Re: Digest for forum-tdf@evidyaloka.org - 2 updates in 1 topic

[Jyotsna Neeharika]

Hi Satish,

I have been taking science for 6th class. Its been only a few classes for me. Iam sharing my experience and hope it would be helpful for you.

-As far as I have observed kids show interest in looking at pictures and identifying them. I remember an instance where i could not complete a power pt presentation and they asked me in the next class to show them pictures of the previous lesson. I have not shown any videos yet but showing pictures and videos is definitely helpful as i believe photographic memory works with kids.
-As far as assessments are considered I feel that we can take oral tests or ask them to identify pictures/ give simple puzzles ,crosswords  occasionally other than pen and paper assessments that are a part of curriculum of school and eVidyaloka.
-I have taken 2 lessons till date and i download pictures referring to the lesson and prepare power point. It takes 1-2 hrs to download pictures, telugu script from Google translate and prepare presentation. It definitely helps preparing for a class.
- As i have no formal degree in teaching, i go only by what is given in textbook. It would be nice for people like me to know that for a given topic what is the plan and what points including minute details are to be dealt.
-I would personally wish to have an unbiased feedback from kids where in they fearlessly share about my teaching method to a confidante like a school assistant or anyone else.
-sharing contents will be helpful as it makes teaching across all centres uniform. Ofcourse teachers can modify accordingly.
- In 6th science (AP) the lessons have tables where kids are asked to write examples for ex. exs of things made of clay. So i discuss some in class and ask them to write remaining as homework.
Hope this helps.
With kind regards,
I.J.Neeharika.

On 26 Sep 2015 15:45, <foru...@evidyaloka.org> wrote:

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• Content Support for Teachers & Current Delivery practices - 2 Updates

Content Support for Teachers & Current Delivery practices

Satish Viswanathan <satish.vi...@evidyaloka.org>: Sep 25 11:48PM -0700 Dear All Teachers,   Good to meet you all here. I have taken up leading the Content Development initiative for eVidyaloka which has been on the list and been working on few pilots development over last 18 months. We have to agree that it has been going slow as we try to understand the space and want to create a repository which will be useful for teachers for delivery. I will share more about the structure and few sample views in next 10 days.   I am reaching out to you now to ask your view fresh thoughts on what you would like to get as support for preparing for your class delivery based Curriculum plan. While you respond please take the following in to consideration & also encourage your peer teachers who may not be active in the forum but will have some inputs.     What would you like to have as Prep resources for your topics ( Other than text book ) ? ex: Mathematics - Concept summary, How to introduce a topic, Few examples which teacher can use in the class . Though may be available in text book, do you see value in having a short lesson plan for the curriculum   How many hours do you prepare for the class ? Do you allocate time for preparation based on class schedule ? Do you see value in preparation ? ex: Khan academy videos may be helpful for you as teachers to understand how to teach the topic. The videos run for 12 to 14 minutes, do you have patience to see/listen the videos and make notes. If eVidyaloka provides you a set of videos including khan academy which is curated, will it be helpful.     Do you give homework to your children in the class room ? If so what you would like to give them . A one pager worksheet with Key terms of learning etc. for science & Math. What are your thoughts ?   How many assessments you plan to do in an Academic year ? Some of you may be teaching for a Quarter or continue for the full year. Do you recommend doing assessment periodically if so what is your ask ?Do you want to prepare your own assessment or would like to take it from Question bank ?     Do you prepare contents for your classroom ? If so can you share with us your content. We will request coordinators and program Managers to follow up with mail and share the place where you could submit your work ?     How often do you play videos in yoru class from youtube ? Do you think will that be useful or does it have any technology challenges in streaming etc ? Do children love videos ? if so can you share few examples.     Regards, Satish Content Volunteer.

