A Long Helping Hand From GE

Vish and his IM Team in GE invited us to share our experiences in Sikshana and find out how they could help us. The meet which was held at the Jack Welch Research Center in Bangalore was well attended; the proceedings were also broadcast over their intranet. Three major developments from this highly interactive meet:

• We ( Read more... )

Cheeluru is a small hamlet, roughly midway between Bangalore and Kanakapura, situated on the banks of Cauvery river, it is surrounded by farmlands and coconut groves. Two teachers, Srinivasachar and Ashok Narayana, from its local primary school (map) signed up for our notebook computing experiment last December. They had never touched a computer ( Read more... )

The teachers in Halagondanahalli public primary school have been exploring notebook computing since December along with four other public schools in Kanakapura. Interestingly, for someone who has never used such computers before, they did manage to come up with some interesting creations.

Prashanth Hegde is the headmaster of this school and Anantha ( Read more... )

The conventional approach to computing in our primary schools is to configure a desktop PC with Windows and play canned flash animations or videos. This environment didn't require any active participation on the part of the teacher. In fact, teachers would often play the CDs and walk off to handle another class or go out on an errand! Our notebook ( Read more... )

During our last visit to Sasalapura school, the seventh standard students took an oath that everyone in their batch will get a B grade or better in the next assessment. Well, many kids take such oaths inspired by the moment but their seriousness wanes as soon as we leave the place. In Sasalapura, the students wrote down their oath on a chart, ( Read more... )

Meet with the Heads of the schools at Kanakapura

On 18th Jan 07, we had an eventful meet with the Heads of the schools at Kanakapura. 35 out of 36 attended it even though it was organized at short notice. A review was taken on the progress of the program and the varying compliance levels to the agreed concepts and practices. Many of them agreed ( Read more... )

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Last friday, I tagged along with ESR and Prasanna to Sasalapura (SSL) village school. When we reached the school, the committee members were in a huddle with Shankarappa, the HM. One of their teachers, Shambu Lingaiah, was going to be transferred out of this school. Sasalapura school did not appear in this year's shortlist of schools where new ( Read more... )

I joined ESR and Prasanna on their trip to Kanakapura school cluster yesterday. This time, our visit included a newly adopted public school in Hegganuru (HGN), a small village in Kanakapura taluk. Though small, the homes in the village looked quite prosperous with tiled roofs and some homes even had cable TV. The village public school in HGN had ( Read more... )

Yesterday, I accompanied Ramamurthy (ESR) and Prasanna to Halagondahalli (HLG), a village about 6km south of Kanakapura. This school saw the launch of our notebook computing experiment last month. Prashant Hegde, its Headmaster, is credited with turning the school around from a dull laid-back place to a vibrant school with active participation from ( Read more... )