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| EDUCATION TRIBUNE |
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Neighbourhood project to connect children with community
Resource centre for teachers imperative
Planning must for academic excellence |
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Neighbourhood project to connect children with community The pilot project, jointly initiated by the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Space and the Centre for Spatial Database Management and Solutions (CSDMS), an NGO, was initiated in 10 schools of Almora in Uttaranchal in 2003. The President had mentioned the efforts of students of these schools and the project on Technology Day as one of the top nine technological events, which have the potential to penetrate the economy and assist in transformation of society. The programme, a purely voluntary commitment, encourages students to develop geographical and scientific knowledge for understanding spatial patterns and relationships and enhance their geographical skills ‘through practical exercises. The focus, CSDMS president M.P. Narayanan, says is not just technology but also its innovative use for mapping the neighbourhood and its resources. The resultant data can be effectively used in micro-level planning at the panchayat and the district level, he says. The project helped these young geologists become more aware of their locality, environment, forests and bio-diversity. They also collected relevant socio-economic data, which can now be used for development and solving problems in their neighbourhood. The innovative data can be upgraded and made part of database for the Centre’s National Spatial Data Infrastructure, which is in its final stage of approval. Armed with Global Positioning System (GPS), the Geographic Information System (GIS) and space imagery incorporated in palm-held computers, these young technocrats from remote and rural Almora district of Uttaranchal, who were recently in Delhi to showcase their newly found skills, revealed how they had created maps with intricate neighbourhood details to understand immediate environment and that mapping could after all be a child’s play. With these maps, they now hope to find solutions for the regeneration of fast-disappearing natural sources of water, improving road connectivity, finding better locations for electricity and water distribution points, reducing traffic congestion and improving system of garbage collection. Even though most children who participated in the programme were good in geography (which is why they were selected), the initial confusion regarding how mapping could be done without a pencil and a paper and with the GPS and the GIS was but only natural. Over a period of time they learnt to use the devices and handle the sophisticated technology with ease. After working on the project for almost one-and-a-half years, some of them want to specialise in the area. Dr Narayanan says these efforts should become a national movement where students from all over the country should map their locality and use the collected data the development of local area. Education, he says, is much beyond fixed syllabus, rigid timetables and permanent classroom exercises. It should help children connect to their community and schools. The field mapping with the PDS and the GPS help students learn and prepare maps and understand the relationship between spaces and objects and between their community and resources around them. They understand the role of maps in the developmental process and learn the process of gathering information which can help strengthen the capacity of communities to take informed decisions. The project includes training and knowledge of modern technologies like the GIS, the GPS and remote sensing coupled with hand-held computers (PDA) to generate maps to arouse natural curiosity in young minds. This, together with sketching the locality, interactive sessions to identify local problems, creating maps, conducting other surveys and archiving the findings, gives schoolchildren the pride of having authored information relevant to their own community.
