digitalLEARNING-Sept-2011-[8-16]-Cover story-Virtual Environment

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Virtual Labs

Virtual Environment for Real Learning K12 education, today, has come of age with the schools increasingly adopting technological solutions to make the teaching learning process engaging and interactive for students. Learning labs are playing an important role in this by providing creative modules that cater to diverse subject-specific needs. We highlight some of the key elements in Learning Laboratories and find out the perspectives of educationists and service providers on the importance of Learning Laboratories in today’s day and age

By Pragya Gupta

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School education in India is undergoing a major shift from rote learning to blended learning with constructivist approach. The shift to blended learning methods leads to a joyful classroom environment and hence, generates desired experience and output. Learning is now not limited to cramming definitions, visiting physical labs once in a blue moon or learning complicated structures or formula with images printed on the text books. Today’s learning requirement centered on real life experience and here virtual labs offer conducive environment for learning.

The interest and awareness for activity based and collaborative learning paradigms has made the concept of virtual labs even more exciting for learners and users. Learning based concepts, which were always a critical area for actual knowledge retention, are now getting high priority in school learning activities.

There is a need for solutions that can blur boundaries between the classroom, the Lab and the outside world. Virtual Labs enable hands on experience and demonstrations using a simulated laboratory with the help of technology that are Internet enabled. Yet, adoption level is quite low due to lack of awareness, budgetary issues and unavailability of resources. It is expected to pick up at a very fast rate in the coming days. Schools, private or government, are now advocating the role and benefits of having labs in schools. The quality of software and their evolution is also driving this transition.

Types of Lab Usage of interactive learning labs in India are now gathering momentum, with schools slowly but steadily accepting the fact that practical ‘learning by doing’ lab environments form the real methods of learning skills that are needed for a child’s evolution. Diverse range of labs are available in the market, which are also specific to the subjects that are being taught including Language Labs, Math Labs, Science Labs, and Arts Labs.

Language Lab: Language lab has gained most prominence amongst all others, especially English Labs. English Labs enable teachers to focus on each child individually with numerous amount of activity based learning methods. It enhances student’s overall communication skills, which is very crucial for a child’s future. English labs are available in vernacular interface for various other Indian languages.

Math and Science Lab: Mathematics and Science lab helps students to explore the concepts.

Schools are now introducing math and science labs in their curriculum thereby making it a part of the regular time table where students sit in groups of four or five and explore the concepts. This has to be supplemented by a virtual component since many

“If best of lab technologies can be devised and used in school labs, this can make the biggest of differences in engaging the child through practical learning.”

Kannan Bharadwaj Co-Founder and CEO, Math Buddy LLC Pvt. Ltd.

of the concepts in higher classes can be a lot more easily understood with the help of technology. The new age, interactive learning labs will go a long way in helping students develop interest and learn the concepts in the right way. It is a good alternative for the areas where the possibilities of creating physical labs with expensive equipments is not possible and it gives students an opportunity to have hands on experience on virtual environment.

While learning maths, the learners must acquire skills on analysis, problem solving, critical thinking, decision making and data handling. While learning science, the learners should develop abilities like observation and investigation, exploration, deductive and analytical, correlation to real life environment, analysis, concept understanding, and use of it, to begin with.

Currently, the market for math and science lab is very scattered with only a few players offering interactive math lab solutions. There is a huge market for labs, especially as more schools start recognising the benefits it can bring about.

Arts Lab: Arts lab connects students with various geographies, cultures and social elements, which they read on books. It helps students to understand concepts in real terms. Use of modules in classroom learning helps students to visualise their lessons and travel through the deserts of Sahara or the Rain Forests of Amazon.

Adoption Lab technology is very important in driving experiential education since the present generation students have access to the latest technology and are most attracted to game like solutions. When learning can become as much fun as playing a game, it can be one of the most natural ways of making them learn the basic skills needed for personal and social growth.

Beyond gaming, technology can really help students visualize difficult concepts in Mathematics and this can eliminate the need for rote learning.

