Jalandhar, September 2
Scores of classical and vernacular teachers from across Punjab thronged BMC Chowk and blocked traffic for almost two hours in support of their long-pending demands, here today.

Raising slogans against the state government, the teachers, who earlier assembled under the banner of the Government Classical and Vernacular Teachers Union, were demanding that schoolteachers of physical education, art and craft, music, drawing, sewing, agriculture, etc., should be treated at par with teachers of vernacular languages like Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu and Sanskrit.

Talking to The Tribune, North India president Harbhajan Singh Dhindsa said since the early 1950s up to 1989, all the 18,000 classical and vernacular teachers, irrespective of the categories within the cadre, were treated as a single cadre and the pay scales for all the categories were equal.

“However, during the Governor rule in 1989, the classical and vernacular teachers were bifurcated into different cadres and gifted high pay scales to the vernacular language teachers. When original cadre of all classical and vernacular teachers were the same, why teachers of streams like art and craft, drawing, physical education, etc., were barred from benefits at that time,” said Dhindsa.

State president Sukhjinder Singh Harika said in spite of the High Court verdicts in our favour, the government was still reluctant to implement the orders.

The teachers were also demanding introduction of separate promotion channels for them. “Due to absence of a promotion policy in our case, once inducted as classical and vernacular teachers, we retired only as such,” said a protesting teacher.

The protesters lifted the blockade only after Police Commissioner Gaurav Yadav assured them to facilitate their meetings with the higher authorities.

Demand: Schoolteachers of physical education, art and craft, music, drawing, sewing, agriculture, etc., should be treated at par with teachers of vernacular languages like Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu and Sanskrit

Jalandhar, September 2
With the number of dengue cases on the rise with every passing day, the local health authorities are finding it difficult to run a campaign to control the disease as a large chunk of the staff has been deployed on election duty for the past few months.

There are 25 sanctioned posts of health supervisor in the office of the District Health Officer. Job of such supervisors is to conduct a survey of dengue cases and take blood sample, if needed, of the population of those localities from where the cases of dengue are reported.

With four posts lying vacant and 17 supervisors on election duty, only four supervisors are available. As per sources, the health authorities were able to follow only 11 out of a total of 19 positive cases in the recent days. Owing to inadequate staff strength, the authorities have yet to reach to eight other cases, and the surrounding population.

The authorities had also faced a similar crisis during the gastroenteritis outbreaks in different parts of the city in the recent past.

Admitting the delay in the anti-dengue campaign due to compromised staff strength, District Health Officer Dr R.L. Bassan said he had contacted the SDM-I to release the staff deployed on election duty.

“The high prevalence of dengue cases should be considered as an emergency. In this situation, our staff should be directed back to their parent job even at the cost of work pertaining to elections,” said Dr Bassan.

The authorities are finding the job more difficult as instead of one single locality, the cases are scattered in different localities.

Jalandhar, September 2
Tightening the noose around unscrupulous travel agents operating from city and its vicinity, the district police has started preparing dossiers of the companies involved in illegal immigration.

The police swung into action after the Punjab Government issued guidelines and created a taskforce to crack down on illegal migration.

The police also started monitoring various types of advertisements given by such immigration companies, consultant travel agents in different English dailies and local vernaculars.

Waking up to the menace that has assumed alarming proportions in the state, the Union Home Ministry had directed the state to come down heavily on such agents who swindle huge amounts from youths on the pretext of sending them abroad.

Rajpal Sandhu, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police, has been appointed as a nodal officer to enforce the law on illegal immigration in Jalandhar.

Talking to the Tribune, Sandhu claimed to have started preparing a database of the all travel agents and immigration consultants besides others involved in this trade.

The travel agents have been asked to keep an additional photocopy (counter signed by the applicant) of each and every document (passport, visa and air ticket) of the applicant to make the deal transparent. The agents must have the mandatory permit issued by the Protector of Immigrants for running such a business, he added.

The nodal officer revealed that 1,344 complaints against the travel agents were reported in the district in 2009. More than 700 complaints have been received by the district police till date.

Against 40 cases registered against the travel agents last year, 26 cases have been lodged till date. So far, 87 accused have been declared proclaimed offenders out of which 20 jumped bail. The police would also organise awareness camps in the schools and colleges to urge people to migrate the legal way and not fall prey to unscrupulous agents, the sources added.

Jalandhar, September 2
Of the nearly 7.5 lakh engineering graduates passing out every year in the country, only 26 per cent are employable. These figures put up by the NASSCOM have raised serious questions over the quality of professional education being imparted in colleges across the country.

