Swati Kohli
Computer TeacherThe Indian School
Its not about the magnificent building with its lush green fields, well-lit ventilated class-rooms, the library, and the mathematical labs. Its about the well designed effort to fulfill the needs of a twenty first century learning environment that equips all to keep pace with multiple learning methods of the future. The Indian School in South Delhi, India since 1996 came into being equipped with modern infrastructure that would keep pace with the rapid advances in Science and Technology while providing India’s roots in so many other forms. The Indian School has been among the first to implement the order of the High Count in opening its doors to the “weaker sections” by offering an active school after school to the not so fortunate. Computer club, NIIT computer-aided learning sullabus, IBM certification,… all come integrated to the school programmes with the innovative usages of information and communication technologies at different levels. Swati Kohli, the computer teacher at The Indian School gives more glimpses of these innovations.
Computer Club – A club is functional for classes VI upwards after school hours, for learning courses other than in regular computer classes like Linux. The course is taught by learned faculty from IBM. A kit with books, stationary and bag is provided free of cost to the students.
Computer Aided Learning – CAL for English, Science, Social Science and Maths subjects is conducted by interactive one-to one multimedia programs with quiz and exercises and sound in most of the lessons by NIIT.
Teachers also make their own power point presentations with lots of pictures from Internet for computer aided learning in all subjects at all levels.
A host of multimedia CDs/cartoon movies/educative programmes are used by teachers to show to the students in AV room through LCD projector.
Teacher’s Training/Resource Room – Five computers with Internet connection and printer, scanner, USP ports are available to all the teachers during and after school hours to enhance their learning. Teacher training programmes were conducted to enhance their knowledge in Word and PowerPoint.
Computer Newsletter – The Computer Department takes out a newsletter at the end of 3 months to update teachers on the latest trends in IT. This time the newsletter has editorial contributions from all the students at all levels for the newsletter.
Junior / Senior Lab – The senior and junior lab have in all 55 Pentium 4 machines with TFT screens (flat screens), optical mouse with headphones. They are networked together with Internet connection, DVD writer and CD writer.
Thin-Film-Transistor (TFT) – The traditional TV like box monitors are done away with in the computer labs. The 55 machines now have TFT – flat screen monitors for better eye health and space.
Networking – All the computer in the labs are connected for sharing resources like printer, scanner , DVD and CDwriter and Internet.
IBM Certificates – The school offers IBM curriculum to students from classes I to VIII. The faculties are certified by IBM to conduct these courses. At the end of each class, each student gets a certificate from IBM.
Website- The school has an interactive, multi-dimensional Website – www.theindianschool.in with e-mail at various departments the most commonly available, one being contactus@theindianschool.in. The website hosts all current and future activities in school along with its vision, departments etc. The website is maintained by the computer teachers along with a group of students.
C++ and Web Tech courses are offered at XI and XII levels and are popular with the students as they see it as the latest and most essential course today for futher / higher studies. CBSE couses are run at classes IX and X level with more than 95% results at class X level.
Software learnt – at our school include Windows OS, Paint and Wordpad at junior levels, MSOffice – for Word documents, Power Point presentations and MS Excel for calculations and charts, Frontpage – for web page designing. MS-Access for managing database, CorelDraw for enhanced drawing and art work., Photoshop for editing and managing photographs, Flash for animation are also taught along with HTML.
Exchange programme through email – Roxeth School, London – Students of classes IV and V exchange their views, information, curriculum through e-mail.
Visits / competitions and achievements – Recently the students of classes XI and XII visited IIT-Delhi for leaning through projects at their open-house. Students were taken back by the scope of doing computer courses at XI-XII levels.
Students constantly compete at various competitions at different schools in presentations skills, programming skills, painting etc. Last year, students stood second at Powerpoint presentation and stood first as the best participating school at Tagore Intl. School. We hold Cyber Olympiad conducted by National Science Foundation every year at all levels. We participated at CBSE Informatics Olympiad. We participated in Microsoft aptitude test/ IT awareness at all levels this year held in our school.
Projects – The exercises given for learning the above software are in accordance with what the students learn in other subjects in their classes at that time, eg in PowerPoint the students make parts of plants if they are learning about plants in science. The projects also run parallel to our school Spiral Learning Project.
Hindi typing- with keyboards compatible in Hindi our Hindi teachers make extensive use of the computers as well for their report, papers, lesson plans etc.
Computerised Administration – usage in labs, lib, examination, accounts, office, computers are used extensively in all these departments for efficient and timely work (fee collection, time tables, bus rosters, class lists etc)
Audio–Visual usage – Teacher’s show Presentations to the children in the AV room. We use LCD for the various wokshops conducted by the school, for outside guests.
Constant maintenance and upgradation – The labs are constantly maintained by engineers on weekly visits. The labs are upgraded with latest software like photoshop, corel draw, flash as well as hardware like headphones, optical mouse, TFT screen etc.
School newsletter is worked and compiled at the computer lab. Incorporating image transfer through digital camera.
Teachers usage- Teachers extensively use the lab for – curriculum planning, marks sheet, presentations, Internet (downloads – chapters of books not available through NCERT, etc.), question papers, circulars, boardwork, etc.
