Smart classrooms
Who says toys have no place in the classroom? Today’s students could benefit from educational electronics, according to one math teacher who has seen the results for himself.
Vamsi Krishna, a mathematics teacher at the Kendriya Vidyalayas Sangathan (KVS) in Sulur, says technologies used to promote project-based learning can enhance the student’s ability to apply classroom concepts to the real world.
Mr. Krishna has returned to Sulur following a Fulbright Fellowship exchange in the U.S. at New Tech High School in Durham, N.C. Now, he is persuading his school administrators at KVS to purchase similar gizmos, the cost of which he says his school can easily shoulder.
“The classroom tools support an environment that accommodates interactive learning rather than one-way instruction,” he says. “The Indian student can tell you everything about the quadratic equation and can solve it perfectly, but he does not actually know about its practical application.”
Classrooms in India are already equipped with LCD screens, overhead projectors, and Power Point facilities, but technology can be used to cultivate interest and classroom discussions too.
Mr. Krishna says, with the Geometer’s Sketchpad and remote-controlled SMART board software, teachers can manipulate graphs, equations, and data sets while casually sitting among their students, stimulating collaborative learning and analytical thinking.
The Sketchpad, priced at about $1000 and licensed for use by 50 students, is convenient for teaching coordinate geometry and allows students to build and study mathematical models, diagrams, and graphs. Teachers save time drawing similar examples because Sketchpad allows them to change shapes and positions simply by dragging a mouse, while keeping in tact all mathematical relationships.
Meanwhile, Mr. Krishna says the SMART board (roughly $5000) provides interactive animated word problems, among other things. For example, students visualise calculating the coverage area on Earth (a sector) provided by a certain satellite from space. Teachers can simultaneously access related reference tools — all at the click of a button (or wave of a hand).
Additionally, devices such as Texas Instruments graphing calculators (the most common TI-84 Plus costs $119) can plot graphs, solve simultaneous equations, store commonly-used formulas and functions, etc. This is especially handy for students pursuing science or engineering, he says. Thus, Indian students, too, could visually relate abstract concepts to concrete applications. But trendy technology is not enough to further academics.
Mr. Krishna says schools should, at the very least, gear themselves with interactive computer software that allow students to learn more on their own, with teachers as facilitators.
AMRITHA ALLADI
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