ScooNews-September 2017-Digital Edition by ScooNews

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think

Volume 2 Issue 2 September 2017 IGNITING MINDS

Margaret Mead

STRAIGHT TALK

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED by Ravi Santlani on behalf of EduPulse Media Pvt. Ltd

Editor Nichola Pais Deputy Editor Parvathy Jayakrishnan Assistant Editor Anjana Deepak Reporter Ashima Sharma, Anuj Kr. Website Team Vaibhav Ramchandani, Pranav Sharma, Ojas Godatwar, Gaurang Mandhana Art Direction Rexsu Cherry Design CP Sharma Editorial Advisor Shobhita Rajgopal, Meenakshi Uberoi, Neeta Bali Pics Pressfoto Pixabay, Shutterstock

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EDITORIAL OFFICE EduPulse Media Pvt Ltd, J-3, Jhalana Institutional Area, Second Floor, Jaipur 302004 India Email: editor@scoonews.com FOR ALL SALES QUERIES Virendra Kashyap +91-9953219439 Abhishek Tomar +91-9811756705 sales@scoonews.com FOR SUBSCRIPTION +91-9784447860 subscribe@scoonews.com PRINTED AND PUBLISHED by Ravi Santlani on behalf of EduPulse Media Pvt Ltd PRINTED AT Jaipur Printers Pvt Ltd, MI Road, Jaipur 302001, Rajasthan, India and PUBLISHED AT EduPulse Media Pvt Ltd, J-3, Jhalana Institutional Area, Second Floor, Jaipur 302004 India Published for the month of September 2017 Total number of pages 120, including Covers

Nichola Pais

From Virtual Reality to a Necessary Reality

o matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.” Robin Williams Words and ideas surely changed a section of the world over two days in August, at the ScooNews Global Education Fest 2017. Yes, the fest lived up to its promise of bringing together some of the finest minds from the education ecosystem across the globe. More importantly, there is no underestimating the power of organic sharing of knowledge and insights to spark transformation, in ways both great and small. It is difficult to stay unmoved when Prof. Sugata Mitra tells you that tech is here to stay and the sooner we accept it the better – and in the next breath adds that the role of a teacher in these times of internet is that of a friend. “What you are saying to your class is, ‘You go there, I don’t know where you will land up, but I’ll be with you’. …And children love it if they can go home and say, ‘My teacher is my friend’.” That human touch, that personal element is paradoxically only assuming greater importance in these tech-heavy times. A point driven home by Tutored & Trained’s Joyanto Mukherjee who made a plea for teachers to keep the connection alive with their students in the space that the latter best express themselves – the virtual world. Whether a casual ‘poke’ or a silent plea for help, the onus is on teachers – most fail to connect with parents anyway – to spot the danger signs and reach out to kids in distress. It could make the not-so-minor difference between life and death, as Mukherjee himself has personally experienced. Combining the human touch with the sharp eye of a connoisseur, you had to applaud Education Secretary and keynote speak Anil Swarup’s attempts at making an equitable and excellent basic education system available to all – it is a mammoth mission and none would envy him his job. Yet he goes about it with a calm and curious mind, sifting through the chaff to swoop down on the grains that can be shared pan India, raising the competency levels of teachers and the learning outcomes of students. While the exciting disruptions for the 21st century learner are entirely relevant today, an education that combines the head, hands and heart is even more necessary in a world beset by limitless consumerism. Unfortunately, a system which values experiential learning and preparation for life, and which encourages collaboration as opposed to competition – the hallmarks of Sonam Wangchuk’s philosophy – is sometimes more difficult to comprehend than the spatial structure of a molecule, using Augmented Reality.

FIND US ON

September 2017

CONTENTS

12 COVER STORY ScooNews Global Educators Fest 2017 Excitement, Energy, Education at the Much-Awaited #Unconference!

68 Teacher Warriors: Honouring Heroes Striving to Educate India’s Disadvantaged Children

113 SCHOOL SAFETY A BURNING QUESTION: Are our kids

FIRE SAFE at

AWARDS : ScooNews Global Education Awards 2017 And the Winners Are …

It is common to hear of students failing in school. However, time and again it is schools that fail students on one of the most important counts - their personal safety.

76 INTERVIEW “I SEE SUCH POSITIVE ENERGY IN THE COUNTRY” Anil Swarup, Secretary School Education & Literacy, lists the many positives of the current education scenario, in an exclusive chat at SGEF 2017.

September 2017

SCHOOL

TESTIMONIALS WEIGHTY WOES Sometimes I think about how much better school life would be if the school bags were eight pounds lighter. I feel that all we have is talk on using education technology to improve learning but there is no

thought of how this will practically help children and teachers. A concerned parent

congratulate you on your first anniversary. Kamal Gupta, Mohali

INTERESTING READ

THANK YOU!

Read your August 2017 issue with great interest. As usual, the content was good. I would also like to

I thank you for publishing my article in your magazine. Captain S.N. PANWAR

CORRIGENDUM Two errors unintentionally crept into the August 2017 issue of ScooNews. In the article ‘Education’s Biggest

Benefactors’, we inadvertently printed an image of Cyrus Mistry against the profile of his father Pallonji Mistry.

PALLONJI MISTRY

PALLONJI MISTRY When you look at good governance, you also need to look at how you approach the subject

When you look at good governance, you also need to look at how you approach the subject

ORIGINALLY PRINTED

In the feature ‘Edu-Nation 2017’, an infographic used contains an incorrect map of India. The said infographic was used for information purpose only, we do not condone or accept any information or representation which challenges or is perceived to challenge Indian sovereignty and territory. The error is highly regretted. We thank Mr. Harvinder Singh, CEO, Edupro Learning for bringing it to our notice.

CORRECTED

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September 2017

Please recycle this magazine and remove inserts and samples before recycling

TRENDING National Award to Teachers 2016 and Launch of “DIKSHA” portal The Vice President, Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu presented the National Award to Teachers – 2016 on the occasion of Teachers’ Day, in New Delhi. Shri Venkaiah Naidu also launched DIKSHA portal, a national digital infrastructure for teachers. DIKSHA will enable, accelerate and amplify solutions in the realm of teacher education. He also said that a mediocre teacher tells, a good teacher

explains, a superior teacher demonstrates and a great teacher inspires. A teacher should have an ideal behavior which can leave direct impression on their students as values are caught and they cannot be taught. Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar reiterated the message of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi to teachers – “teach to transform, educate to empower and learn to lead.”

Ministers of State for Human Resource Development, Shri Upendra Kushwaha and Dr Satya Pal Singh also addressed the gathering and congratulated the winners of National Award to Teachers – 2016 Shri Anil Swarup, Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy gave the vote of thanks on the occasion. Source – Press Information Bureau, Govt. of India

Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist says music education essential

NCERT plans national curriculum for pre-schools across India

Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea says music education in public schools is essential, particularly to disadvantaged children. Flea made the comments in a recent Rolling Stone interview in which he discussed his upcoming benefit concert for his Silverlake Conservatory of Music, a non-profit music community centre he founded and built with his own money in 2001. Silverlake Conservatory of Music offers private lessons for orchestral and band instruments, along with ensemble classes. It also gives free lessons and instruments to qualifying students. Since building the school with his own money, Flea has started hosting annual fundraisers to help continue to fund and expand it. Source – Rolling Stone Magazine

The NCERT is working on finalising a national curriculum for playschools across the country. Work on preparing the curriculum is under way and is likely to be introduced from 201819, officials said. However, there is no clear policy about preschools, and most of them are privately run. Schools follow their own criteria and curriculum. Officials said the material would be prepared for two xyears as most students study for this period before taking admission in Class I. The curriculum will also explain how the students should be taught. “Most of these schools are privately run and we will hold a meeting with them to ensure they at least use the curriculum as the model curriculum and they will be free to make changes to it to meet the demand,” said a senior NCERT official. Source – Hindustan times

September 2017

Karnataka announces free education till graduation for girl students

The Karnataka government has decided to provide free education to all girl students from class one to graduation. The Congressled government has called out to all parents whose income is less than Rs.10 lakh to avail of this benefit. The government would reimburse all fees except examination fees of girl students of Class 1 to graduation level. The scheme will apply to all private aided and government schools and colleges. The students must pay the fees first at the time of admission and later get it reimbursed by the government. Similar schemes have been launched in Telangana and Punjab. While Telangana has announced free education for girls from kindergarten to post graduation, Punjab recently fulfilled a key poll promise by extending the scheme till PhD. Source – Times of India

ChuChu TV awarded the Diamond YouTube Play Button award This award is given to channels with over 10 million subscribers. ChuChu TV is Asia-Pacific's No.1 YouTube channel in the kids' genre. ChuChu TV Nursery Rhymes and Kids is ranked at 87 in the world, in terms of subscribers and 22 for views. ChuChu TV is the third most subscribed YouTube channel in India with over 10 million subscribers and over 10 billion video views. ChuChu TV consists of various YouTube channels for children that are dedicated towards creating 2D and 3D animation videos of traditional nursery rhymes with an incorporation of peppy music and a modern day aesthetic in them. The channels include ChuChu TV Nursery Rhymes & Kids Songs, ChuChu TV Surprise Egg Toys, ChuChu TV FunZone and ChuChu TV StoryTime. On November 14, 2014, ChuChu TV Nursery Rhymes released "Johny Johny Yes Papa and Many More Videos", which has received over 1.2 billion views as of July 2017, making it the third most viewed YouTube nonmusic video of all time, after "Wheels on the Bus" by Little Baby Bum, and episode 17 of Masha and the Bear. ChuChu TV is available on YouTube KIDS, and available on Amazon Prime Video in India. Source – YouTube

CBSE asks private schools to frame service rules for teachers The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has directed schools affiliated to it to frame service rules for teachers following complaints of violation of norms. “It has been noticed that in spite of provisions under the Right To Education (RTE) Act, 2009, and affiliation bye-laws, the appointment of teachers with prescribed procedures and qualifications, service condition of the teachers, their professional development and mechanism for redressal of their grievance are not adhered to by some schools,” a communication sent to schools by the CBSE said. “A number of complaints have been received against affiliated schools alleging payment of partial salary, delay in disbursement of salary

and allowances, promotion and non-availability of welfare measures for teachers, retaining the teachers after schools hours, engaging them in the non-education activities,” it said. The board has asked schools to “frame service rules and service conditions, and ensure appointment of teachers etc. as per RTE provisions and CBSE bye-laws.” Source - PTI

September 2017

OPINION

Joy of RAISING a

Student

ENTREPRENEUR

Dr Sheenu Jain, Assistant Professor, Jaipuria Institute of Management, on the importance of inculcating entrepreneurial skills at a young age

September 2017

he world today needs doers, innovators, thinkers, and makers, which is only possible when the foundation is laid at the school level itself. Admittedly, the education system at the school level is changing, but not at the required pace. Only a handful of public and private schools are modernizing, as they include group activities, role play, simulation, and online learning - all integrated with science and art. Yet, most of the institutions, including those which are modernised, do not teach the core of modern education: entrepreneurship, which explains how to begin a venture, and enables creative thinking and an ambitious nature amongst students.

Today a dilemma exists among students as well as people interested in the improvement of education. On the one hand, we want to inculcate creativity, decision-making skills, and the quality of independence among students but, on the other hand, we don’t do anything to include it in our product. The education system pedagogy needs to witness a sea change today, with a rise in interdisciplinary programs specially designed for students. It is becoming essential to inculcate business acumen in students at the school level, which will help in integrating experiential learning and gradually help build up entrepreneurial skills to tackle the challenges in this multi competent world. “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that

you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, and catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover.” - Mark Twain Mark Twain, famous author and entrepreneur, advocated inspiring the younger generation to create enterprises that would evolve into solution providers, and employment generators for the nation. He believed that the jobs on which our generation relied, no longer remained relevant. If students, at a young age before graduating from school, are innovation-ready, they will invent their own careers. Entrepreneurship education benefits all kinds of students from different socio economic backgrounds, since it fosters creative thinking and brings mind-set change. It also creates opportunities, instils confidence and responsibility and societal skills amongst the students. Schools should embed entrepreneurship education in their curriculum; however they can take external help from myriad organisations to teach and run these programs. Entrepreneurship education is essential today to build economy, and economic development. It also encourages students to take risks, and make mistakes and learn at an early age, and gather experience of the world. Entrepreneurship education programs may not make students book-smart, but it will definitely hone their peopleskills and risk-taking abilities.

Founder, Virgin Group, Richard Branson, was a bad student while in school. He believes, had he gone through formal education in entrepreneurship, he could have been good at a variety of things. Creating entrepreneurial awareness will also promote social and emotional well-being of an individual as the kids do not see profit and purpose as mutually exclusive. “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” - Albert Einstein Digital marketing too is becoming a promising platform for the education industry. Today younger kids, right from the age of 2 - 3 years, start playing with gadgets and devices. Teaching youngsters the right use of web and digital media will bring transformational thinking, which this generation will easily adapt to. The present generation lives in an era of boundary-less world and demands mobility. If they gain digital skills at the elementary level it would enhance their way of shaping their career. Young people's employability is threatened by labour market mismatches: inadequate skills, limited geographic mobility and inadequate wages. A changed education system embedded with these skills can definitely show good results because it will focus on key skills and make them aware of the same well in advance. It will not only enable students to inculcate entrepreneurial skills, but will also make them valuable contributors to India’s economy.

September 2017

COVER STORY

SCOONEWS GLOBAL EDUCATORS FEST 2017

EXCITEMENT, ENERGY, EDUCATION AT THE MUCH-AWAITED #UNCONFERENCE! 12

September 2017

Vipul Redey, HeadSchool Enablement, Khan Academy India, Prof Sugata Mitra, New Castle University (UK) and Matthew Raggett, Headmaster, The Doon School

editor@scoonews.com

field of education, both national and international.

ver two days brimming with ideas and excitement, the ScooNews Global Educators Fest 2017 whipped up a storm of the best kind â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the brain kind! The much-awaited #unconference to encourage exchange of concepts and best practices between the finest minds in education from across the globe, was attended by no less than 60 speakers, 350 delegates and 40 partners from the

The keynote address at the inauguration was delivered by no less a dreamer and doer in the field of Education than Shri Anil Swarup, Secretary, School Education and Literacy, MHRD, who also unveiled the first anniversary issue of ScooNews magazine, along with Prof. Sugata Mitra and Ravi Santlani, Founder-CEO ScooNews. While defining the work undertaken to identify and replicate successful educational practices across the country,

Nichola Pais

Shri Swarup also hailed the attempt by the ScooNews Global Educators Fest to provoke discussion and generate recommendations for improved quality of education. The fest, which took place over August 18th and 19th at the Hyatt Regency Gurgaon, was ideal ideas ground as participants focused on the various speeches, discussions and workshops, engaging at length with experts, and getting into huddles with fellow educators, all the while listening, absorbing, learning...

September 2017

COVER STORY

DAY

he right note was struck by the very first highlight of the day, with Education Secretary Anil Swarup discussing ‘What Makes an Equitable and Excellent Basic Education System,’ followed by Prof. Sugata Mitra discussing ‘The Future of Learning’. Professor at Newcastle University UK, Prof. Mitra’s

IDEAS IN

ACTION! speech divulged the strange new future of learning thrown up by the results of his experiments in learning conducted in varied environments, from the slums of India, the poor schools in Chile, Argentina, the USA and Italy, to the schools of Gateshead and the rich International schools of Washington and Hong Kong.

Unveiling of the Anniversary issue by Anil Swarup, Secretary, School Education & Literacy, MHRD, and Prof. Sugata Mitra, New Castle University. (UK) with Ravi Santlani, Founder-CEO, Scoonews.

September 2017

Nino

Audience applauding a session

Busy Expo Area.