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Resource centre for teachers imperative Instead of the already existing four-levels of education i.e. primary, middle, high and Senior Secondary, the government has mooted the idea of two levels of school education-elementary and secondary. The former, consisting of classes I to VIII and the latter the next four classes. Accordingly, the teachers shall be divided into the master cadre and lecturer cadre. Similarly, the existing primary schools shall be elevated to elementary schools and all high schools elevated to the senior secondary level. The senior secondary classes will be withdrawn from colleges. There shall be re-training of the redeployed staff. All JBT, ETT, C&V and master cadre teachers shall be absorbed in elementary schools and trained to conduct multi-subject teaching. Other structural changes would follow suit. In western countries it is customary, nay mandatory, for the teachers to upgrade not only their academic qualifications, but their knowledge as well. A good school has a system of structuring just the right kind of syllabus to ensure that the right material is delivered in the right way. It would be presumptuous to expect all teachers to be totally involved in their vocation or be exceptionally innovatives. So the best way out is to block all loopholes and evolve a system which ascertains the competence of most teachers if not all — a capsule formula so to say. The teachers should feel confident in dealing with the assigned syllabus and for that he should not only have a thorough knowledge of the subject, but also enough to support and supplement it without any feeling of strain. This means the teacher has to hunt for fresh material all the time. How is this done? It is essential for all schools to have a resource centre for teachers. This has become an indispensable part of the educational system today in the USA and England. The concept of resource centre has been introduced in India too, particularly in Delhi and Mumbai. While it may not be possible for each school to have its resource centre, but it should be feasible to have one teachers’ centre for a cluster of schools of an area. The resource centre is a veritable treasure house of facilities for the local teaching community. In fact, it forms a link between parents and the teaching community and between the school and the institution. The resource centre supplies material in the form of books, filmstrips, video-tapes and even software to teachers. It gives a venue to the teachers to meet
periodically, exchange views, help each other with innovative ideas, organise meetings and bring about improvements and alterations in syllabus whenever necessary. The most important factor a teachers’ centre should take care of is in-service training. This can be done in the form of purposeful workshops, periodically conducted with experts as resource persons. At the beginning of each academic session, the teachers’ centre should organise a week of meetings, lectures, symposiums, workshops on methodology, seminars on value education, schemes to cater to the gifted students, remedial steps to help weak students and an activity-based curriculum. Like guidance councillors, the director of teachers’ centre should be able to guide the junior staff members in conducting classroom projects, directly relevant to their subject and monitor working of these projects. The teachers’ centre can have collaboration with departments of the universities, institutions like the British Council and the USIS and also social service organisations like Rotary Clubs and Lion Clubs whose help can be sought for conducting educational seminars. The writer is ex-Acting Principal, College of Education, Moga.
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Planning must for academic excellence Privatisation, liberalisation, globalisation, sophisticated technology and information explosion have had a major impact on the objectives of education. But the content, method and technique of imparting education have not undergone a change. In the globalised environment, syllabi should be prepared keeping in mind the needs of not only local society, but also of the world market. This primarily requires a broad-based perspective to cater to the diverse needs of different constituents of the global market. Another aspect of globalisation is that the field of education has been thrown open to foreign universities. It has increased competition which has been further sharpened with privatisation of education. Institutions of higher learning have become profit-focused and education, traditionally considered to be public good and an instrument of social change, has become a ‘market’ good and the institutions of higher learning are selling it to primarily earn profit. However, maximum profit can be made only if the quality of ‘market’ good, i.e. education, is improved considerably. It can be improved by providing better facilities, both physical and human. Moreover, in the age of self-financing, one has to be focused on one’s core competency in order to excel, otherwise the competitors will finish you. In such an environment, most existing arts, science and commerce colleges are gasping for survival. They cannot face the competition as they lack facilities and infrastructure which attract students. They are running old courses which have lost their relevance. Even when they are introducing new courses, their approach is conservative, their teaching methods and techniques unimaginative and their management skills lack strategic planning and innovation. As such, they do not hold any promise for young students who are curious, awakened and global in outlook. Despite the bleak future for the colleges, there is a ray of hope for their survival. They should introduce new courses in consonance with new trends and developments in society. They should also incorporate information technology in their methods and techniques of teaching. Colleges should base their functioning on the following premises: Consider the teaching community as an intellectual capital not as liability; consider non-teaching employees as service department; consider each department as a responsibility centre and total area of activities must be classified as responsibility-centred, profit-centred and cost-centred. The colleges must prepare an academic calendar of all subjects and classes and the same be given to students in the beginning of the session. For optimum utilisation of resources and accomplishment of goals, the management must prepare a vision document. The writer works at the P.G. Dept of Commerce, Arya
College, Ludhiana
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WITH the Department of Science and Technology deciding in principle to expand its “Mapping, the Neighbourhood Project” across the country, including Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s belief in igniting young minds through this innovative programme of discovery and invention is likely to benefit students from as many as 30,000 schools.
Through practical experience outside the school curriculum, as many as 250 students from Classes 7 to 11 participated in the pilot project, learning mapping skills using modern mobile mapping techniques.
THE Punjab Government has drafted a policy document as Punjab Education Policy-2002 and has restructured the entire system of school education in the state.