Initially, when we first introduced ET, we were met with the same dialogue as most would with technology – an external foreign element that needed to be dealt with special training and time-slots etc. Almost none of the teachers did any mediation between technology and black-board due to the discomfort in switching gears from technology-aided teaching to delivery. They would use it as one special class during the week. Later, when the format of our content changed to suit their needs better with easy navigation and localization -it was also broken down to many small components giving flexibility for mediation - they gained more confidence to integrate with their teaching. It was generally used as supplementary material after the initial black-board writing in 2 schools. They also liked the images and voice- overs and said that it made it easy to understand the concepts. 2 other schools used it as filler as they found Science too challenging to teach. However, one teacher that had a Science degree was ambitious enough to try a few experiments himself. Although he didn’t want to be teaching in Elementary Schools forever, being more qualified than the rest of the teachers with a Science degree, he made many trips to CLT Resource Centre asking for more experiments.
Yet, it is not to say that these Science experiments are being experienced by all the children in hands-on fashion. However, it changed the classroom dynamics with teachers exhibiting more confidence to engage children with queries; they were facing the children more and the blackboard less, thus making themselves little more accessible to children. Kids were more animated as they were engaged. Teachers would Pause and add their comments to the video experiments. Kids
would watch the experiments that were very doable, in some cases, with a lot of interest.
Few months back, we converted all the DVDs to be played on TV/DVD, as well. Other unrelated observations - Couple of teachers that had kids in elementary schools in small private schools wanted an extra set of copy to take home. During our observation, we saw a teacher writing something on the Black Board and realized that she had an error with the facts after watching the e-lesson. She then went back to the Board and corrected herself.
Some risk factors were stolen PCs – 3 out of 30 schools had PCs missing and teachers’ reasons were less than convincing.
Conclusion
In our observations at the After-School Computer Clubhouse, we find that children are naturally drawn to Science and Technology without knowing what it is called! They find it fun when they are engaged - hands-on. They tune out the monotone voice of a teacher coming at them at some point. It is about applied-learning, constructivist, peer-to-peer, collaborative, on their own, doing mistakes, correcting themselves etc. Teacher's role should be only to get their curiosity going to find out more about it by themselves and gradually, ‘teachers’ evolving to becoming ‘Mentors’!
We have a while to go before breaking away from set patterns, especially in rural schools. In the interim, can we create other layers of support for the main stream schools? Although our content is more of an anchor, guide, resources and a teacher’s support tool for many, few motivated teachers can emulate certain practices or do good mediation between technology and blackboard to make their teaching more effective.
A few days back, a friend who is educated and has his children in high-end private schools mused, “I wonder though what children gravitate towards if left on their own -on the web - it seems to be music, games..., art? My kids are influenced by peers and play Disney website games, I guess some may even read up on Science, maybe very few. My only question is that kids may not go towards learning, what is required to pass the exams or specific disciplines like math and science-which are required whether we like it or not for passing exams.”
Could it be that that we don’t apply our knowledge about how children learn naturally and build it into their everyday teaching/learning-hours? Left to themselves with things to explore, kids are continuously learning. Sugata Mitra has left us with a fascinating observation in one of his recent talks that learning is a Self-organizing system and parts of elementary education can happen on its’ own!
Hopefully, this argument could lead us all to explore to come up with alternatives for newer vista in education with a special focus to foster Scientific and Technological temper!
Acknowledgement
We are very grateful to Prof D.R.Baluragi for his outstanding commitment and contribution towards development of activity-based science content with hands-on approach.
References
[1] Pratham Foundation, http://www.pratham.org
[2] Future policy choices for education sector in Asia by Shailaja Fennell, http://www.eldis.org/vfile/upload/1/document/0708/doc21182.pdf
[3] Kumar Misra P, E-strategies to support rural education in India, by Educational Media International, 43: 2, 165-179, 2006.
[4] Sugata Mitra - Lift Conference, http://liftconference.com/people/sugata-mitra
Paper presented at the 6th International Conference on “Hands on Science. Science for All: Quest for Excellence",