September 2017

COVER STORY He was followed by Anand ‘Super 30’ Kumar who held the audience captive as he spoke about ‘How to Make Super 2000’. Talent knows no boundaries, it is all around us – even in the most unlikely places. Kumar emphasised that all it needs is a keen eye to spot it and nurture it. His discourse touched upon how innovative teaching techniques should be used to develop an interest and there should be equal opportunities for all, not a lowest common denominator approach. Discussing the ‘”International” in Schools’, was a panel comprising Matthew Raggett, Headmaster, The Doon School; Anuradha Rai, Principal, Ambience School, Gurgaon; Lt General Surendra Kulkarni, Director, Mayo College; Kavita Aggarwal, Chairperson, Members of International Schools Association; and Aarti Chhabria, Co-Founder, Clap Global. Moderated by Dr Neeta Bali, Principal, Podar International School, Powai, the discussion threw up interesting facets of a globally inspired curriculum being but one step to begin an international school. With the growing chorus to make universities truly world class, it first needs to be understood what goes into ‘Building Institutions of Excellence’. Pondering the issue was a panel, moderated by Gaurav Singh, DirectorEducation, PWC, which included Prof. BS Satnarayana, Vice Chancellor, BML Munjal University; Ashish Gupta, Founder, Ashoka University; Prof. PB Sharma, Amity University, Gurugram; Professor (Dr.) C Raj Kumar- Founder, Vice Chancellor O.P. Jindal Global University; and Sahil Chalana, Founder, Collegedunia.Com.

Delegates at Tutored & Trained Lounge at SGEF.

Sharing insights on ‘Redefining Collaboration to Foster Inclusive Growth’, was Venkatesh, Head of Engineering, Virtulive. With Virtulive set to change the way we learn, live, play and work by leveraging collaboration and live video content, it enables real time interactivity between multiple remote classrooms using the intersection of technology, people and learning. Interesting! An individual presentation on Massive Open Online Courses by Amit Goyal, Country Head-India at edX on the topic ‘What’s the Story with MOOCs…Are they Living Up to Promises Made?’, was followed by a discourse on ‘Global Classroom: What is the Biggest Challenge Facing Education Today?’ by Dr Harish Chaudhary, Professor, IIT Delhi. The discourse dwelt on the fact

(L-R) Gaurav Kumar Singh, Director, Pwc India, Priti Kwatra, Director, Petals Pre School, Shilpa Potnis, Vice President – School Operations, Birla Edutech, S K Rathor, MD, Sanfort Schools, CA DR Rajeev Gupta, Director, Golden Bells Pre School.

September 2017

COVER STORY

Divya Lal, Director and COO Smartclass Educational Services Pvt Ltd.

Educators interacting with the speakers

Delegation from Curro Holdings, South Africa

September 2017

that the education system must prepare the children for the future, keeping in mind that the VUCA - volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity - of general conditions and situations of the future would require competencies and skills significantly different from those of yesteryears. Dr Chaudhary attempted to assess what those competencies and skills would be, besides suggesting an approach to inculcating the same. Throwing light on ‘Social Collaboration and Advance Management of the Education Vertical ERP’ was Pranjali Khare, AVP Pre Sales, ConnexRM. Emanating light – and some heat! – was the next debate on the topic, ‘Are Teachers Underpaid?’ Moderated by Lt Col A Sekhar, Head of Schools, Alpha Education, the panel discussed the possibility of the real victim being education when the most respected profession lags behind in remuneration. Sharing their viewpoints on the same were Supriti Chauhan, Principal, Raghav Global School; Anurada Rai; Dr Sunita Swaraj, Principal, The Heritage School; Joyanto Mukherjee, Founder and CEO, Tutored and Trained; Harleen Mohanty, Head of School, Vega Schools; Dr Dheeraj Mehrotra, VP - Next Education; and Dr Jawahar Surisetti, Author, Motivator & Educationist Ever wondered ‘What's the Fuss about Technology?’ This was precisely the topic of the next deliberation, which discussed Classroom 3.0, in a world that is going gaga over the inroads made by technology in education, iPads and smart classrooms. Vinesh Menon, CEO, Education, Consulting & Skilling Services, VIBGYOR Group of Schools, moderated this debate which saw Beas Dev Ralhan, Co-Founder & CEO, Next Education India Pvt Ltd; Aditi Avasthi, Founder & CEO, Embibe; Meenakshi Uberoi, Edu Evangelist & Founder, De Pedagogics; and Dr Manjula Pooja Shroff, MD & CEO, Kalorex Group participating. The education sector is growing in leaps and bounds, yet most education investment related ROI analysis miss out on a huge opportunity by focussing on monetary returns and comparing programs and initiatives. This process leaves out some of the biggest drivers and never addresses some of the fundamental resource issues that might actually drive student and education success. This viewpoint formed the core of the debate on the topic, ‘Effective Investments in Education:

September 2017

COVER STORY Why and How to Measure ROI’. Moderated by Arunabh Singh, Director, Nehru World School, Ghaziabad, the panel comprised Krishna Vinjamuri, Principal, Lightbox Ventures;Abhishek Tiwari, Fellow, Kstart (Seed Fund Of Kalaari Capital); Gaurav Mehra, Partner, Kaizen PE; Akhil Shahani, MD Shahani Group & Director Kaizen PE; and Imran Jafar, General Partner, Gaja Capital. The audience was all ears as Valentina Trivedi, writer, story-teller and educator, discussed ‘Is the World Small Enough to Become a Classroom?’, which touched upon using creativity to make each moment a learning one, and enlarging the classroom to encompass the world. ‘Can Private Schools have an Impact outside Metro cities?’ Shreevats Jaipuria, Vice Chairman, Jaipuria Institute of Management & Seth M.R. Jaipuria Schools pondered over how private school education is often considered to be the preserve of a privileged few residing in metropolitan cities and being able to afford high fees. National level school chains often don’t provide educational access to smaller cities and other local players don't provide quality or differentiation. He pondered over whether high quality private schools will venture outside their comfort zone of metropolitan cities to permeate into smaller towns and cities across India in the years to come. Shedding insights on ‘Institution Building - The ICFAI Way’ was Sudhakar Rao, Director, ICFAI Group, while Varun Khullar, VP - Business, Education category at Paytm spoke at length on the new reality - ‘Cashless Campus’. Geeta Dharmarajan, Founder and President, Katha, had the audience all fired up with her rousing oration on the ‘300M Challenge’, an initiative that stems from the fact that 50% of the 300 million children in India, cannot read at grade level. Fatema Agarkar, Co-Founder, KA EduAssocaites wrapped up the speeches of the day as she discussed ‘Creating Disruptions for the Sake of the 21st Century Learner: Time for Change’. Re-thinking traditional approaches with an eye for integration and alternative facilitation strategies for teachers, she emphasised the need for teacher training as the core priority for leadership teams.

When Educators meet Edupreneurs

Gaurav Kumar Singh, Director, Pwc India, Prof. (Dr.) Devendra Pathak, Vice Chancellor, Sanskriti University, Dr. Raj Singh, Vice Chancellor, Rayat Bahra University, Prof. (Dr.) Poonam Devdutt, Director, School of Business Studies, Shobhit University, Dr. Madhu Chitkara, Vice Chancellor, Chitkara University

Arunabh Singh- Director, Nehru World School, Ghaziabad

September 2017

Rashenah Walker, Curriculum Specialist.

Mithun Kamath, Arc Skills, Dubai.

September 2017

COVER STORY

DAY

The day started off according to schedule with all participants making use of the sketch-pens and blank cards placed on each table to create their own personal message for the students of SECMOL school, Ladakh. Appropriately, the first address of the day was delivered by Jigme Karuna Yangchen, representing the Kung Fu Nuns of the Himalayas. She discussed

GREAT BRAINSTORMING, GRAND LEARNING! the topic ‘Creative Problem-Solving Often Lies in the Hands of Female Youth’, sharing diverse and inspirational stories of the unheard voices of the Himalayas. Spreading awareness and excitement on ‘VR & AR in Education’ was Dan Lejerskar, Chairman, EON Reality Inc., who was followed by Joyanto

September 2017

Mukherjee, Founder and CEO, Tutored and Trained, speaking on ‘Enhancing Student Teacher Relationship to Improve Education’. Mukherjee spoke tellingly on the need for student-teacher relationship to be nurtured more than ever in the time of social media and other tools, which are increasing the gap between trainee and tutor.

Resoundingly delivering his speech on ‘The Dignity Of Labour’ in pure Hindi – to bring home the beauty of the language – was Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar, Trustee, Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation. Educators were further entranced by the discussion that followed on the topic: ‘What Will a New System of Education for the Next 20 Years Look Like?’ Ruminating over the future of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment were Prof. Sugata Mitra, Ted Prize Winner & Professor, Newcastle University, UK; Matthew Raggett, Head Master, The Doon School; and Vipul Redey, Head of School Enablement, Khan Academy. ‘Using Gamification to Increase Language Acquisition’ was the topic of the next discourse by Curriculum Specialist UAE, Rashenah Walker. The vibrant Walker discussed how the concepts of James Paul Gee and Joel Foreman encourage the interactive immersion of games to develop critical thinking, language skills, and assess learners’ ability. Attendees gained insights on how to create an instructional environment that immerses students into gamified learning. An industry presentation by Divya Lal, COO, Smartclass Educational Services Pvt Ltd, was followed by a panel discussion on ‘What Makes for Successful Transition to School?’ Moderated by Gaurav Kumar, Director - Education, PwC India, the speakers included SK Rathor, Managing Director, Sanfort Group of Schools; Preeti Kwatra, Director, Petals Pre School; CA Dr Rajeev Gupta, Director, Golden Bells Pre School; and Shilpa Potnis, VP, Birla Edutech. Reflecting on the ‘Growth of Digital Payments in Education Space’ was Ashish Mittal, CEO, Vidhya Management Services Pvt Ltd, even as attendees also stayed glued for the session that followed on ‘STEM Needs to Let Off Some Steam’. Speaking on how bright students pursuing STEM can exponentially better their results with the help of a single element, was Kavita Sanghvi, Top 50 finalist, Global Teacher Prize & Principal, MET Rishikul Vidyalaya, Mumbai. ‘How Can We Equip Our Children For Their Future?’ – the question on every educator’s mind was addressed by

Mithun Kamath, CEO, Arcskills, who discussed how and why schools need to nurture skills for the fourth industrial revolution. Moderated by Arunabh Singh, the next panel discussion on ‘Education Is the Only Weapon to Survive in Today's World of Competition’ saw educators Cdr VK Banga, Chairman IPSC; Pramod Sharma, Director, Genesis Global School, Noida; Capt. (I.N). V K Verma, Former Chairman & Honorary Member IPSC; and Manas Mehrotra, Trustee, Greenwood High International School, sharing views. No doubts on this count – ‘Learning by Doing is The Best Way to Learn’ and shedding light on exactly why and how this is so, was Aditya Tripathi, CEO, Marksharks. The panel discussion on ‘How Is Indian Higher Education Realigning Itself to the Changing Market Dynamics?’ deliberated over how higher education institutes in India are incorporating skill development in their curriculum. Charting the road map to developing a practical, application and experience based higher education system, were Dr Poonam Devdutt, Director, School of Business Studies, Shobhit University; Dr Madhu Chitkara, Vice Chancellor, Chitkara University; Dr P S Grover, Campus Director, KIIT Institute of Colleges; Dr Shrihari Hondwad, Professor & Director, UPES, Dehradun; Dr Devendra Pathak, Vice Chancellor, Sanskriti University, Mathur; and Dr Raj Singh, Vice Chancellor, Rayat Bahra University. ‘Facilitating Education Through the Maker Culture’ – the topic saw Vaibhav Chhabra, Founder, Makers Asylum share the story of Maker's Asylum that brings together a cult of unlike minded people right from doctors, engineers, architects, academicians artists and students to prototype their ideas and learn from collaborations and “making”. The Maker's Asylum has also instituted an interdisciplinary learning program called STEAM school in collaboration with the French government to work on UN's sustainability development goals. Equally engrossing were the revelations of Matthew Raggett, Headmaster, The Doon School, who shared his ‘Reflections on a Year in the Hot Seat’. He opened up about the learnings gleaned after a year of work-

ing for the boys, masters and alumni of The Doon School, and leading and managing change in a school with a very strong culture. The story was of special interest to those aspiring for a leadership position or those wondering how to get to the heart of what works and what needs to change. Discussing ‘Secondary Education and the Deafening Silence Around It’ with frankness and foresight, was Seema Bansal, Head - Social Impact practice, Boston Consulting Group. She dwelt on the sensitive reality of secondary education continuing to get ignored beyond the issues of access and gender equity, even as there exists a very strong national level narrative around primary education and its challenges. Providing greater food for thought was the inimitable Sonam Wangchuk, Founder SECMOL & HIAL, Ladakh, speaking on ‘The Next Learning Revolution’. The audience listened in rapt silence as he spoke movingly on how everything around us has changed drastically in the last 150 years... from riding on horseback to flying by aeroplane, but in our schools, colleges and classrooms... almost nothing has changed. It’s still chalk, talk and paper - paper knowledge; very little that prepares us for real life in the real world. Graduates coming out of most of our colleges and universities finish a ritual and get their degrees but are highly unemployable. This is where the Next Learning Revolution comes in, bringing real change in the education sector of society where education is not only to do with the head alone but skills of the hands and kindness of the heart. Emotional, inspiring and the need of the hour! Both days culminated respectively in the ScooNews Teacher Warrior awards, applauding those striving for the education of India’s disadvantaged children, and the ScooNews Global Education Awards, which recognises individuals and organisations for outstanding contributions in transforming education through pioneering practices and use of innovation and technology to enrich the lives of learners. And after the incredible ideas’ smorgasbord that was the ScooNews Global Educators Fest 2017, the calm, to chew over the many wonderful and innovative thoughts and methods shared. Time now to live the change!

September 2017

COVER STORY

Arunabh Singh, Director, Nehru World School, Ghaziabad; Pramod Sharma, Director, Genesis Global School; Cdr VK Banga; Chairman IPSC; Manas Mehrotra, Trustee, Greenwood High School; Cdr. V.K Banga, Chairman-IPSC

Matthew Raggett, Headmaster, The Doon School

September 2017

Lt Gen Surendra H Kulkarni, Director, Mayo College; Dr Neeta Bali, Principal, Podar International School, Powai

Board Room meeting of industry leaders with Anil Swarup, Secretary, School Education & Literacy, MHRD.

Swarup with industry leaders at SGEF 2017.

September 2017

COVER STORY

Seema Bansal, Head Social Impact Practice, Boston Consulting Group.

Aditya Tripathi, Founder & CEO, Marksharks.

September 2017

Delegates visiting the Expo Area.

Ashish Mittal, Co Founder and CEO Vidhya Management Services Pvt Ltd.

Sonam Wangchuk, Founder, SECMOL, Ladakh.

Delegates with Sonam Wangchuk.

September 2017

COVER STORY

Delegates asking a question

Prof. Sugata Mitra, New Castle University (UK) sipping a cup of tea with educators

Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar

Vaibhav Chhabra, Maker's Asylum.

September 2017

Vipul Redey, Head School Enablement, Khan Academy India, Prof Sugata Mitra, New Castle University (UK) with Matthew Raggett, Headmaster, The Doon School.

Matthew Raggett, Headmaster, The Doon School.

Aarti Chhabria, Co-Founder, Clap Global asking a Question.

September 2017

COVER STORY

Livescribe: Live doodling in action during the sessions.

September 2017

Dan Lejersker, Founder, Eon Reality

Prof. Sugata Mitra with Sridhar Sunkad of Eon Reality.