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School’s say Shemrock & Shemford Schools Amol Arora, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Shemrock & Shemford Group of Schools shares the school’s experience in the use of Virtual Labs Shemrock & Shemford schools use virtual labs in Science and English teaching, and some online sites with virtual experiments. “We are using a number of virtual labs in our schools and we feel that they are a good resource for our schools for a number of reasons,” he says.

Virtual Labs are good for situations where it is not feasible to conduct a real life experiment because the interaction, exploration, and experimentation with locations, objects, and environments that is unavailable, pricey, dangerous or impossible.

Furthermore, virtual labs can present abstract ideas that may not normally or easily be viewed. For example, when learning about gas laws it may be hard to visualise what is actually occurring at the microscopic level, but with use of a simulation, the interactions can be made visible and tangible.

In addition, if we talk about an actual lab, the time period for a class is 40 minutes in which children go from their class to the labs.

This may lead to wastage of time.

While performing a virtual lab rather then a “real world” lab, it allows students to make mistakes without fear of not getting the experiment done right. Also, virtual labs allow students to study at their own pace and the ability to repeat as necessary.

Therefore, by using virtual labs, students can perform experiements that are messy, time-intensive, costly, or downright dangerous without the risk or expense. The net result is that students not only find the learning experience more enjoyable, they also performed better academically.

However, I don’t think virtual labs will replace real life labs as real experiments give students the hands on opportunity to perform scientific reasoning, and to come to appreciate the complexity and ambiguity of the sorts of empirical work that scientists actually do.

Therefore virtual labs will continue to supplement the real labs.

With better technologies, more immersive technologies such as virtual reality will emerge with technology making the experiments more and real and as close to the real world experience as possible, thereby increasing its usage in schools.

New Era School From students’ and teachers’ angle Pradnya Gokhale, Academic Coordinator, shares, “Our students are thoroughly enjoying the virtual lab programme especially the challenge round (game round).They wait for that particular period in the week where we use Math Labs for teaching, which clearly shows that they like to solve different numerical activities in the programme. It also helps them to master their maths concept by doing the mastery level activities. For teachers it is easy to make worksheets and assign the students different activities in various concepts. It is also a very powerful tool that the teacher can make use of to introduce a concept in mathematics.”

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Kannan Bharadwaj, Co-Founder and CEO, Math Buddy LLC says, “If best of lab technologies can be devised and used in school labs, this can make the biggest of differences in engaging the child through practical learning.”

The CBSE is taking necessary steps to come up with virtual labs, in which students can perform physics and chemical experiments several times over in order to help them understand concepts better.

The schools have focused on adopting the new pedagogical techniques and integration of ICT tools as part of teaching-learning environment to transform the experience of education.

With reforms being undertaken at the school level, learning labs have integrated these changes in order to help teachers and students cope with the advances. “The Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation has to be implemented in schools so that the students develop various life skills and 21st century workforce skills to enable them become employable and effective in their life. They should be conversant with the technologies in print, web, video and mobile technologies, which would enable them to be more efficient in the futuristic economy-an economy that supports knowledge and creativity. To implement such initiatives and achieve such objectives, the support of ICT rich environments is key,” says Hemant Sethi, President, School Learning Solution, NIIT Limited.

Some key players in the sector • 24 X 7 Learning: 24x7 Learning partners with educational institutions to provide the intellectual infrastructure that is required to create enhance and maintain our intellectual capital base.

• S Chand Harcourt: S Chand Harcourt offers Go Math in the suite of its educational products. The primary aim of a math lab is to engage students, strengthen their mathematical concepts and to also develop math skill and competencies. Go Math, has different activities - digital and hands on manipulative- which will help teachers use them at different stages of learning like concept introduction, consolidation and application.

• Actuniv Group: WordsWorth English Language lab is designed to develop English language proficiency among the ESL learners of English as a second language. WordsWorth offers English learning programme that prepares the participant to communicate in English with clarity and confidence.

