In Dec
2013 I was in Almora (a major city in the Himalayan state of Uttrakhand) for 10
days conducting workshops on 21st century life skills in small
schools and organisations in and around Almora. My experience in one of the
schools:
50 km from Almora is village Maram. In
Maram, Jeevanshala is a tiny school run by two passionate teachers – Shankar
and Sandeep. Though well qualified for a government job, in 2001 they decided
to start Jeevanshala (JS) and have shaped the school since. They run the school
out of three small rooms, which were originally constructed as roadside shops
(see photos).
JS has 55 students ranging from
Kindergarten to class 5. Those who can
afford pay Rs 150 (£1.50) a month to keep JS running. The total monthly income
generation is around Rs 5,000 (£50). The school does not get any government
support. The four teachers at JS hence earn a pittance of around Rs 1,000 (£10)
per month.
Compare this to Rs 12,000 to 15,000 that
the teachers in the government run schools in the vicinity earn but where parents
don’t want to send their kids! As I understand, the three government run
primary schools in the vicinity get a monthly grant of Rs 150,000 odd each but
all three school together have only seven students. The villagers prefer
sending their kids to JS because they believe JS is doing a better job of
educating their children.
I spent two days at JS with class 4 and 5
students. My focus was on developing their self-expression and creativity using
tablets and multimedia. Thanks to the generosity of some people JS has got 5
Android Tablets and the children are familiar with them. Though Maram does not
have Internet connectivity so JS teachers come to the city of Almora once in a
couple of months and download apps there.
The students told me that they were
learning about the solar system so I split them into groups of 2-3 and asked
each group to research one planet, write about it, make a model using play
dough, stand up and speak about the planet they researched and I demonstrated
to them how a short film could be made using a tablet.
We also made a stop-motion animation on
local environment. The children researched about local crops, fruits, birds etc
and depicted the same using play dough. We then discussed the impact of loss of
trees on the local environment and converted all this into a stop-motion
animation and a short film.
The objective was to demonstrate to the
students and the teachers how they could use tablets and multimedia to create
‘performances of understanding’ i.e. instead of regurgitating rote knowledge in
end-of-year exams they could create a ‘portfolio of multimedia artifacts’ to
deepen understanding in a more engaging manner.
To enable this workshop, besides two
tablets for the school, I was also carrying a USB microscope and we observed
skin, hair, nail, teeth etc and discussed about hygiene (dental hygiene was
very poor). I finished the workshop with some aerial photography using the
remote control helicopter with camera that I had taken for them. Most of the
kids had never seen a man-made object flying (other than on TV or in books).
I found the children at Maram to be highly
enthusiastic, very independent and curious to learn. They start and end the day
by themselves – opening/locking the classrooms, cleaning them and dusting the
mats etc. The senior students conduct the assembly – prayers and exercises, and
in case the teachers are absent they even start teaching the younger kids and
give them homework.
My days at Jeevanshala were interspersed
with discussions with the teachers on what would be a relevant curriculum and
how it could be imparted in most effective and engaging ways. I plan to build
on this in the coming months and return to Maram soon to conduct more workshops
on weaving Timeless Lifeskills into the curriculum and use of ICT to enhance
the learning experience.