Ravi Santlani, Founder & CEO, Scoonews with Sonam Wangchuk, Founder SECMOL, Ladakh, and other Delegates.

September 2017

COVER STORY

Prof Sugata Mitra making a point.

Jigme Karuna Yangchen, Representative Kung Fu Nuns of the Himalayas.

Shalini Nambiar, Director, Gems International School, Gurugram asking a question.

(L-R) Aarti Chhabria, Co-Founder, Clap Global; Lt Gen Kulkarni, Director, Mayo College; Dr Neeta Bali, Principal, Podar International School, Mumbai; Anuradha Rai, Principal, Ambience Public School, Gurugram; Kavita Aggarwal, Chairperson, MISA; Matthew Raggett, Headmaster, The Doon School.

September 2017

Prof. Sugata Mitra, New Castle University with Sanjay Datta, Principal, Maharana Mewar Public School, Udaipur.

Joyanto Mukherjee, Founder TNT.

Fatema Agarkar, Co-Founder, KA EduAssociates.

September 2017

COVER STORY

Anand Kumar, Founder, Super 30 sharing his experiences.

Sahil Chalana, Founder, Collegedunia; Prof B S Satyanarayana, Vice Chancellor BM Munjal University; Gaurav Kumar Singh, Director Pwc; Prof P B Sharma, Vice Chancellor, Amity Univ, Gurgaon; Ashish Gupta, CoFounder & Trustee, Ashoka University.

September 2017

Anil Swarup, Secretary, School Education & Literacy, MHRD

Amit Goyal, Country Head-India at EdX.

September 2017

COVER STORY

Anil Swarup with CA Dr Rajeev Gupta, Director, Golden Bells Pre-School.

September 2017

Anil Swarup, School Education & Literacy, MHRD visiting the expo area

Mr Swarup with the ECA team.

September 2017

COVER STORY

Sonam Wangchuk, Founder Secmol Ladakh with Pramod Sharma, Director, Genesis Global School, Noida

Shreevats Jaipuria, Vice Chairman, Jaipuria Institue of Management, & Seth M R Jaipuria Schools interacting with the speaker

September 2017

Mr Anil Swarup visiting the expo area

Mr Ravi Santlani Founder & CEO, Scoonews sharing his journey.

(L-R) Vinesh Menon, CEO (Education, Consulting & Skilling), Vibgyor Group of Schools, Dr Manjula Pooja Shroff, MD and CEO of Kalorex Group, Aditi Avasthi, Founder, Embibe, Beas Dev Ralhan, CEO, Next Education, Meenakshi Uberoi, Founding Director, De Pedagogics.

September 2017

COVER STORY

Kavita Sanghvi,Principal, MET Rishikul Vidyalaya with Fatema Agarkar, Co-Founder, KA EduAssociates.

Anil Swarup, Secretary, School Education & Literacy, With Ravi Santlani of Scoonews and Fatima Agarkar, Co-Founder, Ka EduAssociates

September 2017

COVER STORY

ScooNews's Parvathy with Dan Lejersker of Eon Reality.

Valentina Trivedi, Writer, Story Teller and Educator, Shalini Nambiar, Director, Gems International School, Gurugram, Dr. Dheeraj Mehrotra, Education Evangelist, Prof. Sugata Mitra, Vanya Bhandari, VP- Relations, Scoonews.

Dr Manjula Pooja Shroff, MD & CEO Kalorex Group of Schools, Vinesh Menon, CEO (Education, Consulting & Skilling Services) Vibgyor Group of Schools; Aditi Avasthi, Founder & CEO Embibe; Beas Dev Ralhan,CEO, Next Education India Pvt. Ltd. Meenakshi Uberoi, Founding Director De Pedagogics and Ravi Santlani.

September 2017

Shreevats Jaipuria, Vice Chairman, Jaipuria Institute of Management, & Seth M R Jaipuria Schools with Mr S K Rathor, MD, Sanfort Group of Schools.

Prof P B Sharma, Vice Chancellor, Amity University, Gurugram.

September 2017

COVER STORY

Dr. Dheeraj Mehrotra, , Academic Evangelist, Next Education, Anuradha Rai, Principal, Ambience Public School, Sunita Swaraj, Principal, The Heritage School, Supriti Chauhan, Principal, Raghav Global School, Harleen Mohanty, Head of SchoolsVega School , Atul Khosla, Founder & Pro Vice Chancellor, Shoolini University, Dr Jawahar Surisetti, Author & Motivator

Matthew Raggett with other delegates enjoying a light moment.

September 2017

Venkatesh of Virtulive (Head of Engineering).

Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar pays keen attention.

Anuradha Rai, Principal, Ambience Public School, Gurugram; Dr Kavita Agarwal, Chairperson, Members of International Schools Association.

Educators at the SGEF.

September 2017

COVER STORY

Sonam Wangchuk, Founder SECMOL, Ladakh.

Ravi Santlani, Founder & CEO presenting a Memento to Anand Kumar, Founder, Super 30.

September 2017

Valentina Trivedi, Writer, Story Teller and Educator.

Shreevats Jaipuria, Vice Chairman of Jaipuria Institue of Management, & Seth M R Jaipuria Schools

September 2017

COVER STORY

Vinesh Menon, CEO Vibgyor Group of Schools and Dr Pooja Manjula Shroff, MD and CEO of Kalorex group.

Varun Khullar, Vice President Paytm.

September 2017

Sudhakar Rao, Director-Branding ICFAI Group with ScooNews's Ravi Santlani.

Behram Mohta, Chief Academic Head, Educare & Associate Business Head, Robomate.

September 2017

PARTNERS @ SGEF

September 2017

PARTNERS @ SGEF

September 2017

AWARDS

September 2017

SCOONEWS GLOBAL

Education Awards 2017 And the Winners Areâ&#x20AC;Ś Parvathy Jayakrishnan writeback@scoonews.com

he Scoonews Global Educators Fest 2017 was intellectually enriching, enlightening, refreshing and it proved to be much more than a global platform where ideas were exchanged between educators. The two day fest reached a pinnacle with the ScooNews Global Education Awards on the evening of August 19, wherein outstanding contributions made by individuals and organisations in the field of education were recognised. It was time to bring

into the limelight those inspiring people from the field of education, who are enriching the lives of learners through pioneering practices and use of innovation and technology. The awards were presented by Prince Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar of Udaipur, Prof Sugata Mitra, Professor Newcastle University and Ted prize winner, Mr Bahul Chandra, co-founder ScooNews, and Mr Ravi Santlani, CEO ScooNews. ScooNews instituted 45 categories for the awards, bringing together individuals, schools, start-ups and unique

companies that are making commendable contributions to the cause of education. The awards aim to recognise their work and showcase it to the world. The award categories were thoughtfully cherry-picked to recognise schools and individuals who are soaring ahead in their own fields, be it by using cutting edge technology or by going green!

HEARTY CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WORTHY WINNERS! The Principal of the Year award was won by Dr Nripen Kumar Dutta.

September 2017

AWARDS SCHOOLS CATEGORY The Spirit Of Enterprise award (Jury’s Choice) was won by MET Rishikul Vidyalaya. The Creative School of the Year award was won by Rockwood School. The Spirit of Enterprise award (Editor's Choice) was won by The Jaipuria School. The Innovative and Creative Literacy award was won by Allenhouse Public School. Secondary School of the Year (Innovative Practices) was won by Gurukul The School. Secondary School of the Year (overall) was won by the Sanskaar Valley School, Bhopal. The Secondary School of the Year (Community Impact) was won by the Divine International School. The award for Outstanding Commitment to Sports was won by Young Scholars (YS) Public School. The Distinguished Performance in Academics award was won by Prelude Public School.

Dr. Nripen Kumar Dutta receiving the award for Principal Of The Year.

The award for Exceptional in Co-Curricular Activities (Jury’s Choice) was won by Mussoorie International School. Exceptional in Co-Curricular Activities (Editor's Choice) award was won by Modern Defence Senior Secondary School, Jaipur. The Phenomenal Implementation in Pedagogy (North) award was won by Patanjali Rishikul, Allahabad. The Phenomenal Implementation in Pedagogy Jury’s Choice award was won by The Heritage School. The Phenomenal Implementation in Pedagogy (Editor's Choice) award was won by DCM Presidency School. Incomparable School Infrastructure (Jury’s Choice) was won by the Assam Valley School. Incomparable School Infrastructure (Editor's Choice) was won by Dass & Brown World School. The Standalone School of the Year 20162017 (Editor's Choice) award was won by JBCN International School, Parel. The Standalone School of the Year 20162017 (Jury’s Choice) was won by Nehru World School.

EON Reality Pte Ltd receiving the award for Outstanding Contribution In Education And Training.

September 2017

Saplings receiving the award for Impressive Infrastructure In Early Education.

"Fliplearn Education Pvt. Ltd. receiving the award for Emerging ELearning Startup Of The Year. "

VIBGYOR Group of schools receiving the award for Integration Of Holistic Development In Education.

September 2017

AWARDS The Standalone School of the Year 20162017 (North) was won by Subodh Public School, Jaipur. Exceptional Infrastructure of the Year was won by The Emerald Heights International School. Emerging School of the Year (North) was won by Delhi Public School, Greater Faridabad. Emerging School of the Year (South) was won by Mount Litera Zee School. Emerging School of the Year (West) was won by S.V. Public School, Jaipur. Emerging School of the Year was won by Seth M.R. Jaipuria Schools. The award for Skill Development Enhancement Programmes in Schools was won by the Geekay World School. The Best Use of Ed Tech in School award was won by Modern Public School. Green School of the Year award (Editor's Choice) was won by JBCN International School, Borivali.

The Sanskaar Valley School, Bhopal receiving the award for Secondary School of the Year (overall).

Green School of the Year award was won by Sanjay Ghodawat International School, Kolhapur.

PRESCHOOL CATEGORY The award for Impressive Infrastructure in Early Education was won by Saplings. Standalone Pre-school of the Year award was won by Shri Ram Foundation Pre School. Playschool Chain of the Year award was won by Petals Preschool. Emerging Pre-School of the Year award (Editor's Choice) was won by YOUNGIN International. The Emerging Pre-School of the Year award (Jury’s Choice) was won by Papagoya Education Pvt Ltd. The Promoting Children’s Health and Wellbeing award was won by Intellitots Early Learning Centre.

The Emerging Education Outsourcing Company award was won by NCR Eduservices Pvt. Ltd. Emerging STEM Solution award was won by Addy's International.

The Divine International School receiving the award for Secondary School of the Year (Community impact).

September 2017

Petals Pre School receiving the award for Playschool Chain of the Year.

Shri Ram Foundation Pre School receiving the award for Standalone Pre-school of the Year.

The ICFAI Foundation For Higher Education receiving the award for Private University of The Year.

S. V. Public School, Jaipur receiving the award for Emerging School Of The Year (West).

Gurukul The School receiving the award for Secondary School of the Year (Innovative Practices).

September 2017

AWARDS Emerging E-Learning Start-up of the Year was won by Fliplearn Education Pvt. Ltd. Integration of Holistic Development in Education was won by VIBGYOR group of schools. Digital Content of the Year-K12 Education was won by Smartclass Educational Services Pvt. Ltd. Outstanding Contribution in Education and Training was won by Eon Reality Pte Ltd. Private University of the Year was won by the ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education. The categories of Skill Development Initiative of the year in Higher Education and Best Academia and Industry collaborator were won by Adi Shankara Institute of Engineering and Technology, Kalady. Supporting Parents to Build their Capacity and Confidence Award was won by Skill-eD.

YOUNGIN International receiving the award for Emerging Pre-School of the Year (Editor's Choice).

Seth M.R Jaipuria Schools receiving the award for Emerging School Of The Year

Delhi Public School, Greater Faridabad receiving the award for Emerging School Of The Year (North).

September 2017

Papagoya Education Pvt Ltd receiving the award for Emerging Pre-School of the Year (Jury's Choice).

The Jaipuria School, Farukhabad receiving the award for Spirit Of Enterprise (Editor's Choice).

Modern Public School, New Delhi receiving the award for Best Use of Ed Tech in School.

Subodh Public School, Jaipur receiving the award for Standalone School Of The Year 2016-2017 (North).

September 2017

AWARDS

Patanjali Rishikul, Allahabad receiving the award for Phenomen al Implement ation In Pedagogy (North).

DCM Presidency School receiving the award for Phenomenal Implementation In Pedagogy (Editor's Choice).

Allenhouse Public School receiving the award for Innovative And Creative Literacy.

Smartclass Educational Services Pvt. Ltd. receiving the award for Digital Content Of The Year-K12 Education.

September 2017

The Heritage School, Vasant Kunj, Delhi receiving the award for Phenomenal Implementation In Pedagogy

The Assam Valley School receiving the award for Incomparable School Infrastructure (Jury's Choice).

Young Scholars (YS) Public School receiving the award for Outstanding Commitment To Sports.

Sanjay Ghodawat International School, Kolhapur receiving the award for Green School Of The Year (Jury's Choice).

September 2017

AWARDS The Emerald Heights International School receiving the award for Exceptional Infrastructure Of The Year.

Adi Shankara Institute of Engineering and Technology, Kalady receiving the award for Skill Development Initiative of the year in Higher Education.

Prelude Public School, Agara receiving the award for Distinguished Performance In Academics.

Adi Shankara Institute of Engineering and Technology, Kalady receiving the award for Best Academia And Industry collaborator.

September 2017

Rockwood School receiving the award for Creative School of the Year.

Intellitots Early Learning Centre receiving the award for Promoting Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Health and Wellbeing.

Addy's International receiving the award for Emerging STEM Solution.

Modern Defence Sr. Sec. School, Jaipur receiving the award for Exceptional In Co-Curricular Activities (Editor's Choice).

September 2017

AWARDS JBCN International School, Parel receiving the award for Standalone School Of The Year 2016-2017 (Editor's Choice).

Mussoorie International School receiving the award for Exceptional In Co-Curricular Activities (Jury's Choice).

NCR Eduservices Pvt. Ltd receiving the award for Emerging Education Outsourcing Company.

Mount Litera Zee School receiving the award for Emerging School Of The Year (South).

September 2017

Nehru World School receiving the award for Standalone School Of The Year 2016-2017 (Jury's Choice).

TEACHER WARRIORS THE SCOONEWS TEACHER WARRIOR AWARDS 2017

HONOURING HEROES

Striving to Educate Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Disadvantaged Children

September 2017

Anjana Deepak writeback@scoonews.com

he first edition of the ScooNews Global Educators Fest 2017 held over August 18 and 19 at the Hyatt Regency, Gurugram brought together some of the brightest minds from across the globe in the field of education. Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most exciting education brainstorm, it witnessed no less than 60 speakers, 350 delegates and 40 partners exchanging ideas, concepts and more.

On a more touching note, the occasion

also marked the presentation of the ScooNews Teacher Warrior Awards 2017. The awards honoured 16 of the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best and bravest teachers, striving to give disadvantaged children a fighting chance at a better present and a future bright with possibilities. These outstanding individuals, who were featured in the June issue of ScooNews, have taken learning out of the classrooms of privilege, to those that need it most yet all too rarely receive it. The auditorium resounded with applause as these heroes ventured up on stage to acknowledge this recognition of their commendable and inspir-

ing service. Awarded by Prince Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar Trustee, Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation; Joyanto Mukherjee, Founder, Tutored and Trained (TNT); and ScooNews Founder-CEO Ravi Santlani, these Teacher Warriors were clearly the brightest stars in an already glittering firmament that evening. The Scoonews Teacher Warrior Awards will identify such exemplary educators every year and felicitate them, thereby also enabling them to rack up popularity for their cause and network with like-minded individuals.

