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How technology is reshaping education Ragging and its effect
Campus Notes
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How technology is reshaping education From online courses to kid-friendly laptops and virtual teachers, technology is spreading in America’s classrooms, reducing the need for textbooks, notepads, paper and in some cases even the schools themselves. Just ask 11-year-old Jemella Chambers. She is one of 650 students who receive an Apple laptop each day at a state-funded school in Boston, USA. From the second row of her classroom, she taps out math assignments on animated education software that she likens to a video game. “It’s comfortable,” she said of Scholastic Corp’s FASTT Math software in which she and other students compete for high scores by completing mathematical equations. “This makes me learn better. It’s like playing a game,” she said. Education experts say her school, the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School in Boston, offers a glimpse into the future. It has no textbooks. Students receive laptops at the start of each day, returning them at the end. Teachers and students maintain blogs. Staff and parents chat on instant messaging software. Assignments are submitted through electronic “drop boxes” on the school’s Web site. “The dog ate my homework” is no excuse here. The experiment at Frederick began two years ago at cost of about $2 million, but last year was the first in which all 7th and 8th grade students received laptops. Classwork is done in Google Inc’s free applications like Google Docs, or Apple’s iMovie and specialized educational software like FASTT Math. “Why would we ever buy a book when we can buy a computer? Textbooks are often obsolete before they are even printed,” said Debra Socia, principal of the school in Dorchester, a tough Boston district prone to crime and poor schools. There is, however, one concession to the past: a library stocked with novels. “It’s a powerful, powerful experience,” added Socia. Average attendance climbed to 94 percent from 92 percent; discipline referrals fell 30 percent. And parents are more engaged, she said. “Any family can chat online with teacher and say ‘hey, we’re having this problem’.” Unlike traditional schools, Frederick’s students work at vastly different levels in the same classroom. Children with special needs rub shoulders with high performers. Computers track a range of aptitude levels, allowing teachers to tailor their teaching to their students’ weakest areas, Socia said. The Internet is also a catalyst for change. U.S. enrolment in online virtual classes reached the 1 million mark last year, 22 times the level seen in 2000, according to the North American Council for Online Learning, an industry body. That’s only the beginning, said Michael Horn, co-author of “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns”. “Our projections show that 50 percent of high school courses will be taught online by 2013. It’s about one percent right now,” said Horn, executive director of education at Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank in Massachusetts. K12 Inc, which provides online curriculum and educational services in 17 U.S. states, has seen student enrolment rise 57 percent from last year to 41,000 full-time students, said its chief executive, Ron Packard. Much of the growth is in publicly funded virtual charter schools. “Because it is a public school, the state funds the education similar to what they would in a brick and mortar school, but we get on average about 70 percent of the dollars,” Packard told Reuters. “We don’t usually get capital dollars, or bond issue dollars. Sometimes we don’t get local dollars. So on average it works out 70 percent of the per pupil spending that an average school in the state would receive,” he said. “We’re getting the kids who the local school is not working for. And the spectrum goes from extreme special education to extremely gifted kids,” he said. U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley says K12 and similar companies look set to capture an increasing share of the $550 billion publicly funded U.S. education market for children aged from about 5 to 18 as more U.S. states adopt virtual schools. Virginia-based K12 recently opened an office in Dubai to expand overseas. Packard says he expects strong offshore demand for American primary and secondary education tailored for foreign nationals who want to enter U.S. universities. Apex Learning Inc, based in Bellevue, Washington, is seeing a similar surge in demand. It started in 1997 by offering online advanced-placement courses to parents and individual schools but now sells an array of online classes for entire school districts and state departments of education. “Over the last two years in particular we have seen very, very significant growth in the interest and demand for our type of digital curriculum,” Apex chief executive Cheryl Vedoe said in a telephone interview. Apex enrolments rose 50 percent to 300,000 in 2006-2007, and likely grew at the same pace last year, she said. “Where we see the greatest growth today is actually in brick and mortar high schools for programs for students who are not succeeding in the existing programs,” she added. Online tutoring is also expanding rapidly. Bangalore-based TutorVista, which launched online U.S. services in 2005, estimates its average global growth in active students at 22 percent a month — all taught by “e-tutors” mostly in India. Horn expects demand for teachers to fall and virtual schools to boost achievement in a U.S. education system where only two-thirds of teenagers graduate from high school — a proportion that slides to 50 percent for black Americans and Hispanics, according to government statistics. “You deliver education at lower cost, but you will actually improve the amount of time that a teacher can spend with each student because they are no longer delivering one-size-fits-all lesson plans,” he said. “They can actually roam around.”