• Clarity India Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd: Clarity India Learning Solutions is a subsidiary of Young India Films, and focuses on Primary, Montessori and Secondary Education. Their products make the entire learning process fun and exciting

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Making Youth Employable with Language Proficiency

Chitra Bhatia

Country Head Sanako Corporation

Sanako Corporation specialises in language software. The company is redefining the way to learn languages, enhancing communication through high-end teacher-led Interactive language learning platform. Chitra Bhatia, Country Head, Sanako Corporation, in conversation with Pragya Gupta, talks on importance of English Language and company’s outreach for the Indian market. Excerpts: Please share details about the genesis of Sanako Corporation?

Sanako is the global leader in developing teacher-led language teaching software and modern language labs. Sanako started in 1961 with the name Tandberg as a language lab producer. In 1984, Teleste acquired the educational division of Tandberg and in 1991, Teleste developed the word’s first computer controlled language lab. In 2003, Divace changed its name and launched the new global brand – Sanako.

We have worked closely with our customers for nearly five decades towards

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a single goal: to enable better speaking, comprehension and communication skills for language learners. We have satisfied customers in over 100 countries and 30,000 classrooms. We already have 1100 class room in India in last one year, which is a significant number for us.

We cater to higher education and K-12 segment, with our language lab solutions, be it Indian or international. For example, we are providing solutions for Kashmiri and Tamil at CIL and Chinese and English in ERA B-school.

Our solutions can be used for any

teaching and learning languages. At Sanako, we give flexibility to teachers to pick and choose their content. We give the basic content with the flexibility to teachers to add the content. They can even pick up content from You Tube or the latest news paper.

What are the key issues in language education in India?

In India, there is a general trend of focusing only on reading and writing, and not the other important skills of language learning, like speaking and listening,

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which I see is a major issue. Also we have come across several other issues like most teachers in India complain that the strength of student is much more as compared to an average class room size in western countries.

One of the most difficult things to do in a large classroom is trying to get the attention of every single student. It lacks an intimacy in students-teacher level. Teachers do not find time to interact personally with students and weaker students do not get personal attention. Nervous students may hesitate even to clear their doubts in front of such a large number of students.

There is also the problem of inadequate space and lack of language learning equipments in the classroom, which does not encourage any fruitful communicative activities like role plays, group discussions and oral presentations. Unless there is a proper and systematic plan, it is going to create havoc in the classroom.

The crucial challenges of language learning can be attributed to non availability of good and trained teachers, lack of good technology infrastructure, and content.

What is the need of language learning in India?

In India, only five percent of Indians understand English. As the links between people across the world grows, there is an increasing need for us to communicate in multilingual and multicultural equation.

Knowing one of the world languages such as English becomes an increasingly important skill for an individual who wants to do well in today’s global market .With the IT revolution and most of software and operating system being in English language, a new utility for written and oral communication in English language has emerged.

English is said to be the world’s most important language having communicative and educative value.

A typical language lab consists of student desks that are equipped with media players, recorders or PC’s that enable activities in which students can practice their language usage by listening to audio and recording their speech.

Every student’s device is connected

to a central console that stays with the teacher. Unlike in a traditional classroom, a student does not have to wait his or her turn to interact with the teacher and several students can establish interaction with their teacher simultaneously. This structure facilitates the active participation of students in the learning process and also allows both students and teachers to achieve the maximum amount of practice and usage time with the language they are learning.

How do you reach your customers in India?

In India, we reach our customers through HCL and Everonn. They are our strategic partners who represent us all across India. Beside this, we have smaller partners and region specific channel partners.

Could you elaborate on your plans in India?

Presently, it has been a mandate by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to have a language lab in all the AICTE approved colleges. However, in schools and colleges, it is still not a mandate to have a language labs. In five years, Sanako would like to make the Indian youth more employable by helping them improve their communication skills.

We are working towards providing affordable, flexible interactive language learning technology solutions. Teachers training in language learning using technology and developing interactive language content suiting Indian market are among prime goals in our five year plan.

We will be launching cloud based language learning solutions for ‘next gen language learning’, which will help students learn and practice language speaking even after the class. Sanako has launched a product called ‘Sanako speak’ which is a cloud based product.

Besides building global community of language teachers, this can help teachers all across the globe learn from each other and share their knowledge back.

Please throw some light on your tie-up with schools and colleges?