September 2017

TEACHER WARRIORS

Sandeep Desai

AND THE WORTHY WINNERS ARE… Akshai Abraham, Founder, Project Khel – Imparting life skills education through play Babar Ali, Founder, Anand Siksha Niketan – The youngest headmaster at age 16 Dr Amitabh Mehrotra, Chairperson, SPARC – Overcoming cerebral palsy to start a school for disabled children G K Swamy, Founder & CEO, Purkal Youth Development Society – Transforming lives of rural children through holistic education, nutrition and healthcare Gazi Jalaluddin, Founder, Sundarban Orphanage and Welfare Trust – A taxi driver working to give poor children an opportunity to attend school

Sandeep Desai, Founder, Shloka Missionaries – Collected donations in Mumbai’s local trains to start four schools in rural India Sudheer Jalagam, Founder, Tea with Headmaster – Bringing parents and teachers together to discuss issues prevailing in government schools Sugata Mitra – Fuelling the training and development of nearly a million young Indians through Hole in the Wall and other projects Sujata Sahu, Founder, 17000 Ft Foundation – Transforming lives of thousands of children in remote Ladakh The Kung Fu Nuns, Helping hands, healing hearts in the Himalayas

Mittal Patel, Managing Trustee, VSSM – Working to ensure children of Nomadic and De-notified tribes get their right to education

Uttam Teron, Founder, Parijat Academy – Started a school of ‘Joyful Learning’ for tribal children in Assam

Mrinalika Rathore, Founder, Sashaktikaran – Changing societal mind-sets and empowering children

Faith Gonsalves, Pioneering a communityled approach to music education for social uplift of ‘at-risk’ children

Navin Gulia, Founder, Apni Duniya Apna Ashiana (ADAA) – A glimmer of goodness in young lives darkened by the grime of reality

Fr Maria Julian, Imparting computer education to under-privileged kids in a self-sustainable bus)

September 2017

Sudheer Jalagam

Mittal Patel

Mrinalika Rathore

Sugata Mitra Navin Gulia

September 2017

TEACHER WARRIORS

Babar Ali

Uttam Teron G K Swamy

September 2017

Gazi Jalaluddin

Dr Amitabh Mehrotra

September 2017

TEACHER WARRIORS The Kung Fu Nuns

Akshai Abraham

September 2017

Sujata Sahu

INTERVIEW

It is a vicious circle. People, at some point in time, didn’t have money and couldn’t get their children educated. And since they were not educated, they continued to be poor.

“I see such POSITIVE Anil Swarup, Secretary School Education & Literacy, lists the many positives of the current education scenario, in an exclusive chat at SGEF 2017. Nichola Pais editor@scoonews.com

The vicious circle of poverty and education… How do we break it? As you rightly said, it is a vicious circle. People, at some point in time, didn’t have money and couldn’t get their children educated. And since they were not educated, they continued to be poor. A lot has happened in the past 10 years and if you look at the data of children attending school, almost everyone goes to school. This is because of efforts of various governments in terms of seeing that every child comes to school irrespective of the income. Firstly, it is the free education being provided by the government, and secondly, the Right to

September 2017

Oh I was very naughty! I was a sportsman. I used to study a bit; later I realised that if I didn’t I wouldn’t get into any service! And I owe to my teachers what I am.

ENERGY in the country” Education Act which ensures that every child does get an education. We have managed to get the child to the school but I think the problem now is to see that the child gets actually educated. He has come to the school but I’m not very sure if the quality of the education we are imparting to him, especially in government schools, is good enough for him to get educated. So that is something we are looking at.

It’s too late in the day for me to back down. I’m coming to a close to my innings as a bureaucrat. I haven’t backed down in the past and hopefully I’ll continue to be the way I am!

Earlier you briefly touched upon the education mafia. Are they are hindrance in your approach which calls for low cost resources and higher outcomes? In any walk of life, be it government or personal life, there would be hindrances. And there are hindrances and challenges I enjoy, given my past work in the Coal ministry and otherwise. I’ve enjoyed these challenges and I will continue to enjoy the challenges here. Yes, mafias are present in education as well – probably they are trickier than the ones we had in the Coal sector. But that is a lovely challenge; let’s see what happens!

Amidst the scenario of multiple boards in India, would the government consider a single board system for the entire country? My take is that India is a country of many countries, in the sense that we have different cultures, different languages, and different social norms. To impose something from the Centre would not be advisable. If the Centre is able to create a board which attracts everyone and all voluntarily join this board, I would be only too happy to have that. As long as we are unable to provide a platform where everyone willingly joins in, I would definitely not impose anything on anyone. In a country like ours, we should allow different systems to operate and evolve. Over a period of time, if there is a feeling amongst the consumers that they should ride on a particular board, then they should be facilitated to do that. People should be given a choice.

Right, so evidently there’s no backing down where you are concerned?

Ideally, the process of identifying, documenting and replicating different teaching models across

the country should be conducted every year by an appointed team of experts… We are already doing that, and will continue to. I don’t think the Education Secretary should be going around the country to identify different models. Right now I am not travelling so much but I am getting all the feedback from all over the country from delegated people who send me those details. Then there is intensive interaction and we see how that particular model could be replicated. Credit for this entire grassroots model must go to you. Nothing of the sort existed before, over the decades… You know, I would not say that; I’m sure there must have been some effort in the past also to identify such models and replicate them. But, I think, in a structured manner, this is the first ever effort to put in place an institution mechanism through which you discover the good work that is happening in education in the country. We have now set up a portal called ShaGun (Shala Gunvatta), where all these models of good work are being displayed, for people to see and replicate on a wide scale.

September 2017

INTERVIEW What exactly would be the objectives you hope to achieve through the National Teacher’s Platform? As I said, there is so much good work being done by so many teachers in the country. Now, how do you get the other teachers to know what good work is happening? So you create this portal wherein all the good work gets filtered, gets curated, and is then placed on the portal. Through a navigation tool, if a teacher wants to understand how the Archimedes Principle can be explained, and it has already been explained beautifully by a teacher somewhere in the country, she can actually pick that up and show it to the students, or then learn it herself. What we are trying to do is create this virtual platform wherein the good practices, the good lessons, get showcased. And more importantly, as there is an information overload, there is a team which curates it; it provides a navigation tool so one can pinpoint and go to the particular video they are seeking. Problem today is if you go to Google and search, you will spend so much time in arriving at what you want to know. This navigation tool which we are putting in place will enable the teacher to reach where he or she wants to reach, almost immediately. Do you think anganwadis and government schools should work together, as the anganwadi workers also act as teachers? I’m so glad you raised this point. Just 10 days ago, Secretary, Women & Child Welfare and I sent a joint letter to chief secretaries to bring in anganwadis wherever possible to primary schools. It will solve a number of problems. In the midst of so many negatives about education in India, can you share a few positives about our Indian education system? Well, amazing positives! In the first place, look at the data when India got Independence and look at where we are today – almost every child is going to school! That is a huge positive, to get the child to the school. If you look at the Korean model of education, they did precisely this. Initially they got the child to the school and then they taught him. We have got the child to the school, now the challenge is to teach the child. Number 2 – despite all the problems

there are wonderful, wonderful models that are available in the country, and that is a big positive. As I said during my presentation, the idea is to see how that can be replicated and scaled. Number 3 – I think we have a set of such dedicated teachers. The challenge now is to recognise them, so that others feel deprived and yearn for a similar recognition. And when they want similar recognition, they will improve themselves. Create that challenge amongst the teachers, create that competition amongst the teachers. Similarly, there are wonderful schools that are doing good work. Can we identify them? Can we put them on a pedestal for others to see? There are such wonderful things that are happening. There is such positive energy that I see in the country. When I travel through the country, I find people who feel that things can still be done! And they can still be done, because they are actually being done! The question is whether I am able to direct the attention of the majority of the people to things that have happened rather than the things that haven’t happened, so as to learn from them. As all this is happening within the country, you won’t have doubt about its replicability. If these examples were to exist outside the country, then people would think twice if that same example could be replicated here. But if it is happening within the country, it gives you the conviction that it could happen in other places as well. What’s a day in the life of Mr. Swarup like? Oh, I enjoy every moment that I have, irrespective of what is happening around me! I rise a bit early and do some physical exercises to keep myself fit, I reach the office around 15 – 20 minutes ahead of the office time. And the initial hour that I have at the office is a very useful hour where no one disturbs me and I do my work. We have managed to digitise all files and papers so we don’t have files and papers. When I leave your place, as I go back I’ll do all my files and when I reach the office I won’t have any files pending to be seen. A lot of work gets done as I move. I enjoy travelling a lot, so I travel at least once a week if not more. I go to different places, because that is where the action is.

September 2017

Like I often say, Delhi is a fiction; real learnings are in the states. You move around, you learn; I do that. I avoid sitting in the office beyond 6 pm, 6.30 at the most. I come back home and enjoy spending time with my grandchildren; I love that the most. That’s my personal time and I look forward to it. What was the current Education Secretary like as a student? Oh I was very naughty! I was a sportsman. I used to study a bit; later I realised that if I didn’t I wouldn’t get into any service! And I owe to my teachers what I am. Just yesterday I spoke to my teacher who taught me 45 years ago. I’m in touch with quite a few of them. Some of them are no more in this world but they continue to inspire me. I remember each of their statements… I love them. Regarding the ScooNews Global Educators Fest, do you think an initiative like this helps on different levels? Oh, it’s an amazing effort! I had never thought that I was coming to such an event. I thought it would be just speeches and then it would be over. But what you have done here is, you have got the practitioners together. I don’t get to meet too many practitioners in a conference; there are too many speakers. But there are practitioners who are very good speakers as well so they are very inspiring! The two speakers that I have heard so far have left me amazed. So much to learn from them, so much is happening and they have done it despite everything going against them. They have managed to achieve something. And they were so good in conveying what they have done. Very inspiring! You featured on the cover of ScooNews magazine in July 2017. Any feedback on the magazine? Many magazines have good editorial content which indeed ScooNews also has. But what amazed me was the production quality – it is so well produced, so well presented. Compliments to the team for presenting it so aesthetically! I loved it! Content-wise, I am no expert but I would suggest you get good practices reported as much as you can.

September 2017

INTERVIEW

“Our education system needs to make our children self-reliant and compassionate”

Parvathy Jayakrishnan writeback@scoonews.com

n the evening of August 19, the final day of the Scoonews Global Educators Fest 2017, the room was filled with the cream of educators in our country who waited patiently for the much-awaited

speaker from Ladakh. He came just in time to thrill the audience with his experience of teaching students 12,000 feet high, in the mountains, something which not many among the other educators in the room had experienced. Rushing in to deliver his speech on ‘The Next Learning Revolution’ was Sonam Wangchuk, founder of the

September 2017

Students' Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL).The crowd showed respect by being silent as a man brimming with energy within, with fine lines of wisdom on his forehead, and a smile as bright as a sunny day in Ladakh, took to the podium. He began his speech with a traditional

Sonam Wangchuk speaks on the need to create an educational system that is not just about the head but also about hands and heart, at SGEF 2017. greeting from Ladakh - “Juleh”. He explained how he accidentally stumbled upon the world of education from the field of engineering. He had differences with his father on the stream of engineering to choose and the same resulted in him having to finance his own engineering education. He had to teach students to raise some funds for

his own education. This experience, he says, changed his life completely. He came face to face with realities, or rather the “falsehood” of the educational system. And he continued to try and understand the problems in the educational system… In the 1990s, students were failing in huge numbers in Ladakh - to be pre-

cise, 95 per cent of the students were failing in the X grade, every year. The people and the system blamed the students for the failure rather than examining the system. But clearly, when 95 per cent fail, it is for the system to look into itself rather than blaming the children. That is when Wangchuk started questioning the system to see what

September 2017

INTERVIEW

We need to replace the 3 Rs (Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic) in the current education system with 3 Hs - Head, Hands and Heart.

could be corrected. From his interactions with the children, he realised that the very same children who failed exams year after year were, in fact, very bright and kind and everything about them was right, yet they were blamed and labelled as “retarded “ or as “primitive mountain people”. When he looked into the depths of the system, he realised that they were made to follow a system that was more like a ritual for them, which made no sense. They were being taught from books that came from Delhi and London and the concepts made no sense to someone who was in Ladakh. Even the concept of teaching alphabets through association with objects was a failure there, because when the books read “F for Fan” - no one, including the teachers, knew what a fan was in the -30 degree Ladakh temperature! Sonam realised that the children who were skilled at performing tasks with their hands were being forced to learn, by rote, things that they could barely relate to and that was very wrong. The children had learnt skills of mending torn clothes or repairing houses from their parents, yet the system of education they were forced into was “undoing” whatever skills of the hand they had learnt and they were asked to use only their head. A good preparation for the life that they would live required skilled hands and kind hearts but that had no place in the school system. Their parents had taught them the importance of cooperation and collaboration, which is an important skill to survive in a place like Ladakh, yet the system of education that they were into, forced them to compete rather

than collaborate! It forced them to put themselves first over others in the race to the top. He noted that the most developed or “industrialised” countries like Japan and Korea are also places with the highest rate of suicides. Clearly, the system is not doing good to the people, nor is it making them happy. The outcomes of this system are also causing havoc to our environment itself because the glaciers are melting as global temperatures rise and while the people in Ladakh will have to flee, people living near the coast will drown. This is a system that will not do good to our planet or our country. He believes that we must rethink and reconsider what we put into our children if we want a different outcome. The system was not making our children self-reliant to survive in difficult places like Ladakh. As a result, he decided to think beyond the system that the West had brought in 300 years ago during the industrial revolution. The need of the hour was to create a better system that we can give to the world. We are a country that has given to the world Yoga and Vipassana. We need to create a new system that is not just about the head but also about hands and skill - a system that values experiential learning and preparation for life. Sonam believes that we need to replace the 3 Rs (Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic) in the current education system with 3 Hs - Head, Hands and Heart. Education should not be merely about production and consumption. “I’m more impressed by the technolo-

September 2017

gies of the inner world that our country developed than the technologies of the outer world that have come in the last 300 years. The latter helps fulfil our desires of comfort and ease of doing things but desires keep growing!” Quoting Lord Buddha, he said, “For human beings, it is a bigger achievement to conquer one single desire than to fulfil 1,000 desires.” The current system trains us to fulfil our desires but the buckets of our desires keep filling with products of technology. He believes that we can keep filling this bucket, all the while failing to notice that it is a bottomless bucket. A much wiser technology is to have a bottom for this bucket and fill it with much less - and this is his vision for education. “We need to figure out where we are going. We are told we have to go fast but I believe that if we do not know where we are going, it is better that we go slow. We need to teach our children to be self-reliant and show compassion to others. We need to make them take responsibilities and that is when they grow up,” he pointed out. With like-minded friends, Wangchuk launched SECMOL. Working with the government, they rewrote text books and retrained teachers and the results started changing too. Children are partners of the school and involved in the governance and they are taught to solve real-world problems like climate change. They publish their own campus newspaper and they have made their school solar-powered. Together with the support of like-minded people, he hopes to revolutionise the face of education in our country and the world.

INTERVIEW

“I

would like to SPREAD MORE

Teacher Training

Programmes” Vanya Bhandari writeback@scoonews.com

Educationist, mathematician and pioneer of the Super 30 program, Anand Kumar is looking at going online. An SGEF 2017 exclusive.