The vice chancellors and directors of institutes and universities agree that it is a serious issue, which needs to be handled carefully. Most of them claim that school education is to be blamed as students coming to them at the undergraduate level are weak in grasping the basic concepts of science, mathematics and the English language.

Says Vice Chancellor of PTU Dr Rajneesh Arora, “That is why we have started plus one and two in our colleges so that at least students can be worked upon at that level for those crucial two years.”

Dr Arora said the need of the hour was more interaction at the industry-institute level. “Technology is so dynamic that we need to keep pace with it. There also is a shortage of good teachers. That is why we are pressing for setting up a regular teacher-training institute at our old campus on Ladowali Road, Jalandhar”, he opined.

Dr Moin Uddin, Director of Dr BR Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, blamed it on the obsolete curriculum.

“We need to have representatives from the industry on our boards of studies. Even on the research and development front, students can do much better if they get projects directly from companies.”

He added that mushrooming of institutes is also to be blamed. “Most of the new institutes are private, which get opened up with a simple procedure of getting approvals from AICTE, state government and the concerned university. The teachers are not up to the mark. There are no checks later,” he added.

PTU VC Dr Arora, however, contradicts. “NASSCOM has also been saying that they were not getting enough engineers. They claim that Punjab needs to have just 135 engineering colleges and 50,000 seats. As per the current statistics, there are just 95 engineering colleges and 30,000 seats,” he said.

Asked if there could be a check at the entry level by means of having a merit of minimum 50 or 55 per cent at the plus two level, it did not appeal to him.

Aman Mittal, assistant director, corporate relations, Lovely Professional University, however, claims, “For B.Tech entry in our institute, a student has to have 50 per cent marks at matric and plus two levels. This is mandatory or else the students suffer later at the time of recruitment as majority of companies follow that criteria”.

Employability enhancement efforts at PTU.

PTU is planning to sign an MoU with Microsoft for five programmes for students from its affiliated colleges. The programmes include Digital Literacy, Live@Edu, Dreamspark, Rozgar and Student to Business (S2B). All the affiliated institutes would also be able to get the licensed softwares from the company at 70 per cent discounts.

Explaining each, the VC said Digital Literacy will be a basic 32 hour online certificate course. Live@Edu would be an official internal networking system of the PTU by way of which all students and faculty would be able to get an e-mail ID in the name@ptu.ac.in <mailto:name@ptu.ac.in> format through which they will be able to chat, discuss and flash messages.

Besides, Microsoft has tied up with the British Council for imparting communication and soft skill courses to its students. In addition, it will prepare a database of all the computer science students and send it across to various companies for placement purposes. Few of its institutes have already tied-up with IBM for short-term training certificate courses.

PTU is also endeavouring to promote the entry of students in the defence forces. Placement officer Navdeepak Singh said a tie-up had been done with Brig KD Malhotra of the Army Recruitment Zone, Jalandhar cantonment, for conducting motivational workshops at all campuses, especially those located in rural areas.

The university has also started a series of workshops with the Indian Testing Board on software testing for the students of computer science engineering, IT and MCA during which they would also get a certificate for the day-long course. 

Jalandhar, September 2
Peace organisations working in SAARC countries should collectively raise funds for providing assistance and succour to flood victims in Pakistan and India.

Satnam Manak, general secretary of the Hind-Pak Dosti Manch, and Ramesh Yadav, president of the Folklore Research Academy, said they would work together to collect resources, financial and material, to provide relief to the flood victims. The Punjab Jagriti Manch would also help them in this effort.

They welcomed the Indian government’s initiative to provide an aid of $25 million to Pakistan where the magnitude of floods was severest in the past 80 years. They urged the Pak Prime Minister not to hesitate from accepting the offer. Non-acceptance of the relief would send a wrong message to the world community that the politics was taking precedence over the issues concerning humanity in the subcontinent. Leaders of all the three organisations also urged the Premier to open the Wagah border so that Indians could help their Pakistani brethren in this hour of crisis, they pointed out.

Constructivism is a view of knowledge acquisition that emphasises knowledge construction than knowledge transmission. In simpler words students must use their own prior knowledge to enable them to construct their own meaning in the new material presented. Each learner individually and socially constructs meaning as he or she learns.

In Indian classrooms science teaching is in its infancy. Overcrowded classrooms, bulky syllabus ill-equipped labs, lack of innovation by the teacher, theoretical dominance, knowledge explosion and many other important factors restrict the students to attain the aims of science teaching. Science has to be learnt as an applied knowledge and not as a theoretical base. “Learning is not passive acceptance of knowledge that exists there but learning involves the learner engaging with the word (HEIN). So our teachers must adopt a constructive approach in science teaching. Since children enter the classroom with poor experiences, many of these have misconceptions about the ways in which the natural world works. Teachers have to organise, select and connect material and build up instructural strategies to link learners’ prior knowledge with the new knowledge.