Priya G Aditya <priyag...@gmail.com>: Sep 26 05:01PM +0800 Dear Mr Viswanathan Thanks for your email, some concerns: 1. Yes playing YouTube didn't work as the video stalled. 2. Looks like downloading the White board software maybe prone to viruses, I get a warning. 3. So far I am happy preparing Powerpoint presentations for English topics, along with homework on each topic. The students note down their assignments for the day, hope they all note down correctly. 4. It takes about an hour to finish preparing a topic. Regards Priya     Sent from my iPhone

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[induonmoon]

Hi All,

Thanks for your e-mails. First of all, I'd like to say that I absolutely agree with Jyotsna about using powerpoint presentations (PPT) and visual tool such as pictures,videos etc for teaching kids. I have started teaching only a month back and I  had a discussion with a few other teachers about this before I started  using PPTs for teaching. Surprisingly, they were of the view that including pictures not in their textbook will not help the students because they only have their school textbook for later reference/revision. I was not convinced since it seems counterintuitive that kids would not learn better with pictures and flowcharts in PPTs, irrespective of whether the pictures are from their books or not. So, I decided to try it out myself. I have taught them 2 chapters using PPTs and I could not be happier with the results. :)

The students not only understand concepts better with visual learning using PPT, as opposed to reading out or explaining things from the textbook (without any visual aids), they also enjoy the classes more and pay attention throughout the class. They are more engaged when I share my screen and switch to PPT mode. And, students love it when you show them demonstrative videos and pictures (especially, pictures not in their school books), I guess because it's like opening a new window to the world outside which they otherwise might not have access to.  I also use animations in the PPTs to introduce concepts in a logical sequence. Instead of cluttering the slide with a  lot of text and showing it all at once, I introduce bullet points/pictures one by one and sometimes ask them to guess what the next step (in say a flowchart) maybe. At the end of every chapter, I always conduct oral assessment in the form of inter-team quiz (I have divided them into 4 teams) and I am very satisfied with how much they have grasped. Also, if you have PPTs ready for each chapter, it will be easy to go back and revise with them to refresh their memory. 

All in all, I highly recommend PPT teaching and use of pictures,videos and flowcharts for teaching via E-vidyaloka.  After all,  this is the main advantage of digital classes over conventional classes, and we should make maximum use of it. Like Jyotsna mentioned, making PPT takes about 1.5-2 hours for each chapter (to search and download pictures,to type out in hindi script using google Input tools(http://www.google.com/inputtools/try/), however, the outcome in terms of student learning is wonderful, so I think its worth investing time for that. Moreover, once a PPT is ready, you and others can use it in future to teach the same material or to revise lessons. In fact, I am planning to start a thread in the Science Teacher forum where we can share teaching aids such as PPT, videos etc  for Science in Hindi. Perhaps, Jyotsna can start a thread for Science in Telugu. :)  Or perhaps, Satish can consider making a collective database where teachers can contribute their teaching aids for each subject and language for each standard. I have mentioned this in the suggestions below.

That way we can benefit from each others efforts and it might save us a lot of time if we can use PPTs made by others.

Finally, in response to Satish's e-mail, I have a few suggestions:

1.   TEACHING AIDS - It will be very helpful if you could include suggested videos for demonstrating concepts in each lesson.

2.   SHARING- If you could collect PPTs from all teachers who use them and make a database of all teaching aids collected from E-vidyaloka teachers (past and present), for each grade, each subject and each language, it will be extremely useful for the current teachers. 

3.  LESSON OBJECTiVES-Perhaps you could come up with the lesson objectives  for each chapter so teachers are clear on what they need to focus on (instead of just explaining everything in their textbook). Our aim is to make students understand concepts, not only to help them pass exams. 

4.  STUDENT FEEDBACK- Like Jyotsna said, I would also love to get honest feedback from students about my teaching- what is effective for them and what is not?

5. QUESTION BANK: Regarding homework, I select a few questions from the exercises at the end of the chapter and ask them to do it as homework in their notebooks and hand it over to my class assistant. I send him the answers by e-mail and have him check their HW and grade them. However, I try to ask max no.of questions (in quizzes) in the class itself to assess them. I also ask them the right answers to complete the tables within the chapters in the class itself. It will be useful to include more questions/exercises that require understanding of concepts, for each chapter other than what is their in the textbook

6. I do play a lot of Youtube videos in my class to demonstrate science concepts. And I include the video links in my PPT. Kids love videos a lot. In fact, they request me to show them videos and their enthusiasm while watching videos is amazing. 

Hope this is helpful.

Thanks and regards,

Indu