September 2017

After so much recognition and success, do you feel the need to share the secrets of Super 30 with privileged students as well? Of course! Many come to us. Earlier people who had no money came and would say ‘How will I study?’ Now things have changed, now some come and say ‘If I am rich or poor it is not our fault!’ So we want to go online and with the help Scoonews and Ravi Santlani, see how we can work on this together. There is now a film being made on you. How has your Bollywood experience has been so far? It has been very good. Many people are involved and they are making a big film, a real story to be made, not fiction and masala. What was it like shooting ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ with Amitabh Bachchan? This was my second experience; first was during the shooting of the film AARAKSHAN. I had had the chance to interact with him and also went for the film promotion with him. When I

met him recently, he shared old experiences. Up until now you have been coaching students. Do you think it is more important to train teachers? Our old students want to become teachers so we are helping them. When I am travelling they take over because they are aware of our techniques. With ScooNews we would like to spread more teacher training programmes. How do you actually select candidates for the Super 30 programme? Students who are 10th grade graduates, we also see how passionate they are, if they are truly under-privileged and how curious they are for growth. We have a written exam based on the 10th syllabus. The funding that you get must have helped youâ&#x20AC;Ś We have never ever taken a penny as donation. In spite of the expansion of Super 30, we have never taken any money. Also we have proved that even without resources if you have the will, one can do it.

The Super 30 Sensation! Super 30 is an ambitious and innovative educational program running under the banner of Ramanujan School of Mathematics. It hunts for 30 meritorious talents from among the economically backward sections of society and shapes them for India's most prestigious institution â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). In the last seven years, it has produced several IITians from extremely poor backgrounds. This year 30 out of 30 students cleared the prestigious IIT JEE entrance examination. During this program students are provided absolutely free coaching, lodging and food. Super 30 targets students from extremely poor families. Anand Kumar does not accept donations for the programme. His team creates funds by organizing evening classes in Patna.

September 2017

INTERVIEW

“They try to

CONNECT, D I S M I S S ...”

Nichola Pais editor@scoonews.com

Rude awakening The distance between teachers and students is increasing in a very different way, not in the classroom but in the virtual space. How many of us have heard of this unfortunate phenomenon known as Saraha? Some of us have downloaded it, it’s a good ego boost for us, for kids to tell us, ‘Oh Ma’am you are so good… You teach so well in class…’ We tell our friends how amazing it is. But there’s another side to it. And that’s the side that I want to talk about, because I thought that being a young educator would make me a cool educator. I have trophies from my students in my classes, in my colleges, calling me the Coolest Dean, the Best Friend Ever. And on March 27 this year, you would have heard a very tragic story of a kid committing suicide on Facebook Live. He was my student. We always feel that we are connected to our students, we always feel that there are some things we are doing well for our students. But as professors, as teachers, how many times do we actually look at their virtual life; the real life which they are leading? They have a different world of their own. I remember this particular student of

mine had called me up on March 17, to wish me for my birthday. We spoke. I asked him how he was doing; he had been off the radar for four months. He said, ‘Sir, I’m just sorting things out, don’t worry. And things will be perfect in some time’. March 27, we know what happened. Social media – their life As teachers, as professionals, we are on social media but how many times are we reading students’ timelines? Do we see their status messages on G-Talk, on Twitter? Are we making a concerted effort to understand that part of it? And unfortunately Saraha happened in between. Students are getting pressurised today to be on Saraha, because they want that single compliment from an anonymous space. And on top of that the student says, ‘Thank you for the compliment. Can I know who this is?’ This is where the students are today. They are trying to connect in the virtual world, still wanting that love, and we are overlooking this. Can you jot down the last five things that your students put up on Facebook? Do you remember any of their status messages, their check-ins? It’s difficult, right? This is the only connect that we have with our students today. We look for counselling in school, have we ever sat with them to understand why they

September 2017

were socially inactive for the past 21 days? A kid who generally tweets 20 times a day, who constantly posts Facebook updates - by the way, 18-21 year-olds hate Facebook now because their parents are on it. So they have now shifted to Snapchat and Instagram - how many of us are looking at that? As knowledge-givers, we think that social media is distraction. For children, this is their life. I know students who crib, ‘I put up a profile picture last week, why didn’t you like it?’ And there are fights over that! ‘Where were you last night? You told me you were at home but I saw you check in at a club with others’. As educators, I definitely feel that when this incident happened with me, I had let someone down. I thought I was it, because I tweet at least 50 times a day, I’m on all the social media spaces – except Saraha. If that day I had just switched on his live feed… I could have rushed there; my office is just 20 minutes away from his place. From that time on I’ve taken to platforms to speak to principals, to educators about the need for us to accept students’ social media life. Why are we dismissive of it? Giving back It is not the same as when we were in school or college. I was in college

Joyanto Mukherjee, Founder CEO, Tutored And Trained, and youngest dean at 25, on bridging the student-teacher chasm in the virtual world

between 2003-2006; we were the original ‘Orkutyas’ if you remember Orkut at that time. At that time I could understand my teacher saying, ‘What is this?’ I could understand the deliberate attempt by them not to come on social media. Today it has become so important for us to be a part of our students’ social media life because that is where the connect is needed. Students tag us in photos, in statuses, on Teacher’s Day, thanking us and so on. We are so proud of it. Let’s give it back. Because this is the only breadcrumb trail we have to see where our student is going. Social media is what they use to communicate so many things, so many times. Have you seen your students’ Snapchat trails? That’s investigative journalism. You see, via their trails, that they live a life. I happened to ask a student, why Snapchat? He said, ’24 hours mein sab kuch chala gaya. And my parent doesn’t know how to run Snapchat.’ This is escapism for them. And this is a dangerous time. Like Zuckerberg said, it would be hours being spent and not minutes. These are not times when students switch their phones off. Thanks to Mr. Ambani, everything is free today, and you are virtually walking in 4G. It is scary for educators but the fact is

we can’t shake this off; it’s high time we shook hands with it. Because when we talk about counselling, what are we talking about? Students don’t want to walk up to a counsellor. But, believe me, at 2 am, because they know that you are accessible on Whatsapp, someone pings me, ‘Sir are you awake?’ And I happen to say yes. Two and a half hours we ended up chatting. Will a counsellor be available at 2 in the morning, for someone to just open up? Be an active player The student-teacher relationship is going a very different way and the more we run away from it, the more the distance we are creating. It’s no longer a 10 am-6 pm for a student and a teacher today. They want access to you at 9 o’clock at night, just to clear a doubt – ‘Ma’am, tomorrow there is a test. Can we solve this, I have this doubt…’ When we were young, we were scared of our teachers because at that time tech wasn’t there to support us. I couldn’t pick up the landline and call my Maths teacher at 10 at night. We wouldn’t dare do that. But today things have changed. Why are we not adapting? Why can’t we have 24x7 counselling lines in schools only online? We have these active school and college Whatsapp groups; unfortunately they happen to be active only for two things

– ‘Kal lecture hai?’ and ‘Main nahin aa raha hoon’. Or then the teacher says she isn’t taking the lecture. Can we utilise these groups better? Everyday there is someone in our circle, on our timeline, trying to express to you or to the world that things are not fine in his life. We can’t expect the 19-year-old friend to pick up that clue. The onus is on us, because the parents are generally out of the picture, wondering why their kids are always online. They call it the thumb game – I call it the thumb life. I really encourage all educators to take social media more seriously. We need to understand it. And to understand it, we need to be an active player on it. We can’t have someone else running our own Whatsapp or Facebook accounts. Because all that student of yours wants is that when he tags you, you say thanks and, believe me, the best gift you can give in return is when you tag him or her and say, ‘Proud to be with you…Proud to have you as a kid’. We are cool teachers. We have our certificates proving we are good educators. But even in today’s time, we are losing kids to a world which somewhere is not explanatory to us. Let’s not run away… because it’s about to get worse.

September 2017

INTERVIEW

“TECHNOLOGY has

removed the

threat

from learning” Anjana Deepak editor@scoonews.com

Meenakshi Uberoi Founding Director De Pedagogics, talks about tech finally being accepted in an exclusive interview at SGEF 2017

September 2017

What are the top global trends you think could be incorporated in the Indian education system? 1. What would really work well is bringing in technology, not as a tool but understanding the technology and how it can enhance classrooms and the way it can help the facilitator. Using these tools we can make learning more meaningful and can make the student’s voice heard. 2. Apart from that, what’s trending is student-centred learning. We should give the students opportunities to ask questions. The art of asking questions will play a big role in the days to come. 3. We also need to look at the special needs of the children, as every child has different needs or has his/her way of learning. Though various schools say that they have implemented different styles of learning there is still a gap and these institutes can lend a lot more to learning in classrooms. 4. Teacher training is another area I would say is overrated. Every school holds training sessions, but are those one day sessions really meaningful? Is there anyone they can go back to, to ask questions? Can a teacher find out where something was implemented and was successful or realise where she had to pause and go back. Long

term relationships with learning communities need to be built. There are not many educator communities that are existent globally. There is Microsoft Educator Community, where global educators come in and interact, reach out to learn from each other, bring exchange programs and open out their classrooms to the world. There is Learning Forward India which is led by Sandeep Dutt where you can join by paying a nominal fee of Rs.500 a year and is a very effective program due to the way the professional training platform is built. It is something that you and I must look at in the days to come. Can we ever hope to break away from the rote system of learning and examination? I would put it differently; I would not want to do away with the system of rote learning because it is going to be ages before this system goes away. I would say let’s find some effective ways of rote learning. This system of learning that we have in India has produced the Satya Nadellas (Microsoft) and Sundar Pichais (Google) of the world, so why do away with a system that is doing so well? The world might come back asking you for better methods of making rote learning more interesting. So let’s find ways to make rote learning more approachable, adaptable and engaging.

How do you think we can improve communication amongst children? I think the quietest child gets a voice once technology comes in, because with technology you are interacting with yourself and a device. There is no one to give you feedback which might be challenging or which might be right/ wrong. So it becomes more like journal writing and you doing it with your mind means you are literally spilling your thoughts onto your screen, be it through your writing or speaking. Through this you are sharing yourself in a very non- threatening way. I believe that technology has removed the threat from learning. How do you think we can improve communication amongst children? I think the quietest child gets a voice once technology comes in, because with technology you are interacting with yourself and a device. There is no one to give you feedback which might be challenging or which might be right/ wrong. So it becomes more like journal writing and you doing it with your mind means you are literally spilling your thoughts onto your screen, be it through your writing or speaking. Through this you are sharing yourself in a very non- threatening way. I believe that technology has removed the threat from learning.

“SGEF 2017 – Fabulously awesome!” I think SGEF has brought forward progressive mind-sets of principals. We need school leaders on an everyday basis and what we saw here was them talking about education issues in a good light rather than criticizing by saying this or that isn’t there. They were offering and providing solutions, which was a breath of fresh air. Whether the question was directed at technology or not, people had a blend of opinions and it was great to see that technology was being accepted. This event was fabulously awesome…if that’s even a word!

September 2017

INTERVIEW

EMBR CING the INT RNET Tips for educators on accepting, employing and enjoying digital learning, from Prof. Sugata Mitra. An exclusive at SGEF 2017

Nichola Pais editor@scoonews.com

Books as Technology If you look at the way the education system has evolved, there is a rationale. The rationale is that for the first 16 to 17 years of your life, you learn a whole lot of things. You are taught by people who know it. Why do you have to be taught? Because you don’t have access to that information easily. This was the case, for example, in the 15th century, where if you wanted to learn something, you had to find an expert and ask him or her to please explain it to you. So

that’s where the teaching bit comes. When books came, which was the first sort of impact of technology, suddenly the teacher’s knowledge could be tapped into a non-human form – the book. And there was equal controversy, I believe, at that time about the fact that books were going to ruin the education system! ‘What will teachers now do? Children will just pick up the book and they will figure it out!’ Then the teachers said, ‘No, that’s not going to happen because how do you know which book you have to read? The teacher will tell you!’ So, the curriculum, the library, the books, that kind of system came in…

September 2017

The Big Shift This happens for the first 17 years because after that, once you get into your job, you don’t have access to all those books. You can’t carry your library on your head – you have to have it inside your head! So if you are lost, you are stuck, you are on a ship going somewhere and you want to know where you are, you use your sextant, point to a star, you use your knowledge of trigonometry, you look at your watch and you figure it out. All this you learnt in the first 17 years. But what happens when you can carry the library with you? That’s the shift that we are going through. Not just

the library, you can carry everything with you! So, if you’re now stuck on a ship, the new generation looks at a sextant and says, ‘What is this?’ Then you say ‘Well, trigonometry…’ and he says, ‘What is that?’ And you say, ‘But how will you find out where you are?’ And the new generation will say, ‘Here’s my phone’.We have to make that shift. We still believe that there is something very deep and important about using a sextant and trigonometrical knowledge and so on to figure out things. And we find it very bad that you just look at your phone and it tells you where you are! Fifty years from now there will be

teachers who will say, ‘What is trigonometry? I don’t know’. Teachers will not think that the internet is such a big thing. So the SGEF conference you are having today, where we are talking about the internet and technology all the time, if there was a 10-year-old here – and this has happened to me in England – he would ask, ‘This conference is about the internet? But why are you having a conference about the internet? It’s everywhere!’ He has never known a world where the internet never existed. ‘Just In Time’ Learning The first thing we must remember is that

packing your head for the first 17 years of your life, like a suitcase for a journey, is no longer required. The stuff is available everywhere – whenever you need it, you can have it. You don’t need a ‘just-in-case’ education. Why were you taught trigonometry? Just in case you were stuck on a ship going nowhere. First of all, you know you’re never going to be stuck on a ship going nowhere. And secondly, even if you were, you could figure it out. You can type into your phone ‘Teach me some Trigonometry’ and it will teach you in 10 minutes. So the shift is from ‘just in case’ to ‘just in time’. So what do we have to do?

September 2017

INTERVIEW SGEF Takeaways The SGEF is a very good idea because it brings people together and conversations happen. It’s not just about listening to lectures – of course you learn new ideas – but you also get all sorts of ideas by talking to each other. One school principal talking to another school principal, they don’t get that chance all that often. And particularly if you can get – as you have got – an international audience then it gives you a kind of a rich experience! It’s been interesting. I came for two reasons – one is I haven’t met the Indian teachers for a long time, which is shameful. I mean, how can I not meet Indian teachers! When I lived in Delhi, I used to know everybody. But they have retired now and so on, so this is the new lot and I’ve enjoyed meeting them. More importantly, I came to listen to what are considered our current problems. I must say, that what I heard here is no different than what I hear in many different countries. It is the common problem of the identity crisis of the teacher – who am I?

