New resources for a new India

 

For someone who is a product of traditional  Indian education system, it is difficult to believe that there is  paradigm shift in teaching landscape. From the pen and paper to teaching online, we have come  a long way .

Not just the medium of teaching, but even learning resources saw that incredible shift.

For Most of us millennials, school prescribed textbooks and board prescribed digests were only source of course material. The problem with this traditional approach was that updating of syllabus, the world changes at incredible speed but the schools syllabus is not able to keep up. This makes our course material obsolete very quickly.

But the new generation of internet and high speed connectivity has made it possible to expand our knowledge beyond textbooks and digests, it has made it  literally boundless.

No need to update the syllabus now, just update the website with information. With video lectures and animation technology, we don’t just learn from the resource now, we can feel it. With discussion forums, we don’t just discuss doubts and problems with classmates , but we can discuss it with the world.

But this also brings a lot of problem with it. This vastness of learning resources is not only overwhelming, it can also be misleading. There is chance of coming across a material is not only inaccurate but also majorly misguiding. There is a huge risk involved in exposing students to lot of resources at the same time and it can bog There mind.

What can teachers do in this scenario-

They can update themselves. These resources are obviously not just limited to students, but also to teachers. Teachers can not only use their expertise to validate a learning resource, they can also update their own knowledge in the field. This will not only help them but also their students. They can guide their students to not just right Information, but also right learning resource.

A hybrid of conventional and modern  is best approach. Don’t just teaching from textbook, but also pointing to a correspondingly correct and accurate online resource which is easily accessible. Not just bookish knowledge, but a YouTube video explaining the application. This can vastly improve students knowledge and their application.

Interactive ways of learning can also be promoted in terms of creating and consuming right content in form of plays and movies-

1.          Instead of Learning about historic events from textbook, same content can be learned from a biopic made on the same topic. This will not only help people learn better but also enjoy at the same time. For example instead of learning about Mr. Milkha Singh from a textbook, we can watch the movie Bhaag milkha bhaag and experience not only his achievements, but also experience his struggles, the time and era which he lived, his highs and lows, and truly learn and be motivated from his life. Or a  historic event like launch of India’s nuclear program from Parmanu .

2.           Instead of studying a play from textbook, why not make the students enact the play. Something which is encouraged a lot in western countries but not very much in India, Students enact their course material like Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet. This serves two purposes- firstly the course material becomes more fun and interactive and  secondly, the students learn important skills like stage presence, communication and articulation. It is also proven that students have lesse risk of stage fright if they are exposed to stage performances at a young age.  

3.                Documentary of scientists, in our books we just have the pictures of scientists who so ever is associated with that topic and a bit information about the person. why cant we as a teacher can show a documentary about the person which will be having all his achievement but most important the failures and struggles faced by him. By that the child will be motivated to perform different tasks without the fear of failure.          

By all these interactive ways of learning the child construct his knowledge all by himself. Teacher should only have to show the way and should not look to spoon feed the children's. If teacher tells them everything they will be over dependent on teachers and that reduces there creativity and innovative quality in them.

Would like to thank all the readers of my blog. In further blogs I will be coming up with more content about other learning resources, till then Stay tuned and Be safe.