Mamta Gupta, Principal, Shiksha Bharti School, feels her school is yielding good results because of ICT aided educations system. She talks to Sharmila Das.
How has ICT helped you to achieve the targeted quantum of success?
ICT is very much helpful. It’s an audio visual medium and through visualization children get more information. Even it’s a good experience for the teachers as well. When teachers show the text content on board, it becomes the better means of understanding. Through e-content teaching has become easier. With very less time we can correct the things in no time.
We have got our solutions from Educomp Digital learning process and it is indeed very helpful for the teachers and for the students. Teachers find it very helpful. In the beginning, there were few problems but as the teachers learnt the how-tos involved they are feeling it more convenient. Rather than pen and paper students are showing more interest to learn their lessons. Retaining knowledge also gets better, when they see the content visually.
What are the problematic areas you have come across in deploying e-Content?
Last year when I attended your World Education Summit (WES) I realised that all my teachers should be computer trained. Furthering this, I had asked my computer teachers to teach computer to other teachers and he did. Then I made
it compulsory for every teacher to type the Unit Test questions on their own, later on I also asked them to prepare PPT presentation of the contents they are going to teach in the classes. So that was the beginning. Although in the first phase, teachers came to my room and told me that it is not possible for them to learn computers. Some of them even complained that these things were not mentioned at the time of appointment. I counseled them patiently and when they were convinced, they took help of their children to learn computer. Some of them taught it from outside computer training institutes, and from our computer teachers alike.
Later on when they learnt to operate computers, they brought the PPT to me and commented this is the better way of teaching, because maximum syllabus can be covered with lesser time. Naturally, understanding is also better. So my teachers got interested and they wanted to prepare the PPTs for the next session as well. I welcomed their efforts and they prepared the contents willingly. That was a very successful start and I got appreciation from the parental community and my students were also very happy with the change. The school management also was delighted with the digital learning process and the outcome.
Give us an example of using e-Content system that has solved your students’ issues.
I will cite the example of our History classes, as we know History is a dull subject. So when we started teaching History classes with the help of e-content, the students were enlightened. They came up with the feedback that History classes are no more boring.
Challenges do teachers face while dealing with Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE)?
It is very challenging for the teachers; CCE recommends observing students behavior. Sometime I feel, the students are not behaving the real way, they are actually pretending to be something else in front of the teachers. Reasons could be fear or earning good grades. So this is the problem with CCE. To deal this problem I counsel my teachers to counsel the students to be honest and not to be diplomatic.
What is your take on CBSE guidelines for CCE?
I welcome CCE and through CCE I have come to know that every child is special and through CCE I realised that if any student is not good in studies it does not mean that he/she is good for nothing.
CBSE guidelines are okay; only thing is that CBSE is more conservative, they advocate pen-paper examination. So I would like to have more CCE.
CBSE has fulfilled all my expectations but few things are there which are still not cleared in the parental mind about the grading system. CCE has given a wide range of grading system that says from 91-100 per cent it is A- 1 and from 81to 9o, it is A-2. The range should be minimised. I expect CBSE to change this grading system.
