I recently wrote a small piece on the controversial ‘Hole in the wall’ project for a UK-based magazine called Green Futures. Controversial, because of endless questions about its relevance in a country where primary education rates are dismal, and sustainability over time and place. And even more so, now that Sugata Mitra has won the… Continue reading A hole in the wall, a spark in the mind
Category: – Education
elementary education, trends in teaching and learning…
About Zeeksha
My blogger-photographer friend Chitra Aiyer in Bangalore is involved with a project called Zeeksha. They are now looking for more contributors and participants. I am posting here the information she has shared with me. Do hop over and see if you can be a part of this interesting and extremely useful website. *** Zeeksha.com is… Continue reading About Zeeksha
I never let my schooling…
interfere with my education. and when it is a question of exams… Mumbai Mirror gave six Class XII toppers a simple GK test. Most of them didn’t even come close to getting a first-class – and so the newspaper calls them rather cruelly, floppers in its cover story of Friday June 13th. The questions we… Continue reading I never let my schooling…
Now virtual education…
The last time I wrote on this, I had over a hundred comments, most of them from “post-graduates with teaching skills” (but not terribly good spelling skills, I may add), all of them asking me for details on that – but here goes anyway, from new York Times – Hello, India? I Need Help With… Continue reading Now virtual education…
Dropping out of school
I found 1 in 10 schools are ‘dropout factories’ on my yahoo homepage. Not surprisingly – The highest concentration of dropout factories is in large cities or high-poverty rural areas in the South and Southwest. Most have high proportions of minority students. These schools are tougher to turn around, because their students face challenges well… Continue reading Dropping out of school
Cheating, inspiration and all the rest
The media blog of LSE has an interesting link to a post by Alex Halavais – how to cheat good. They quote Halavais – When you copy things from the web into Word… don’t just ‘Edit > Paste’ it into your document. When I am reading a document in black, Times New Roman, 12pt, and… Continue reading Cheating, inspiration and all the rest
The exam ‘system’
Earlier this week, our maid at home wanted to leave early. She was to go to her children’s school to pick up their mark sheets. The teacher had said that mark sheets would not be given out until the parents came with their kids to collect them. Bahut saara baccha loge ghar se bhaag jaata… Continue reading The exam ‘system’
Educate the girls…
I was recently going through a UNICEF report ‘The state of the world’s children‘ published in 2004 – the report focusses on the millenium develpoment goals, primarily universalisation of education and gender equality – to be achieved by 2015. From the foreword by Kofi Annan, Every boy and girl around the world has a right… Continue reading Educate the girls…
Pardada Pardadi Education
I had written about the saas bahu sammelan a while ago. Now read about the Pardada Pardadi Educational Society, an educational progam based in Anoopshahar in the Bulandshahar district of Uttar Pradesh. The PPES opted for a unique approach of education through academic, value-based, and skill-based education allows PPGVS to address the interrelated issues of… Continue reading Pardada Pardadi Education
Those who can, teach?
IBM to train staff as math, science teachers (for some strange reason filed under ‘money’ in rediff. er, why?) Concerned over the critical shortage of math and science faculty in the United States, global IT major IBM has announced a programme that encourages employees to take up the teaching profession. The world’s largest Information Technology… Continue reading Those who can, teach?