Are we teachers not needed? It’s not true. We have to enable children to do ‘Just In Time’ learning. How to learn quickly, how to learn accurately, how to search for the right thing – this is our job! So the job is changing. If teachers could realise that, then they wouldn’t have this attitude of ‘Technology is evil, technology will take away my job!’ We have to understand, technology doesn’t remain technology. You don’t think my clothes are technology, do you? It was once upon a time huge technology! My watch, my shoes, they used to be technology – they are not technology any more. To the generation that is growing up, the internet and smartphones are not technology; they are things that you live with. Teaching Using Tech One of the topmost things to do, is instead of saying ‘I will teach you’, you shift to, ‘Can you learn this?’ It becomes a question. Instead of saying ‘I’m going to teach you about volcanoes’, you could say, ‘You know, it’s important to know certain things about volcanoes, so I’ll give you 20 minutes, can you figure it out and tell me?’ So you are reversing the process – the student is telling you, and not the other way around. It’s not a hard change to make once you are sensitive to it.This generation doesn’t take to orders, not because they are indisciplined – we often think they are indisciplined but every generation says about the next, ‘Oh they are all going to the dogs!’ Nobody is indisciplined, we are just adjusting and living with our time. So you must understand that with this generation you cannot tell them something like, ‘Don’t slouch, walk properly’. Now you will wonder why you shouldn’t tell someone this, it’s a nice thing to tell somebody. Well, it isn’t. This generation needs a reason. So they will come back with, ‘Why can’t I slouch? I want to slouch’. So then you reply, ‘You know, there are

three muscles here which get weakened periodically if you slouch…’ something like that! They will understand that language. If you don’t know, you say something like, ‘I think it does something to your skeletalmuscular system. We are bipeds, we are meant to walk in a certain way. Just google it…’ If he googles it, he won’t slouch after that because he knows the reason. In a way, I welcome that quality in this generation because it’s the generation of reason, not orders. I often hear teachers say, ‘My role has changed, from a teacher to that of a guide’. That’s not true anymore. You cannot guide people inside the internet; it’s too big to guide. Guide means you know where you are going – you often don’t anymore. So what is your role? The role of a teacher, I think, is of a friend. What you are saying to your class is, ‘You go there, I don’t know where you will land up, but I’ll be with you’. …From the back, instead of from the front. And children love it if they can go home and say, ‘My teacher is my friend’. Reading vs. Internet I am often told that reading a book helps you go deeper into the topic while the internet gives quick, superficial answers to questions. But I think it goes both ways. It’s true what you’re saying - if you read a book you can sometimes go deeper inside but I could take another example of where reading is not as good as speaking. The context would be poetry. To speak out a poem has a different, deeper connect than to read it. It’s the argument turned backwards where reading isn’t as good as it seems! On the internet what happens is that yes, you don’t get the depth of the book but you get the width that the book could never offer. Books don’t point to other books; the internet is all about pointing. So it’s a different medium. Should we not read books? I’m not sure. I’m from a different generation where I am horrified

September 2017

by the idea that we won’t read books! I think we should read books but then maybe I’m old-fashioned, maybe the day of the book is over… The Lazy Issue Does the internet make children lazy? Again, just for the sake of being argumentative, I could apply that to history. Don’t you think that a farmer from 1500 BC would have looked at you and said, ‘They are terribly lazy! Look at the way they look, they have no muscles, they can’t stand up properly, they can’t work in the field etc’. We were very active but that’s because of anthropological reasons – we got down from the trees, we got up on our feet, we had to run for our food, we had to protect our families, shield ourselves from the weather, the works! We were a lot hardier… but we used to die at 30. Now, we are soft, we are lazy by those standards, we are like a sack of potatoes sitting there, every one of us eats too much, we probably sleep too much, we don’t bother about anything… we live to be 75! So, to me, it’s an achievement. It’s the achievement of homo sapiens. So, yes we are lazier – thank god! Lines that find resonance… Oh poetry on order! Why not? You know, teachers sometimes ask, ‘What should I look for in my job, in my career?’ Here’s what you should look for… ‘…to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover She thought that I was not unworthy to love her. There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee; Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee; When it sparkled o'er aught that was bright in my story, I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory.’ Byron

INTERVIEW

BACK TO THE BASICS Listen to your child to train him to listen, says Valentina Trivedi, writer, story teller and educator in an exclusive interview at the SGEF 2017.

Anjana Deepak writeback@scoonews.com

One of your core strengths is story telling. You believe deeply in its power… Well, I started connecting with stories before I could sit up. I grew up in a pre-television, pre-computer age and I’m an only child, so story books were my soul mates. I had very understanding adults around me; my parents, and I had some great teachers and they always gave me that space which is what is lacking in children’s lives today.

They are not getting the space to let their mind wander and that’s where learning actually happens.

kind of learning that comes through stories and with children given that space and through positive inputs.

There is just far too much teaching and not enough learning. And also in this too much teaching, curriculum, jargon, short term outcomes we forget that education is actually a long term process. It’s not like boiling an egg. This is something that is going to last a lifetime, you are building it for a lifetime. So we can’t be measuring everything with short term goals. That is the

I never say anything negative to children as they are very special people. It’s the adults around them that make things go wrong. Children are amazing; they come up with the most original ideas and have completely new perspectives to do things. I love creating stories or songs with them. I would like to share a little song.

September 2017

INTERVIEW I call myself a ‘Childist’; like we have feminists I am a ‘Childist’ because I look at things from a child’s perspective. The child inside me is still very alive and kicking and I can’t not look at the world from a child’s perspective! I do teacher training programs, story-telling performances, stand-alone sessions and ticketed sessions at literature festivals and events.

There are these two little girls who come over to my place who are of different age groups. We were playing and doing mimes. I have a lot of hand puppets. We decided that one of us would create a story and two of us would create a song around it. So the story was about a koel (cuckoo) and a kauva (crow) and the song went like this… Ek tha kauva, ek thi koel…. Ek tha kauva, ek thi koel…. Kauva Mr. Basu aur koel Mrs. Goyal Kauva Mr. Basu aur koel Mrs. Goyal So this is the kind of wackiness that a child has. A lot of the times the adults just push it aside and say ‘It’s not there in the course or curriculum. Where is this going to get you?’ This is what is going to get you to the other places. Not to be a frontrunner in a herd, but to leap above that. The creativity leap! Children are not able to find an outlet for their creativity or curiosity. And that is what I feel very passionately about. I live in a colony which has children of all ages and I interact with them. As children grow older, does it get more difficult to ignite their imagination, this spark in them? I would definitely suggest that parents do it at a much younger age. For any other job you require a qualification, prior knowledge or some work experience. But parenting is the only thing that we are allowed to get into without doing a thing about it and I really think it’s unfair! I often tell adults if children knew what they were entitled to and what they are missing out on, all us adults would be behind bars! When you say igniting the spark it’s a big thing. They are just big terms. You have to go back to the basics. You have to go back to simple things that

are always going to hold true. The world is changing very quickly. There is technology; the amount of change that has happened due to technology in the last 30 years is massive and it’s going to keep changing. But there are some things that are going to be constant. So I say, connect with your child and when I say that it doesn’t mean your child is sitting with you and you are sitting with your cell phone. So if you have a problem with your child’s screen time, look at how much screen time you are giving yourself. When my son was younger and we used to go on holidays, wherever there was a television in the room we never switched it on. It was not an enforced rule but it’s just something he grew up with. Each of us carried our books and board games. Parents have to be very conscious about the world they need to be nurtured in. I would like to say ‘Bachpan’ has two syllables. ‘Bach’ and ‘pan’ - bachana kya hai aur panapane kya dena hai. A lot of things are naturally inherent to children, which are divine, and we kind of strangle it out of them. So that’s why it has to start early. In today’s age where we are online 24/7, how can story-telling still be relevant? Ah! It is surprising to me also that it is so relevant. And with passing time I become more and more aware of its relevance. At the surface of it, it feels like a form of entertainment. You tell a story and a child is happy or an adult is happy and that’s it, but the kind of cognitive development that happens when a child is listening to a story is amazing. That can’t be taught. It’s like osmosis the way the learning happens. So you have to allow that to happen. It will not happen if the child is staring at a screen. Of course there are challenging games (digital) but it’s when they are forming their own pictures in

their mind, when there is no picture to support the audio, that their imagination is growing. During teacher training programs I ask the teachers, ‘So what is the big deal about imagination? You can get your marks in maths and science, so why imagination?’ A lot of them are not able to answer this question. The minute you say storytelling you have somebody saying ‘But imagination is required’ and then somebody will realise that without imagination we won’t be where we are. Like man imagined he could fly and so we have aeroplanes today. The other thing is because of our cell phones and other devices the attention span is greatly reduced. You are flipping channels. The minute you don’t like something you flip and flip and flip the channels. So listening to stories enhances your attention span. You learn to pay attention. We pay a lot of attention to communication skills, and yet it still means just public speaking or speaking confidently or speaking well, but that’s just one half of it. The other half of communication is listening. How are we teaching listening? We are not even paying attention, other that telling a child ‘Listen to me’. I tell parents who say this to their child that if you haven’t taught your child to cycle is it fair to ask him to get onto it and start pedalling? And they said no. So I ask them, ‘Have you taught him to listen?’ ‘Yes of course we keep telling him to listen every day!’ But telling is different, have you ensured that he has learnt to listen. How do you ensure listening? You model it. You show him by listening to him. So listen to your children. You will have a better relation with your child if you will listen more to them than telling them to listen.

September 2017

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INTERVIEW

“There is GREAT DEMAND for fast

KNOWLEDGE” Dan Lejerskar, co-founder EON Reality, on making knowledge transfer accessible, affordable and available to all, in an exclusive at SGEF 2017 Parvathy Jayakrishnan writeback@scoonews.com

What is the aim of EON Reality in making a change in the education sector? The key is to improve knowledge transfer. If you think about what we are doing in education, there is very little need to memorise things because Google does it best! So what we are trying to do now is to expand the communitive dimension, think up

things like creativity, collaboration and creation. Virtual reality and augmented reality lends itself very well for this type of knowledge acquisition. How has your experience been in convincing people in Asia to take up something like VR and AR? We have almost 17 years of experience in Asia. We established ourselves very early in Singapore, even though Singapore is quite advanced. I do agree

September 2017

that some of the videos in my presentation look futuristic but that’s when we land. When we borrow someone’s phone and show them that they can experience both virtual reality and augmented reality, then all the doubt disappears. Seeing is believing and I would say Asia is one of the best locations because people are so tech-savvy. How has your experience been in India? The experience in India is still very

EON Reality is an 18-year-old multinational virtual reality and augmented reality software developer company headquartered in California. Dan Lejerskar is also an expert in simulationbased learning. He explains that technology kills millions of jobs but paradoxically technology is also one source that creates new jobs. There is an increasing gap of unfilled jobs. He opines that in education, India is in a race, a knowledge transfer race, but the funds available for each student are decreasing. So one has to teach more with less time and less money!

early but there is a lot of interest and a lot of demand for fast knowledge, especially in the vocational training area. There is a big gap there at the moment. We have made our first investment and we will announce it shortly. It is going to be in Chennai. Our goal is to set up 10 centres to cover 10 regions in India as well as covering various segments, not only education but also sectors like energy, manufacturing, aerospace and so on.

Each country is different and their needs are different. How does your research team adapt to that? Simply what we do is we find the best local partners and we team up with them. We make the major part of the investment but we also ask them to co-invest. So we know that they are interested. They help us and advise us and make sure that the ‘Indian’ solution is ‘Indian’ and not anything else.

It appears that this would benefit the higher education sector more than the school education sector… I would divide the market into three areas - K-12, vocational and professional training, and higher education. Today, the number one is vocational training, number two is higher education and number three is K-12 but I would say that in the next 3-5 years, K-12 will catch up with higher education.

September 2017

SGEF2017

SHIRKERS & DOERS In a rousing speech delivered in pure Hindi, Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar speaks tongue in cheek of the work-avoiders of the world, at SGEF 2017 Vanya Bhandari writeback@scoonews.com

It is absolutely a pleasure and honour to be here amongst this august gathering. I see some of my old school teachers here; if you see even one in the crowd it certainly makes you nervous even if you have spoken before in front of a larger gathering! I want to thank the platform as well for inviting me to be here, speaking on a topic that is very relevant in today’s times. While I was on my way here, looking at the august panel of speakers, I realised the only person who was out of place was myself ! I am the last one who should have actually been here, the person who has always sat at the back of the class; if I could have pushed the walls behind the last bench I guess I would have! But what I did realise was that by asking an average student, or a below-average student to come here and speak, what this platform has really done is give respect not to Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar but to the average student. This is a speciality of Indian culture. This is the strength of our education. Since yesterday I have been attending the Fest, I’ve been listening to the speakers, to my teachers. Watching the whole atmosphere, two lines come to my mind: ‘Mehez hungama khada karna hamara maqsad nahi, koshish

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yeh hai ki rut badalni chahiye’. It is not our intention to make a noise but to bring about a change. With so many esteemed personages, principals from different schools, gathered together under one roof, it goes without saying that there will be change. I would like to start by pondering over the importance of discussing the Dignity of Labour. There has been a lot of discussion about Time. There was a time when not everyone had a watch, but everyone had the time. Today everyone has a watch, but nobody has time. ‘Waqt aata hai aur waqt jaata hai, waqt ko sambhalkar rakhiyega, waqt bewaqt kaam aata hain’. This is something we need to truly understand. Time passes, use it with utmost sensibility. We talk a lot about technology. I am not against technology at all, in fact I must be the youngest speaker here; I should be the most tech savvy. When we talk about Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, how many likes, how many friends and followers is all we care about. At home we might not be on talking terms with our family. We are moving away from reality. Technology has indeed brought the world closer but it has also distanced us from each other. Where do we want to go? Looking for life on other planets, who will find out first whether there is life on Mars… My question is, why can’t we find happiness in our lives?

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About languages, I want to add that I am not against the learning of new languages. English is an international language, one should know all languages. But having said that, why are we aping the west, at the cost of our own wealth of knowledge? Why are we leaving behind our culture? I was not a popular student; my teachers will vouch for the fact that I spent more time looking out of the window during class. Hindi was not my strongest point, but later I realized the value of our language and how vast, beautiful and scientific it is. We belong to such a great nation; we should use the language in our daily lives, and feel proud of it. Can we carry a message from this stage that our Hindi is a language we should be proud of ? Yesterday a speaker made us aware of Rai Chand… In Rajasthan, we are aware of such a person, Rai Chand. Giving advice is easiest in India and the cheapest. Everybody knows how to advise Sachin Tendulkar on how to make 100 runs. Somebody who has never got a finger injured will dish out advice on how to get a bypass. If you are making a house, be prepared to get advice from someone who has never constructed a house himself. The second type of people found in our country belongs to the Gyan Chand category, the know-it-all. Let me tell you a small story about a sweet

shop. A man strolls into a mithai shop and tells the owner, “This is such a nice shop, you should put up a board, ‘Fresh sweets available here’.” Then a second person comes in, reads the board and says, “Remove the word ‘here’; it’s self-explanatory.” Similarly, more people come in and keep making suggestions. Finally, only the word ‘Sweets’ remains on the board! To cut a long story short, it’s very easy to dole out knowledge. Other types of people commonly found - Hukum Baaz, who will not do anything, but only give orders! We should beware of such people. And don’t forget Hoshiyaar Chand, the type who does not need anyone, and believes they know more than Google. Finally there is Karam Chand, the kind of people who believe in doing as opposed to merely talking. We need to constantly evolve and work hard. I congratulate Ravi Santlani and SGEF for organising such a fest and gathering so many people under one roof. I hope we can inculcate the quality of hard work in our children. Where I come from, I am not ashamed to mention that we are taught to touch our teachers’ feet. This happens only in India. To be born as a human being is a big thing, but to be born as an educator is a blessing.

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SGEF2017

Passion ABOVE Salary!

