Education efforts

Comments, suggestions, feedbacks, all very much encouraged. Please send to arvindsaraf@gmail.com

Introduction
[This is a quick overview of educational material/ knowledge compiled, and how to use them, and current state of the complete setup, and will evolve with them. Detailed documents on these materials and how to use them are still being worked on.] I will recommend that the reader start by asking himself or herself these questions: - Is the form of education we get in schools fun, interesting, effective, or even useful? - If not, how can it be made more so? This is my attempt to answer them. I have put together resources and approaches I found most effective, and now am putting together lesson plans, examples, and activities to use with them. The end product of this exercise will be modules that, perhaps with some bit of customization, can be used for education in most places. The individual module write ups are, at best, meant to be only a guide map to one possible way of teaching the subject using the resource. All the material is written assuming that the teacher understands the topic he or she is teaching fairly well -- if not, some background work maybe needed there.

Methodology
The general objectives of these modules are: 1. Learning using more familiar analogies and examples, emphasizing similarities and differences 2. Involving students in dialogs, encouraging them to logically understand the concepts, instead of rote learning 3. Introducing students to fundamental basic concepts, and teaching them how to discover/ find out the details as and when needed 4. Focusing on exercises, activities, and practical work to enhance confidence 5. Demystifying the concepts, at least to the extent that they no longer seem mysterious devices, but tools which could be explained by common science and logic The general approach used through all this is: 1. Introduce a concept using a very close or similar real life equivalent and analogy 2. Discuss various issues and aspects of that similar system or concept 3. Map the discussion above to the concept to the be taught 4. Engage the students in some activity, demo, or experiments around the concept 5. Lab work or exercise for the students for hands on lesson learnt

Summary of resources used or being worked on

Science experiment kit
Science, especially Physics, experiment kit developed by AID India with about 100 experiments described, covering topics like air pressure, surface tension, Newton's third law, heat, etc, catering to children from classes 6-8. They also have some sample concept booklets for a few topics serving as a guide on how to approach such teaching. I am working on some lesson plans to cover other topics. To quickly illustrate, I will use how one would explain air pressure using this material - Discussion on how all objects are made of molecules, how gas molecules are far off and constantly moving, hitting the surroundings causing air pressure - Quick demo of what happens when you blow air over a piece of paper held horizontally - How straws work. Demos, experiments. More on syringes, balloons - Lead this air pressure concept to even seemingly complicated things as submarines

Mathematics kit
Math activity kit, developed by Suvidya, a Bangalore based NGO. It has some activity descriptions and material for explaining the basic concepts of mathematics, such as numbers, place value, addition, subtraction, addition, multiplication, division, and fraction. It is targeted for younger age group, say class 1-5. It attempts to give a picture of mathematics as not something drab or difficult, but something that can be made fun, felt and understood, and motivates students to do sums, by putting them in puzzles (such as join the dots, with expressions in place of numbers) and games.

Computer teaching kit

This is still being developed. More than a kit, it is a collection of resources, with additional activities and lesson plans designed to supplement. It focuses on teaching students about computers, using them, using computers to supplement other aspects of learning, and giving sneak preview at the latest in the area. The goal is to introduce them to computers, bring them comfortable enough so that they are no longer mysterious gadgets that are difficult to learn, but can be learnt logically. We use activities, games, examples, and demos to supplement learning. Once again, just some snippets to give a sense of the kit - Activity on magnetization of iron to concept of binary digit, bit - Envelopes inside each other activity to explain folders on windows - Explaining word processors by dialog about features in books and print media

Azim Premji foundation multimedia CD kit

Premji foundation has trilingual (English, Hindi, and a regional language) multimedia CD kit for explaining various science, moths and social science concepts to children. Topics

are explained through animations and followed by puzzles. I haven't looked at them in detail yet, but a couple of times I tried, they did succeed in keeping children engrossed!

English
We just tried out a presentation made by AID India explaining various parts of school to children, and some vocabulary and grammar improving fun games. These are ideas to more lessons and activities, but I haven't got around to these yet.

Others
There are bunch of other very good resources as well that we haven't explored or tried out. Many of these I first read about in a book on improving government school education by another Bangalore NGO, Sutradhar: - Environmental education o Textbooks developed by class 6, 7 and 8 by a group in Uttaranchal called Uttaranchal Seva Nidhi. Emphasis is on learning hands on, involving the community, introducing as much science and metrics as is needed for direct application o BVIEER (Bharati Vidyapeeth Institute of Environmental education and research), Pune has developed some material - Social science -- Eklavya in MP developed some nice good resources - Health care -- SeHAT and FRCH - Science and Math -- Homi Bhabha Centre's efforts in science and mathematics - History -- Khoj, Abacus - Rural technology -- Vigyam Ashram - Computer education -- Initiatives by NIIT, FutureKids, ezvidya - Preschool education -- Many efforts Rishi valley school, Pratham, Sutradhar - Bookbox, PlanetRead -- Use same language subtitling to teach reading

TODO
Make topic/class wise lesson plans for science and math using the kits. Plans should include how to explain a topic and logical connection between different activities. Partially done for science. Calibrating these to different age groups is an issue as well. Finish off whatever remains of computer curriculum. Package it all together. Work with Suvidya on math based computer games, puzzles and programs Explore teaching through theatre. I have a sample script explaining air pressure through theatre. There are more ideas on science, even math and English, through theatre. Media lab (back at MIT) is supposedly doing some interesting education work like software programming bricks, logo, legos, etc. Mail those folks and find more. Look at the resources and contacts mentioned above. See if anything relevant, if so, procure, study, try out, etc. With many, have already built a contact and have some sample content. Try all the resources already there, share learning, generalize, give feedback, suggestions. Contact me (arvindsaraf@gmail.com) to avail them! Structure this effort more. So far, its been all over the place, touching everything. Talk to experts, read more to do so.