Children come to school not with clean “mental slate” but with prior knowledge and experiences that affect how and what they will learn. Providing them with opportunities to express their thoughts acknowledges and gives credence to their abilities and ideas. In seeking the alternative constructions that students may hold, the teacher can gain valuable insights.

At a recent conference on higher education held in Harrisburg, USA, this technique was discussed at the international level in context to developing countries. This learning technique, if utilised in building teachers, may change the overall scenario in Indian classrooms.

Constructivism learning theory is based on several guiding principles. First, learning is an active process the learner needs to do something in order to discover meaning in a subject. A student who observes the growth of tadpoles in a jar with a magnifying lens for over a week and shares his concerns with his teacher for the food needs of these creatures that student will become tomorrow’s caretaker of the earth.

Second, principle learning is a social activity and is associated with our connections with other students, teachers’ family members and friends. Much of our education is directed towards isolating the learner from all social interaction.

The third principle is constructivist theory focuses on how one needs knowledge in order to learn. One cannot learn isolated facts and theories without relating the new knowledge to what else a person knows, believes or fears.

Finally, motivation is essential for learning in constructivist classrooms, we must know the reasons “Why” then only knowledge gained would be applied.

Constructivist classroom is a little bit different from normal classroom. The focus in such classrooms is on students as opposed to the teacher. In traditional views of learning, the learner is viewed as a passive recipient of information. Similarly, in traditional instruction in academic areas such as mathematics and science, classroom tasks that also place the learner in a passive role have frequently been used. Students may memorise and recite facts but too often develop little understanding of underlying concepts (Larkin & Sleeter, 1995). Additionally passive instruction is often teacher centred in which the teacher exclusively directs the students toward learning goals and provides the information to be learnt. So educators teachers play a major role in setting the atmosphere of the classroom. In such a classroom a teacher can follow four-step lesson cycle (Atwater and Baptiste). The steps in the cycle are:

Engaging: Assessing prior knowledge and making a connection between past and present learning experiences.

Exploring: Providing the opportunity for direct involvement with phenomena and materials.

Developing: Communicating abstract experiences, analysis and further explaining. Extending and applying: Expanding on concepts, making connections and applying understanding to the world around the students.

These steps encourage quality teaching and professional development of teachers. Teachers are researchers in their own classrooms as they observe, analyse, reflect, critique, revise and construct theories and explanations for instructional practices and students learning outcomes. When teachers follow these steps students become independent learners. In short, teachers have to accept and adopt a constructivist approach to reform science teaching.

Phagwara, September 2
Famous Punjabi singer-cum-actor Amrinder Gill set the stage on fire with his performance at Kamla Nehru College for Women, Phagwara.

Jalandhar, September 2
Bringing laurels to Jalandhar, two city firms got national awards for outstanding entrepreneurship under the aegis of the Union Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) at a function held at Vighyan Bhavan in New Delhi on Tuesday.

While Atam Valves Private Limited was given the award for quality and research development, Action Batteries was conferred with the special recognition award.

Union Industry Minister D. Patel gave away the awards to CMD of Atam Valves Vimal Prakash Jain and Managing Director of Action Batteries (Kaycee Batteries) Kewal Choudhary at the function where President Pratibha Devisingh Patil was the chief guest.

After setting up an auto-parts unit in the name of Emco Industries in 1972, Jain established Atam Valves for manufacturing valves and cocks 10 years later. The award is given to observe the performance of the company in the last three years.

Jalandhar, September 2
A four-day workshop on ‘Refining and petrochemicals’ was organised jointly by Petroleum Federation of India, Indian Oil Corporation Limited (Pipelines) and Lovraj Kumar Memorial Trust in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Dr BR Ambedkar National Institute of Technology. A study tour was also undertaken to the IOCL’s pipeline terminal and LPG installation from August 25 to 28.

The primary objective of the programme was to share the experience of oil and gas professionals with teaching faculty to enhance and update their knowledge which would help them in coaching students for their effective performance in the industry.

Faculty members from eight engineering institutes, including University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES), Deenbandhu Chhotu Ram University of Science and Technology (DCRUST), Murthal, IIT Roorkee, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Thapar University, Patiala, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha Delhi participated.

R.K. Ghosh, Executive Director, Panipat Refinery Complex Indian Oil Corporation, inaugurated the workshop. Dr A.K. Jain Director Sardar Swaran Singh National Institute of Renewable Energy discussed the current energy scenario and climatic changes with reference to petroleum products.

Dr M.K. Jha, Professor and Head Department of Chemical Engineering, NIT, was the chief coordinator of the workshop

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