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If the 150 million literate help the 150 million illiterate, the balance will be struck, enthused Geeta Dharmarajan at SGEF 2017

Parvathy Jayakrishnan writeback@scoonews.com

When Geeta Dharmarajan, writer, editor, educator and Executive Director of Katha, walked up on stage during the ScooNews Global Educators Fest 2017 to narrate her story of how she started Katha, the crowd awakened. Katha is the non-profit organisation she founded in 1988, that focuses on educating children, especially from poor families. For Geeta, educating children is not just a passion, it’s a promise that she has taken to see to it that each and every child in India gets an education. She began her speech by talking about how fifty percent of what we are doing today will become obsolete 20 years from now. She spoke of how she knew of someone who had started a bakery in Iceland. It is all about the passion! She reiterated the importance of inculcating a sense of passion in our children, whether it’s about stones or about the world outside. We see ants climbing trees without ever thinking about the rest of the world, very busy doing what they do. Why can’t our children do that? From her experience of visiting many schools, she stated that in most schools, children are waiting for someone to come in and discipline them. It is always competition and never co-operation. She explained that children are very smart and that there is a complete dumbing down that happens. A 2-year-old can learn by herself or himself. She spoke about a video that she saw wherein a child is trying to befriend a dog by putting out her hands gently. But there are parents who stop children from interacting with the dog saying that the dog is dangerous and then the child grows up fearing dogs! She suggested that we parents and teachers stop asking children not

to try out new things, thereby creating a sense of fear in them. At Katha, they wanted to know whether it was possible for a child to take forward her learning. So they started working with children in 250 slums, which are part of the 750 slums that they had been in. They found that in the 250 slums, there were children willing to come forward and teach others. So a seven-year-old is able to help a five-year-old and an eight-year-old is able to help a six-year-old and so on. In 2016, she wanted to know if it was possible for one child to teach another. They found at least 500 schools saying, “Yes, we can do this!” Explaining numbers, she said that we have 300 million children of school-going age in our country. A number of reports stated that out of this, 150 million can read and 150 million cannot. What an odd arithmetic! Clearly, all the children who are well off can read and those growing up in slums cannot read. If the former set helped the second set, in 20 years, India could be the most literate country in the world! Teachers are not made by salaries, she pointed out, they are made by passion, they are made by exchanging ideas, by seeing their children get that knowledge. Teachers don’t care if their own children earn ten times what they earn. Everything cannot be run by economics and as teachers, she said, we need to believe in a larger goal. She focussed on taking up the ‘300 Million Challenge’. She said that if we truly work hard, we can get the 150 million to teach the 150 million who don’t have access to education. She ended her speech by persuading every teacher, principal and parent to take a pledge to bring our children into the 300 Million Challenge and make India a better place.

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SGEF2017 Fatema Agarkar, co-founder, KA EduAssociates on the need for teacher training as the core priority for leadership teams at SGEF 2017

Anjana Deepak writeback@scoonews.com

We have gone through a lot on this day, lots of ideas, lots of speakers and we are all speaking the same language, we all have the same findings, we are all talking in a collective space where we all agree. However there is work that still needs to be done, and through this presentation I promise you that we will be able to create a few disruptions which the ‘unconference’ started talking about. As an educator, when I attend conferences or ‘unconferences’ like SGEF, I want to take stock of the industry. What have we done, where have we reached and where do we want to go? This gets me to three important truths and, luckily for me, all the other speakers have spoken about them. By default Geeta (Dharmarajan) mentioned that children are more intelligent, are more exposed, more evolved and know that much more than we do. We cannot claim to know what their future is going to be like. One thing is certain: it’s going to be different from how our world was. Perhaps we can claim that ours was easier. Let’s get this discussion on technology over and done with once and for all. It is here to stay, let’s work this out. Do we really know what our children

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know? Or do we go into those classrooms and simply teach? And I’m not talking about multiple intelligence, I’m not talking about differentiation or about learning styles. I’m talking about do we know what they know? If the future is so unexplored, then everyone in this room agrees that we have no idea what the future is going to be like, what on earth are we preparing these kids for and simply why bother? As I attempted to answer some of these questions, there were some harsh realities and I hope you come into some logical conclusions as well. We simply, as an industry, keep talking about what we should teach, how we should teach. We don’t even answer the fundamental question: what do they know in that classroom? I think Sugata (Mitra) pointed that out and Valentina (Trivedi) spoke about the joy of learning. We should know what they know but we do very little to find out. Are we really skilled? If we were not brought up in their generation, how do we know what they are thinking? Are we giving them enough to create? I think that was (APJ Abdul) Kalam sa’ab’s vision and we are all proud Indians here and I know the one thing he told me when I met him was, ‘You create happy children, will they duplicate or will they create?’ That’s a question we have to

September 2017

ask and that’s the harsh reality that none of us seem to face. Is there sustained learning? As a young company attempting to rethink, attempting to re-engineer, attempting to say ‘Hey listen, we know a lot of stuff, we don’t know what to do with it because we keep discussing it and it’s still not implementable’. We said, ‘Let’s borrow from the corporate world once in a while; they seem to talk about it all the time, let’s put it into practice in our industry’. Some radical propositions for you… Imagine Grade 3 and 4 students with one textbook in their hand. Why not Harry Potter? Isn’t that a world of super heroes and isn’t that the age that everyone likes magic and mystery? ‘One textbook for the whole year? How will we charge the parents?’ some of the promotors might ask. One textbook is possible. ‘Hole in the Wall’ was just that. You can teach history, geography, beautiful landscapes to work with, math, science, what better way to get them into the chemistry lab and getting them to experiment with proportions and potions! You can teach vocabulary, grammar and context and all the lovely jargon that we love to use in our conferences. You can teach them to write. My co-founder will always talk about effective communication.

Creating disruptions TIME for

CHANGE!

Replace that Harry Potter with a book that you love. Imagine one textbook in that bag…

Minecraft. It isn’t putting dopamine in their brain. It actually teaches science in a way that you and I don’t.

Sport is a curriculum subject. I am a sportsman’s wife and he often tells me that he didn’t learn anything in school - he learnt it on the cricket ground. But I’m not talking about skill. I’m talking about teaching angles. Decimals, fractions, percentages in context to IPL – three months of the year let’s use it to our advantage. Let’s get things in perspective. History simply taught through drama, no dates to remember, no textbook. The higher educators talk about their challenges in the higher education space – ‘We want the children to think, communicate, manage time, make decisions, solve problems, all of that’ and, like many of my previous speakers this afternoon, we still don’t teach them. Imagine project management, a task to set up their own company... You’ll have everything, organizational behavior, communication skills, HR, recruitment and life skills.

This is a story that my son told me, when I took him through this presentation... ‘Mama, don’t bother them with these stories and don’t tell them my stories, but the fact is ‘Big Bang Theory’ taught me about quantum physics, that no other physics teacher has ever been able to. And I’ve realized they are not geeks’. Learning automatically by just watching! Imagine if gaming was that subject that was introduced, how much more would they learn!

Imagine a Gladiator or Lagaan can become a history lesson. Imagine gaming as a subject and I agree, I have a 12-year-old, they get there faster than I ever will! Why can’t gaming be that subject, why can’t it be fun for these kids and you can still teach? I’m a strong advocator of the game

So these were some radical propositions and you are going to say, ‘Okay great Fatema, let’s try and experiment and see what we can do with it. Who’s going to teach?’ That seems to be our fundamental question. Where are these teachers? Everyone seems to talk about lack of teachers, underpaid, passionate teachers but we don’t know where these teachers are. But before we can get there, who are these teachers? Who is that evolved teacher? I listed a few thoughts down, these are all personal passionate educators, a group of us as a part of KA Edu has put this together. The teacher needs to do more research and lo and behold! They aren’t PhDs, they don’t know how to research. They need to be updated about trends and practices

and, with due respect to everyone, I think people need to know what charter schools in America, New Zealand and what little schools in the Anganwadi classification in our country are doing. We just need to know what is happening everywhere. Subject matter expertise - don’t get me wrong, I do not mean that we are in la la land where teachers can just say ‘Let’s just go and explore’; eventually we are still taking those board exams. I do understand that the Prime Minister is inviting participation from private players within the industry cross section to propose what schools should look like and, as we understand, this might be rolled out in 2020. So people are working. Subject matter expertise is an element of importance because the children have to take exams. I’ll be worried if my 12-yearold goes to his English teacher and says, ‘But Miss that’s factually incorrect because if you actually know the organizational structure especially the hierarchy in England, the Queen is fictitious in terms of her role and position’ and the teacher got upset. He was sent to a corner to think about how to not disrupt the classroom. So these teachers must also be conflict managers and be smart enough to handle these questions, because you don’t want that disruption to change the world of a young class. You need them to be problem solvers.

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INTERVIEW

Indian

“

EDUCATION is

going through

” REFORM Curriculum specialist Rashenah Walker on the exciting future ahead, in an exclusive at SGEF 2017 Parvathy Jayakrishnan writeback@scoonews.com

How do you assess the effectiveness of a curriculum? Assessing the effectiveness of a curriculum includes many components, starting with the need to know what type of curriculum you are dealing with, whether it is American or British curriculum or Indian curriculum. You should make sure that the teachers know what the standards are and

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September 2017

what the objectives are that you want the students to know. What I suggest is that you need to start backwards and work your way forward. First figure out what’s the end outcome. After you finish a lesson or a unit, what do you want your students to know and, from there, work your way backwards. How are you going to get the students to know this? What activities are you going to get them to do and what is going to be the assessment? Once you figure out the ‘how’, the actual implementation is so much easier.

Since you have designed curriculum for many countries, what type of curriculum do children learn best from? The curriculum doesn’t matter. What matters is the process that you are going through and that you have varied instruction, so that you present it in so many different ways. Something that I have noticed in the International schools is that they have many teachers who have no training or a teaching license. They have not gone to school, they don’t have pedagogy. So it is kind of like they are just thrown in the profession. But the truth is teaching is a difficult profession. Just like how a doctor cannot work without formal training, a teacher cannot do justice to the profession without formal training. But the good thing is in teaching you will see people from diverse backgrounds - I’ve known IT specialists, engineers, people who have worked in the military, who have transitioned into teaching. So they have a different perspective that they can bring into the profession. But the problem is when it comes to curriculum, they are not sure how to take what’s on paper and put it in real life. They don’t know how to take what’s on paper and communicate it to a small mind. I know that the British curriculum is easy to work with because it’s already readymade, so it is not much for the teacher to do. It is literally like open a book; a lot of resources are already pre-made. But the American curriculum is so diverse. You have the standards but we don’t care how a student learns a noun or a pronoun as long as they learn it. It can be great for a creative teacher that says, ‘Oh wow, we are going to play this game’ or ‘We are going to do this activity’, or ‘We’re going to try this experiment’. But if there is a new teacher who doesn’t have a background in teaching, they won’t know how to teach what a noun or a pronoun is. But that’s the great thing about teaching. It can be so diverse and you can do it any way that you want. But at the same time, if you don’t have the support needed for the teachers, it can be an absolute disaster.

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INTERVIEW SGEF 2017 – Enlightening! Honestly, I was very surprised. I don’t know anything about the Indian education system and I wanted to see what’s happening here, what’s new, where are you guys in the process as far as educational design is concerned. I can see exactly where you are in the process. It’s definitely going through reform. I see that there is a huge interest in it and that you have so many things up and coming. I’m really excited about the next five years, about what’s going to come up here. I love the forum because it’s a place where everybody can come and share ideas and I love how they had one of the executives from the Board and all the teachers are so excited just to put their input in and he was excited to listen to what’s happening in all the different states. You had Prof. Sugata Mitra known for the Hole in the Wall experiment. I did not know it was him when I first saw him and then when he got up on stage I was like, “Oh my God, that’s him!” because I actually used his video to train some of my teachers in Dubai - the idea of letting go as a teacher and letting the kids explore and discover on their own. It was amazing to see him here. Also it was enlightening to listen to the perspective of someone from the Board and someone from the classroom. You are going through the process of reform that most countries are. Whether to get the expensive book or to get a cheaper one, do they have the same content, how do you choose etc... I’m glad that the problems are being recognised and steps are being taken to solve them.

Do you interact with kids while designing curriculum? Yes, I do. I love the kids. I go into the classroom and I love seeing them learn and I love seeing them play. So that’s the positive but I also have to see how the curriculum is working because maybe I’ll look at something and I’ll have an idea in my head. But working with International schools, it is very difficult when you are dealing with second language learners and what their culture allows. Working in the Middle East, of course you have a strong Islamic culture and a strong local culture. If you are looking at an American curriculum school, one of the most common things that we teach in high school is Romeo and Juliet. That is such a die-hard story and everybody knows it but we can’t teach Romeo and Juliet (in the Middle East) because it is a love story and the two don’t get married and that’s against Islam. So I have to find another story to teach the skill of analysing the story and its characters. It does help to know the students and the base that I’m dealing with, so I can figure out their skills and provide support accordingly. It helps to go into the classroom and know what works with the children and what works with the teacher so that I know that something is perfect or whether something needs to be redesigned. Did you ever get a chance to work with the Indian education system? I have not. They do have Indian schools in Dubai and actually they are some of the best performing schools in Dubai. I’m not sure why but clearly,

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you guys are doing something good with the curriculum! (laughs) It’s always been something that I’ve been interested in because I want to know why they are some of the best performing schools and how the students are able to perform so well. I don’t know if it has to do with the home base. Maybe this is an expectation from home while other parents say ‘Just do your best, whatever that is’. For example, if you’re a D student and that’s your best, ‘Good job’! But for some families, your ‘best’ is not good enough. It is something that I’m interested in researching and looking at schools and finding what works there and figuring out how that can be implemented in other schools’ systems and curriculum. How did you get into curriculum designing? It’s a strange job and what makes it a little bit different here or in the Middle East or any international markets for education versus in the United States is that in the States you never see them. They are always at the board or at the county level, so they never actually come into the schools and see what’s happening. They work remotely and they only have the standards and they put together activities, objectives and that’s it. And all you see is a piece of paper when you go to work at a school. But here what I love is I get to see the interaction, what is working and what is not. I get to go to other schools, I get to give them ideas as to how to change their curriculum and design it in a better way. You can see the teachers, you can see how the stu-

September 2017

dents are interacting to it and you can see what’s working. Like I said, in the Middle East, we have to change a lot of the content to make it culturally sensitive. But even with that, when you are dealing with second language learners, you have to look at the curriculum as a whole. If it’s the American curriculum, you are using American books. So there are some stories that have a certain vernacular, a certain tone which you would understand only if you are American. So when you are looking at resources, you have to find books that fit the students’ ability to understand and grasp the ideas. The student should not just be able to read but also understand it. So when I’m in a classroom, I understand exactly what a child understands whereas if you are at a county level, you never know what’s happening! Have you designed curriculum for children with special needs? Yes, I have. Actually, my certification in the States is with special education. I’ve worked with special education kids for about six years. When you look at special education, it’s not that a child is ‘dumb’ or ‘slow’ - they learn ‘differently’. It’s almost like a puzzle. It is my job to figure out how they learn. It doesn’t matter if they need extra time, maybe they need to be told in a different way, maybe it needs to be repeated multiple times, maybe instead of taking a traditional test, they take it in a different way. They may give oral responses or they are able to do it on the computer.

