, when a school bus carrying Airoli’s Euroschool students and a BEST bus collided on Nahur Link Road, parents immediately got the news through SMS.

“Within 20 minutes, the school authorities informed us where the accident occurred and that our children had been safely taken to hospital. The school’s quick message relieved us and helped us reach the hospital as soon as possible,” says Kiran Pujari, whose four-year-old son Tanish was in the bus. “The school has also installed a global positioning system in their buses. Every day, we get a text message informing us that the children have reached school safely.”

Changing old teaching method
Classrooms have always been plagued by the problem of skewed student-teacher ratio. With the number of students increasing, schools complain that they do not have enough teachers to maintain the 30:2 student-teacher ratio prescribed by the Right to Education Act.

Many schools are using technology to solve this problem. A new method of teaching called ‘flipped classrooms’ is catching on. As the name suggests, it is a flip, or the reverse, of the traditional teaching method — lecturing is done outside class time and tutoring (or homework) in school.

Lecturing is done through free short videos of lectures and concepts created by Khan Academy. “Students log onto a website called KhanAcademy.org and begin maths exercises,” says Sundar Subbarayan, who works with the institution. “The teacher will not lecture in class because the students have already gone through various lectures through video clips by Khan Academy. And the teacher, logged in as ‘coach’, can see who has watched which video. This means the class time is free for one-on-one instruction by the teacher.”

As several schools in the city have shown an interest in the method, Subbarayan is in talks with the Central Board of Secondary Education for launching a pilot project across schools. “Several schools in India have started accessing Khan Academy. RN Podar is one of our regular users and we have also introduced it for students in civic school in Mylapore, Chennai,” he adds.

Kendriya Vidyalaya 2, Colaba, has overcome the problem of teacher shortage by having virtual classrooms for some subjects. With the latest technology that records a live lecture and broadcasts it to other classes, a teacher is able to teach two or three classes simultaneously.

“One teacher is able to teach several classrooms and this has solved our teacher shortage problem,” says Geeta Balgangadharan, principal. “The teacher can also see the students across classrooms and can answer all queries through this platform.”

The education department of Maharashtra, too, has come up with the virtual private network (VPN) to ensure that students in remote areas get quality education. Through this network, education will be imparted through video conferencing. At a later stage, lectures will be relayed across the state. This has been developed by the State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT). The VPN connects around 448 locations which also include 351 block resource centres.

Blackboards
In the age of smartphones, schools have started using smartboards.

These interactive boards have taken over old, regular black or green boards. A smartboard allows a teacher to do multiple things such as project slides, show a video or connect to the internet.

Chalk, which teachers often used as a disciplining tool by throwing little pieces at an inattentive or mischievous child, is no longer in the school stationery list. Most schools have white boards and teachers use markers to write on them.

“If a teacher writes on a smartboard in one class, it gets replicated in another class. It saves time as teachers do not have to keep erasing the writing,” says Geeta of Kendriya Vidyalaya 2.

Shrinivas Nerurkar, chairman of the Shardashram Group of Schools in Dadar, says such software has helped maintain consistency in the quality of teaching across schools.

“Teachers are able to plan their lectures and load them on the board. It saves a lot of time as a teacher does not have to write on the board. The pace of the classroom has become faster,” he said.

Worksheets, homework & forms
Students seldom have to carry worksheets as even homework has gone online. Now, teachers create and post assignments online and share them with students. Students work on documents from wherever they are and collaborate with others in a simple and easy way. Neither teachers nor students have to worry about misplacing a file. Everything is saved online, accessible from anywhere.

“The system helps keep track of assignments given to students. In case a child missed school, he can just log on to the group and get information on what happened that day,” Podar’s Bir says. She adds that children not only from the same class but even from different batches are able to collaborate on assignments.

Jesus Lall, chairman and CEO of Universal Education Group, says teachers upload their lesson plans online. Once this is done, the content head can check if the teacher is following the curriculum and instantly give feedback on the plan. “Technology like Google Docs helps in managing schools and improving staff and student coordination,” he says.

Moreover, in an effort to go paperless, forms of any kind are on their way out. Instead of asking parents to fill forms, schools are sending forms online. Once the forms are filled, the information is automatically converted into an Excel sheet. “This is especially helpful during admission,” says Lall. “Earlier, we had one person only to take printouts of circulars and notices, which was time consuming. If something is posted on the groups now, it is automatically received by everyone and our staff does not need to send mails and printouts.”

Present, miss
In a classroom of 50 to 60 students, about 10 to 15 minutes of a 40-minute school period are wasted in the teacher calling out students’ names for attendance. The latest technology can take a student count within minutes, saving time. Universal School, Tardeo, has started using face recognition technology for attendance.

“We developed a unique program that scans a student’s face within seconds,” says Lall. “The system automatically fills in the names of children present on that day. We had conducted a pilot of this in the Tardeo school and now are going to replicate it in other schools as well.”