We are working with some of the schools and colleges in Delhi, NCR including

Most teachers in India complain that the strength of student is much more as compared to an average class room size in western countries DPS Vasundara, DPS Ghaziabad, Era Business School, Delhi School of Language and JNU. We have also worked with Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Indore, Central Hindi Training Institute, Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) Mysore, Maharashtra State of Technical Education, Mumbai, Bundelkhand Institute of Technology, Jhansi, Delhi School of Languages, The Cabinet Secretariat Government of India, Banaras Hindu University, Tamil Naidu State Board Schools, Amrita Engineering College, Coimbatore, Handa College of Education, Jammu, International School of Business and Media.

Who are other players in this segment? What are the distinctive features of Sanako?

We see Oreli Technosystems, ETNL - eTail Networks Limited, WordsWorth and Robotel as our competitors. We at Sanako offer Interactive Language Learning Environment. Our solutions are affordable and licensing system is flexible. Our latest technological solutions enable round table discussion for advanced learners and offer advanced tools for better results.

Sanako’s solution features - multi-user collaboration, Sanako study examination module, Sanako study video live module, homework automation, subtitling, screen transfer with audio and marker tool, white board, remote access, and control of student PCs. They also include voting and live feedback, adjustable thumbnails in separate windows, hybrid labs, hardware labs and cloud computing.

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Key Focus While Designing Learning Labs • Develop activities based on lots of research on teaching methodologies adopted in different parts of the world.

• Hands on manipulatives accompanied by detailed activity manuals and observation sheets to guide teachers and students.

• Software component to be completely interactive and more game-like, so that students enjoy the learning process.

• Unlike animations or videos, virtual activities are to be lightweight (in terms of file sizes) and therefore to be downloaded very fast over the Internet when accessing from homes.

• Teacher training, hand holding and detailed documentation to ensure maximum usage in schools.

• To keep it simple for teachers who are not very tech savvy.

• Affordable solutions for schools.

• Effort is to mimic real life as closely as possible to give the learner an immersive experience. A safe virtual environment allows for genuine exploration and capturing of subtle changes. Visual manipulation is an integral part of

design.

• Labs should be used not just to verify concepts or validate concepts leading to forced conclusions, but should also be used as place to construct knowledge and create in the individual - the ability to think and analyse new concepts through experience and activity-based learning.

They are also made available in the educational environment so that the learned theories can be tested and understood better using inquiry-based learning.

• A few key focus areas are age appropriate and subjectappropriate pedagogy. It also revolves around proper instructional design designed after in-depth research of the subjects to enable learning of concepts with multiple explanations and examples.

• The multimedia contents and ICT tools should enable all types of learners – auditory, visual and kinesthetic – to understand the concepts well.

• Use of appropriate subject specific ICT tools which would cater to various levels of interactivity.

The CBSE is taking necessary steps to come up with virtual labs, in which students can perform physics and chemical experiments several times over in order to help them understand concepts better

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for the learner and focuses on concepts like ‘activity based learning’ offering high quality teaching learning material.

Classteacher Learning Systems: Classteacher Learning System provides consulting and innovative technology solutions in the area of school education.

Hey Math: HeyMath offers e-Learning programme for Math that has been supporting educators and students for 10 years.

Liqvid eLearning Services Pvt. Ltd: LIQVID is specially known for its learning content development work in domains such as IT, Telecom, Publishing, and English Language Training (ELT).

Liqvid has developed the EnglishEdge programme in association with BBC ACTIVE. Math Buddy: Math Buddy is focused on helping children understand math concepts through interactive activities. The company offers more than

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1000 colorful, interactive activities for elementary and middle school grades to help understand the basic concepts of Mathematics.

NIIT Limited: NIIT Nguru is a holistic education solution for schools that utilises appropriate technology as backbone and encompasses all the possible components required to service the present and future learning needs of a school. The solutions from NIIT SLS has been developed after extensive research and by a team of academicians, subject matter experts and experts in various domains like technology, the education system, teaching pedagogy etc.

The solution has been built keeping in mind different learning and teaching styles. It has also kept in mind the various education reforms and initiatives underway by the Government of India and various academic bodies.