—Reuters
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Ragging and its effect Every new session, students in the colleges and universities get set with their plans for ragging the freshers, while for the unorganised freshers, the euphoria of success in the previous class or entering into a new world of freedom in the corridors of higher education mitigates with the perception of torture at the hands of seniors. Ragging is usually held during a fixed period in most institutions, specially the professional ones. And once the period is over, ‘seniors’ begin a new “friendly relationship. More often than not, seniors go out of their way to help the freshers they “ragged,” and at times seniors even become their guardians. Of late, the concept of ragging has lost its spirit. It is now confined to acts that cause, or are likely to cause any physical, psychological or physiological harm or apprehension or shame or embarrassment to a student. In India, with ragging assuming serious dimension to the extent of gross violations of human rights, the Supreme Court had to intervene. And at present, the Supreme Court appointed Raghavan committee is monitoring anti-ragging measures at universities and colleges to ensure “zero tolerance towards ragging”. While the contemporary environ is surcharged with anti-ragging moves by individuals and institutes, one can not adopt an ostrich-like approach to the grounding effect of the ragging. The dimension was re-unveiled by a few Delhi-IITians recently. At a get together, while they were taking a recap on their ‘golden days’ at IIT Delhi, the grounding effect of ragging came into focus. During the ‘introduction period’, the then fresher were required to move around in different attires and outfits. Besides funny interactions, putting on bathroom slippers, oiling of hair, carrying of books in buckets, were common guidelines for the ‘introductory days’. Initially it looked odd, and some resentment was aired by some of the freshers. However, gradually, the freshers realised the grounding effect of the ragging. For instance, bowing to even a few months older seniors while addressing them as Sir or Madam, diluted the ego in freshers. It was this period of "introduction" that made them conscious of the fact that 'outer-looks and out-fits make no difference' and one need not be fussy about the trifles. Otherwise, most of the new entrants to a system have quite an ego and they enter new phase of their lives with focus on mere outer-looks. It is in the process they waste most of their time on trifles. Of course, blemishes too mar IITs on ragging, but lucky are those who are nicely ragged and still luckier are those who learn from the spirit of ragging.
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Campus Notes In the near future, India would be a significant global power, excelling in scientific, social and spiritual pursuits. India therefore needs all the talent that it has to work for her, said Dr Rajneesh
Arora, Principal, Amritsar College of Engineering and Technology while delivering the key note address on “Career Prospects in Basic Sciences” at the inaugural session of a one-week Motivational Program and Impact Assessment for Talented School Students organised by the Department of Microbiology, Guru Nanak Dev University, in association with Punjab State Council for Science and Technology,
Chandigarh, at university premises recently. Dr Arora said that India needs the services of talented youth for overall development. He advised the students to develop a self-vision that was related with grand vision for India while thinking about their career prospects. He said while deciding about which career to adopt, the students should have the final right and responsibility for selecting their own career, while they may seek advice and get information from all sources. He said that basis sciences should be popularised because root cause of all development is fundamental studies of the basic sciences. While talking about the demand for Indian scholars, he said Indian scholars were in great demand all over the world, especially the scientists and teachers. Prof Dr Raghubir Singh, Dean Academic Affairs, inaugurated the program. He said that due to lack of career guidance, our youth selected wrong career options and some of them believe that doctors and engineers are the only careers options. He appreciated the decision of Punjab State Council for Science and Technology to organise this program at the university campus. — Contributed by P K Jaiswar |
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Agriculture
Armed Forces
Engineering
Medicine
Scholarships
Sciences Social
University
Vocational
Pervin Malhotra, Director, Career Guidance India (CARING) (www.careerguidanceindia.com) |