SGEF2017

KUNG FU

and Compassion Jigme Karuna Yangchen, of the Kung Fu Nuns of the Himalayas, on how creative problem-solving often lies in the hands of female youth Juleh! On behalf of my 700 fellow Drukpa Kung Fu Nuns, I hope to bring the female youth

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Nichola Pais editor@scoonews.com

The words Juleh... mountains far away... Why Kung Fu? Most people think that Buddhism is a religion but for us, Buddhism is a philosophy of life. It is a way of living positively. We have a lot to learn and experience in our life. Our daily schedule in

our nunnery is filled with chanting of mantras and sadhanas, learning spiritual texts and ritual instruments, and practising yoga. All this prepares us to be spiritually stronger to serve others with compassion, love and kindness. So many people have asked us, ‘You are nuns and sanyasis, aren’t you supposed to stay peacefully in your ashrams,

practicing meditation and doing Pooja for your deities? Why are you learning Kung Fu?’ Let me share with you the reason why we embraced Kung Fu in our lives. There was a time when we were facing many adverse and dangerous situations. Whenever we went out on our walking pilgrimage, whenever we had meditation in the forest, and whenever we visited holy places, we

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SGEF2017 Girls, Get Empowered! Kung Fu is the answer… … To build confidence, to face people … To increase activity, strength, and power … To boost mental strength … To learn to be comfortable in your environment … To learn what you never knew before … To become wiser, develop patience, control anger … To serve selflessly

were teased and bullied by men. We were very scared and we did not know what to do. We had no solution and we had no confidence; we felt hopeless. Our guruji, His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa decided to include Kung Fu in our daily learning. Kung Fu experts from Vietnam were invited to teach us self-defence. For 9 years we have been learning and practicing Kung Fu and recently we have been training young girls in the Himalayas in the art of Kung Fu. The main reason we became nuns or sanyasis is because we want to live a life not for ourselves but for the sake of others, for the happiness of others. But if we are not strong, if we are weak, how can we help others? Then our renunciation makes no sense! We need the power, we need the self-confidence to be able to go out and help others – and Kung Fu gave us that. It is a great solution. Without needing to give up meditation, ritual practice, yoga and study of philosophy, Kung Fu is the additional learning that we have provided to enable us to go out and share our spiritual knowledge and understanding with everyone. Confidence in Service Knowing Kung Fu has helped us in many ways. It has not only helped us to develop physical strength, but we also build up mental strength and spiritual concentration. We have become more active physically and more confident in doing everything that we do, especially when we are needed to help and benefit others. During the earthquake in Nepal in 2015 we travelled to the most affected and the most remote areas, to help those in need. We carried supplies and medicines in our bags. Wherever we went, we offered moral support and prayers for the victims. We divided ourselves into five groups, visited 29 districts in Nepal, distribut-

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ing 3000 tonnes of rice, milk powder, tents, clothes, food, blankets and so on. It was because of our Kung Fu training that we had no fear during the earthquake and the aftershocks. We refused to be evacuated because we should not run away from those who need help. The Kung Fu training supported our meditation, which in turn supported our cultivation of compassion. Because our physical power developed from Kung Fu training, we were helped and we were able to help each other and everyone in need. Without having power, how can we help people? We would not be able to put our compassion, our loving kindness into practice. We need the power to go into society, to the disaster areas, to help others. And this is our life-long commitment. We also go to different parts of the Himalayas to do different humanitarian works. We visit different communities to educate them through action because we realise that nothing is better than education in action. Why? Because when people see visually that we are doing something good, they get inspired by our actions. We human love to copy – we copy fashion, we copy bad things, we copy violence. Why can’t we copy a positive power, a positive action? We should all join together to rise up and help each other because the world doesn’t belong only to you or to me – it belongs to all of us! You cannot change the world alone and nor can I. But if we all come together, we will be able to bring some positive change. Our guruji, the Gyalwang Drukpa repeatedly teaches that we need to live a righteous life. We need to live a life that benefits others, that inspires others by becoming a positive example to everyone.

September 2017

Helping Hands We have cycled 10,000 kilometres from Nepal to India and in different areas in India, through the dangerous terrain in the Himalayas, and dangerous areas in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to raise awareness about human trafficking, promote gender equality, and encourage eco-friendly ways of living. Wherever we cycled, we spoke to the girls and women, trying our best to encourage them by showing that if the nuns can do it, they can do it too. We have completed 7,000 km of padyatra in India, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, promoting peace, gender equality and spreading positivity. We have collected 20 tonnes of non-biodegradable garbage during our bicycle yatras and padyatras. We have been involved in animal rescue. As you know, stray dogs are a huge menace in India. We work on compassionate solutions without harming life, such as sterilisation, adoption of dogs, and education of humans. We also work with the local community to nurture sick animals. We would like to share with others the little compassion, wisdom and power that we have learnt from our guru. We realise that the more we share, the stronger, wiser and more compassionate we become. Experiential knowledge empowers us much more than anything we have learnt. We need the support and participation of all of you in our activities. This would be a huge encouragement to us. We welcome you to visit our ashrams in Kathmandu and Ladakh. We would like to help by conducting self-defence workshops for your girls at your schools. Just for your knowledge, 20 of my colleagues are presently in Ladakh conducting a 5-day self-defence workshop for more than 100 young girls. So please reach out to us, we can be a part of your solutions.

SCHOOL SAFETY

A BURNING QUESTION: Are our kids

FIRE SAFE at

SCHOOL Nichola Pais

editor@scoonews.com

It is common to hear of students failing in school. However, time and again it is schools that fail students on one of the most important counts - their personal safety.

News comes in of at least 24 students and teachers perishing in a fire that broke out in a religious school in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. The victims were evidently trapped in their dormitory as the windows were barred with metal grilles, which could not be opened from the inside. Even as flames and thick smoke engulfed the sleeping quarters of the residential school, probably caused by a short circuit or a lit mosquito repellant coil, the hapless children remained trapped within as the door was engulfed in flames. A gory end to innocent young lives caused by the callousness of those whose duty it was to protect them... Malaysian local media report that since 2015, there have been more than 200 fires at such schools. Clearly, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a lesson no one in a position of responsibility has cared to learnâ&#x20AC;Ś

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SCHOOL SAFETY

FIRE SAFETY TIPS 1.

Develop a fire emergency plan for the school and ensure that everyone knows it.

The cafeteria staff should be extra cautious while working in the kitchen.

Always follow the building by-laws to keep your school safe and secure.

Set out a fire alarm in case of emergencies and alert all in case of fire. It is important to practice a manual alarm system.

Always maintain a First Aid kit and keep it ready for any emergency. Keep the boxes at easily accessible locations.

Keep inflammables like kerosene, gas cylinder etc. out of the reach of children.

Practice moving through your escape routes with eyes closed during normal times.

Always keep escape/ evacuation routes clear of any blockades.

10. Ensure old wiring is maintained and broken electrical fittings repaired by an electrician. 11. Keep fire extinguishers in working condition and learn how to operate them.

Keep storage and working areas free from trash.

12. Teach students fire safety rules.

India had witnessed an even more gristly catastrophe when no less than 94 children had died in a fire in a school in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, burnt to death in their classroom as the thatched roof caught fire in 2004. This accident had been one of the four major fire accidents and the largest school accident in Tamil Nadu. The Supreme Court had swung into action. According to its judgement of 2009, it is the fundamental right of every child to receive education free from fear of security and safety. The Court had listed detailed guidelines and ordered that all government and private schools in the country should follow the safety measures prescribed by the National Building Code of India 2005. The Court had also directed that all existing schools must provide fire extinguishing equipment within 6 months. However, the chilling truth, as of just last year, proves that not much has changed. Out of 500 educational insti-

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tutions with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation limits, only 29 were found to adhere to the fire safety standards prescribed by the government. A whopping 471 schools had failed to get the No Objection Certificate from the District Fire Officer, which ensures that the school building is well equipped with all safety measures, as prescribed by the Education department. Putting the lives of children in jeopardy appears to be no great matter of concern, as the RTI reply showed. On the matter of School Safety, the National Institute of Disaster Management (Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India) stipulates that schools are critical infrastructure entrusted with the responsibility of creating citizens of tomorrow. â&#x20AC;&#x153;A safe and secure environment is a prerequisite for effective teaching and learning. Thus ensuring safety of children, teachers and staff members during disasters is necessary.â&#x20AC;? In the light of tragedies involving school children,

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like the Kumbakonam fire tragedy, Dabwali fire incident and earthquakes around the world where school children were affected due to unsafe school buildings, it states that it becomes a matter of utmost importance that safety of children is given due consideration, thus making schools safe. While deeming that building safe schools should be a priority for architects, engineers, policy makers, administrators and emergency response planners, the recommendations for School Safety include structural safety of the buildings per se and non-structural measures like awareness generation, ensuring communication, school preparedness plans, capacity building of students and teachers, rehearsals and mock drills etc. The onus lies squarely on schools to implement the directives in their true spirit. The law must step in to ensure the rules are being abided by. In the matter of life and death, all would do well to err on the side of caution.

How FIRE PROTECTED is your

SCHOOL?

Schools heads from across the country share detailsâ&#x20AC;Ś

We have fire exits in every corner of our school. We conduct mock drills regularly to make students and staff aware of what needs to be done in case of a fire. We have slides at emergency exits on higher levels. We routinely check the expiry of our fire fighting equipment. More important than having the equipment in place is to educate people to operate it. We teach our students too to operate the equipment so that they need not wait for an adult in case of a fire. Even a fourth grade student in our school can operate the equipment!

We have 54 fire extinguishers and 17 hose rill drums in our school. Quarterly fire drills are done for students and teachers. Teachers and students are also given training on use of these equipments quarterly. Our school is aware of fire protection and our teachers and students are familiar with the school's protection system. We have maps posted in every class identifying the nearest safety exit. We have fire drills while the school is functioning so that any child who needs extra assistance can be identified.

We are a residential school and parents trust that we are good guardians of their children. Children also need to be told why mock drills are not a fun activity but is something that they need to know in case of an emergency.

Regular checks not only by authorities but by the HOS should be made mandatory. Licenses of those schools should be cancelled who do not follow strict guidelines.

Dr Jagpreet Singh

Dr Sunita Swaraj

Principal, The Punjab Public School, Nabha

Principal, The Heritage School, Delhi

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SCHOOL SAFETY In all the schools that I have worked with, the fire preparedness was good. Whether it can be better is a matter of perspective. But for any school that is recognised, it is a legal requirement for us, according to the affiliation rules, to have fire preparedness in place. It is a mandated requirement. Right from the architecture stage of any new school or old perhaps, it requires to be factored in. I also know of schools looking for recognition and have been refused because of lack of fire preparedness. In all the schools that I have worked, we have always stayed on the right side of the law when it comes to safety. There are procedures,manuals, layouts, investment and readiness when it comes to installing fire safety equipment. The problem is never with the infrastructure not being in place. But what is sometimes a concern is that the manuals or the rules and regulations also mandate that there are fire safety committees, fire safety student bodies, there are regular meetings to be held, the gadgetry needs to be regularly checked and a certificate saying they are all in good condition should be issued. Everyone in the school needs to be trained by people who are authorised to do so, to tell us how to use, what to use - like in some kinds of fire, you throw sand, for some

The state fire department does fire audits and gives a certificate of compliance. We are also an IGBC green school and they do intensive checks and audits when it comes to safety in schools. Since we are a boarding school, it is our duty to care. We believe in parenting in absentia. We make sure that we go beyond regulation when it comes to safety of our children. We have installed cylinders, vents and other fire fighting equipment at vantage points.

We also highlight the phone numbers of the fire brigade around the school. Dr Nripen Kumar Datta Principal, Miles Bronson Residential School, Assam

other kind, you use water or air. These committees must not just be on paper. They have to be properly done.

Learners’ safety is non negotiable at Vega Schools, Gurgaon. Vega, with its 21st century infrastructure, is fully equipped to deal with fire hazards. The school has 30 fire exit doors, 67 fire extinguishers and 14 hose reels. We also have about 500 sprinklers and three fire pumps. Our building is cladded with highly fire resistant material. Our learners, learning leaders and the support staff are completely aware of the safety procedures and the fire drills. We do conduct these drills on a quarterly basis.

Also, you need to do mock drills to educate children too, at least twice a year, if not more. It’s not about the infrastructure or the manual, it’s about training people who follow their manual in a very strict way. The response given by personnel in a school in the time of a disaster is most important. They need to know what exactly needs to be done in case of a disaster.

Fire hazard is generally not taken seriously by schools; however some schools do carry out mock drills for learners. It is essential that the concerned authorities pay more attention to ensure that schools comply with all safety procedures. Post checks, the errant schools must be penalised as many young lives are at stake. There should be absolutely no compromise on learners’ safety.

Lata Vaidyanathan

Harleen Mohanty

Director, TERI Prakriti School, Gurugram

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Head of School, Vega Schools, Gurugram

Fire is a hazard that can cause huge calamities in school especially because schools are sitting 'time bombs' as they are full of paper and wood! Most schools lack fire safety guidelines. Many have fire hydrants and fire extinguishers but they are either expired or staff don’t know how to use them. Fire drills should be an integral part of all schools, be it pre primary, primary, secondary, daycare etc. I also feel that one cannot call schools 'errant' because there are no guidelines given to schools about fire or any other safety. Errant is when a school is trained and given guidelines and does not adhere to the same. So it is imperative that our HRD ministry should now come out with school safety norms for all areas of safety and then do regular checks on schools for the same. Let me give you an example, we run nurseries in UAE and here before we start a centre, the fire safety department gives us guidelines that we have to adhere to and then they come to check and only when we get a certificate from them can we start the centre. Then throughout the year, fire safety inspection will be conducted and if we err we will be given a notice and time frame within which to rectify. Similarly health authorities, municipality all have their guidelines in place and schools have to adhere to the same. So first our country needs to set safety guidelines for schools to follow and then there should be regular checks on the same. I am the President of the Early Childhood Association and we have come out with comprehensive safety guidelines for schools which I feel should be mandatory for all schools. Dr. Swati Popat Vats President, Podar Education Network

At Raghav Global School, we are especially particular about the safety and wellbeing of our children and members/ personnel at school. We have a Fire Safety Policy/ protocol covering the whole school; which has SOPs to ensure the safety of staff, students and visitors. Our Estate Manager provides staff with training; our Senior students are also trained in preventive and eliminative fire safety drills to ensure a ‘Safe School Plan’ drill ( it involves checking that the firedetecting alarms and fire-fighting equipment are in working condition, and evacuation drill). It is an activity that we all undertake every three months. The same is recorded and documented (which we very proudly upload on our school’s FB page too!). We ensure that a sufficient/ realistic fire risk assessment is undertaken at our school premises and it is reviewed periodically. If there are any floor plan changes or process changes in the school wing, the subsequent changes are shared with all stakeholders in the School Assembly, Club Periods and Circle Time. We have recently added floor ‘markup arrows’ in all our corridors floors for visual cues for our children, for a more effective evacuation. Although on paper most schools are ‘equipped’ for fire safety I wish I could say that they have it in the ‘true’ spirit too. And there isn’t any plausible reason to it… It definitely isn’t about the money (as it hardly costs much, considering what could be at stake). It is more about getting your priorities right and the efforts towards it. I certainly feel that if there were more stringent check mechanisms in place, schools would take Fire Safety very seriously. One shouldn’t be in a blissful ostrich maneuver nor need a wake-up call only after a mishap. Preventive preparedness and mitigation is what we should all be practicing, period. Supriti Chauhan Principal, Raghav Global School, Noida

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How can you SAFEGUARD your school FROM FIRE?

We ask the EXPERTS Any loss of any life - especially innocent, helpless school children to fire accidents - is extremely painful and devastating for the affected families. More so, when these could be prevented with a bit of awareness and proactive measures by the authorities. Unfortunately, Fire Safety is given the least importance. When we talk of security of Homes, Educational and Medical Institutions, the matter is often left to untrained staff with primitive Fire Safety equipment. Majority of the fire casualties can be decreased if we take the time to spread the word of fire prevention and to learn about fire prevention measures. We need to go beyond lip service to this extremely important issue. Fire Safety must be taught to everyone, no matter how young or how old, what race, what religion, or natural origin. Fire prevention is important and hence, WHAM (Winning Hearts And Minds) has decided to focus on this important but completely neglected issue. No one deserves to have their life taken by the flames that could have been prevented.

Our unique automatic and portable fire extinguisher FIRE 1on1 operates automatically and kills the fire in its incipient stage without any manual intervention. This product is ideal to be installed in schools at strategic locations, from where the fire can erupt. It can also be picked up by any child and thrown into the fire to make way to evacuate. No training or maintenance is required for this product. This product has been installed in few schools, whose management was proactive towards the fire safety and security of their students but many schools do not purchase such equipment as they have already spent the budgeted money on the conventional fire extinguishers, which are rendered useless as they are very heavy and can be operated by trained personnel only. Children cannot operate them in case of fire accidents. In a school with a strength of 1000 students, the cost of installing automatic and portable fire extinguishers is just Rs.4-5 lakh and this product comes with a five year warranty. The cost of installing such automatically operated extinguishers is hardly Rs.8 per student per month, which is very affordable.

Brig. Ram Chhillar (Retd.)

Kavinder Khurana

Advisor, WHAM â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Winning Hearts And Minds

MD, Kansi Technovation Pvt. Ltd.

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