Teaching, the 'IT' way

WHAT HAS a farm got to do with teaching of English Grammar? A lot, if you go by what teachers had to say at Futurecast 2001 - an exclusive platform for teachers to demonstrate their ability to integrate computer aids with school curriculum.

Ms.Jayalakshmi, an English teacher of Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan, had a multimedia project in which she asks the viewer to spot out the persons, places, things, plants and animals. She goes on to associate proper nouns with names; herd and flock with collective nouns, not to speak of singular and plural of plants and animals.

The ``picture-in-picture'' study module prepared for class three students provides video clippings of a classroom, a farm and animals.

The objective is to ensure that the computer skills bring up an interactive mechanism between the `teacher and the taught' and more importantly the ability to hold the students' attention.

About 90 teachers of four city schools assembled at the office of Futurekids to display their acquired skills in computers and the ability to use technology for simplification of the subjects. The focus was on Mathematics, English, Science and Social Sciences. A lot of homework by the teachers had obviously gone into the presentations.

Colourful video clippings, besides reducing the time taken for explanation, gave them that much time to interact with children and elicit responses, which would otherwise be more or less confined to a monologue in a ``chalk and black board'' setting.

Apparently the teachers had also field tested their `projects' in classrooms to gauge the response of children, knowing that the jury was from their own fraternity. Facilitators of Futurekids have trained the teachers, apart from infusing their curriculum with content.

Mr.S. Venkatasubramanian, Futurekids Asia CEO, said his company was working in 75 countries and its curriculum was followed by 2,000 institutions worldwide.

A couple of judges summed up the impact of the total exercise. Students can be classified as good, better and best and multimedia would definitely push all the three categories a notch higher, even in the present scenario were board examinations ultimately decided the future of children.

By S. Shanker

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