Sanako Corporation: Sanako is teacherled language teaching software and modern language lab development company.

Virtual Eductechnica Pvt. Ltd: The Company is dedicated to promote innovation in the field of education. The company focuses on the development of new and modern solutions to initiate optimal teaching and learning.

VISIONet Info Solution Private Limited (VISPL): VISPL is an e-Learning Solution provider in India and is e-Learning content development company since 1996 with focus on E-Learning. The company offers Multimedia Courses for Engineering, IT, Polytechnics, ITI, and Schools.

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Learning Solutions

Digital Interactive Classrooms

Formative Assessments

Science, Math, English Labs

iPerform – Extended Learning Environments

Community Platforms

Virtual School

Collaborative Learning Tools

Assessment Solutions

The Assessment Center

In–class Assessment Devices

Skill Assessment Program (SAP)

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Solution Providers

What They Have to Say “Our solutions include the Language Lab, Digital Science Probes, the Maths Lab and the Assessment Centre. Each one of them is a cutting edge solution, which maps the relevant curriculum and creates a hands-on exploratory module. We have authentic assessments, which are inbuilt into the design of most of these Labs.

We are working on creating adaptive learning paths which would allow for genuine personalisation.”

Rohit Pande, Founder and Chairman, Classteacher Learning “We deliver English Language Lab - The digital content provides resource on all language aspects serving the needs of the Indian audience. The focus is on development of skills in functional usage of the language, grammar and phonetics besides vocabulary, remedy to regional influences, pronunciation and games.

Learners need a practical approach to skill acquisition and a lot of practice. We also provide special content for the teachers of English and structured curricula besides Trainer manuals and the much needed Training of Trainers. The lessons are practical and represent common practices that are easier for the learner to relate to and comprehend.“ Jasvinder Singh, CEO, ACTUniv “To cater to the technology learning and IT enabled learning requirements of school children in the areas of Math and Science, NIIT had set up an Independent Business Group, School Learning Solutions (SLS) a decade ago. We have plans to come up with Labs focusing on Language skills development in the near future” Hemant Sethi, President, School Learning Solution, NIIT Limited

Labs should go well beyond what is taught in the classrooms.

With technology advances, new generation students have access to a lot more information and they are hungry for exploring even more

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“We are focused on Mathematics and our products are designed to help teachers and students enjoy teaching and learning Mathematics in both the classroom and the lab. Our lab solution consists of both physical and virtual components, with both of them complementing each other very well. We have an excellent collection of manipulative to help hands-on exploration, supplemented by 1000+ virtual activities for teacher to use from the classroom or for students to practice from a lab. We have an online component also to help children continue to practice from their homes. It is a complete solution for understanding the concepts, practicing the concepts and an assessment module to gauge students’ understandings,” says Kannan Bharadwaj, Co-Founder and CEO, Math Buddy LLC says Rising Needs and the Future Since there is a shift today to constructivism (where in the learner is encouraged to create his or her own ways and arrive at his own interpretation and conclusions or analysis) and teachers playing the role of facilitators, learners would be required to provide with appropriate technological aids, which are probably mobile and possessing high degrees of interactivity. Also the strict demarcation as it exists today between theory and Lab sessions should be removed, and Labs should be an integral session of classroom teaching. It must also facilitate high degrees of collaboration and peer learning.

The other key element with labs is the need for effective teacher training since all of these will be of no avail if the teachers are not comfortable in using the system. Ensuring high usage will only make a difference in students’ learning.

Learning environments, which seamlessly blend the physical and the digital worlds with the student tablet as the interface need to be created. This would seriously create engaging learning experiences which could be interdisciplinary in nature.

Labs should go well beyond what is taught in the classrooms. With technology advances, new generation students have access to a lot more information and they are hungry for exploring even more.

Labs should provide an ideal platform for them to explore, experience and enjoy learning. Combination of hands-on and technology based lab gives an ideal learning environment with concepts in primary classes more suited for hands-on exploration and technology playing a major role in higher classes to visualize and understand concepts. Labs should also not restrict learning only to a room, and with advances in Internet adoption, students should be able to access the system from anywhere, anytime.