Cultivating Innovation in School Education
Creativity is an element that is brought to innovation. Creativity and innovation goes hand-in-hand and unless the two are not together they are meaningless. Innovation in education helps the child to explore, generates interest and inspire. Bhawna Satsangi of Elets News Network (ENN) nds out how this new form of learning is transforming the teaching methods
With the introduction of digital era, the new form of learning is transforming the teaching methods with an inclination towards innovative and creative learning. Innovation brings a positive change in the life of a person, child and a teacher. Student centered learning is important
Education is the challenge that underlies all other world challenges. When it comes to education, innovation is a technique which helps the child to explore, generates interest and inspires him. Being innovative is about looking beyond what we currently do, identifying the great ideas of tomorrow and putting them into practice.
Kalpana Mohan, Principal, Vidyashilp Academy, Bangalore, shares, “We all talk about child centric education but how many of us are giving that kind of opportunity to the kids to speak in the class about their ideas. Innovation in a classroom can be a small anecdote, small kind of role plays by a teacher which will help to make a change. Give a role to play to child. We can look innovation in a different way by demonstrating it to the child.”
With the introduction of digital era, this new form of learning is transforming the teaching methods with an inclination towards innovative and creative learning. Innovation brings a positive change in the life of a person, child and a teacher. Student centered learning is important.
To prepare emerging innovation driven knowledge society, students and teachers should be engaged in functioning as a knowledge creating community, oriented toward advancements of collective knowledge.
Techniques of Innovative Learning
Integrated Learning: It is an aspect of innovations in classrooms. It is important to equip teachers with the requisites skills to be able to take up something challenging as integrated learning.
Play-way Method also encourage innovation in learning.
Collaborated Learning helps students to learn with each other and find the solution to the problems.
Three-way Conferences are becoming extremely popular forum for discussion between the teacher, the taught and the parent.
Skill Creativity: Educators should find the way to encourage skill education among the learners and break it down into smaller skill sets. Programme like ‘Thinkquest’ bring together to design creative solutions and bring them to competition.
Emotional Connection: Creativity lies in the emotions of the learner. Students devising a programme to help local community, such as helping homeless people give valuable insight to this type of teaching.
Playful Learning Environment is also an innovative type of learning where gaming, playing, informal learning technologies emerge.
Phenomenon-Based Pedagogy is built on the foundation of engaging in collaborative examination of complex real world phenomena with support from various fields of research, tools, and experts. Empowering students to design curriculum, providing avenues for utilising students’ personal and shared interests and supporting the development of the students are key aspects of phenomenon-based study.
But are we equipping our teachers with the required skills to be innovative? Intensive efforts in teacher education are needed to improve the innovative methods of learning. If the teachers’ goals are mainly focusing towards content and knowledge acquisition, new technologies do not change much.
Unlike MOOCs, flipped classroom is likely to flip the logic of learning. This approach is new and the best sources to learn about it can be found on Twitter. Flipped classroom means that instead of using contact time for knowledge transmission, the students acquired the needed information before the session. The time is then utilised in solving complex problems, getting repeated feedback from teachers and tutors, investing deliberate efforts for recovering failures and improving performance.
With the change in the societal needs and the technologies, the challenges in the teacher learning also emerges from time-to-time. The perceptions of knowledge and learning of the industrial age, can still be found in the practices of pedagogical training. It is essential to emphasise on the research based focus in teacher training to compete with the challenges of today’s technological advancements.
The basis of teacher education should follow the research-based learning process conducted in an authentic environment. The studies concentrate on the essentials and attempt to form a deeper understanding of the phenomena. For a collaborative and technology enhanced learning, use of cloud computing and social media also enhances the teaching learning environment.
Lifelong and continuous learning are also important for a teacher to bring a revolution in the method of teaching the technological trends.
