The second edition of School Leadership Summit (SLS) 2015 at Le Meridien, New Delhi was witness to an auspicious gathering of the most influential school education leaders. The event was attended by Principals and Academicians from top 150 schools from across the country, who discussed and shared ideas on role of digitization in school education. The event began with interactive knowledge sharing session culminated into a grand felicitation ceremony of top schools of India ranked in December edition of Digital Learning

Archana Jain Principal, Delhi Public School, Panipat City

The students, nowa- days are experiencing the innovative usage of technology in education and are frequently interacting with innovative trends of technologies like, cloud and mobile to get their learning purpose being served. The delivery models of imparting education to students have also transformed with a change in preferences of a student’s learning method. Earlier, we used to take notes in classrooms but with a change in technologies offered, they are now available on internet. Teachers are sharing them with the students. Education, along with general communication has too shifted to digital boards for delivery purposes. The digitally enabled learning boards leave a very good visual impact on a learner’s mind and an imprinted impression on a person’s mind. However, sometimes a teacher finds it difficult to adapt to tech-savvy students. Mobiles have become a very popular source of learning as e-books can be downloaded on them very easily.

Ratna Dhar Principal, Millennium School, Karnal

Millennium School use technology extensively for standardised teaching to the children and believes in teaching through concept, not content. Such a specified environment enables children to learn and deliver on their own learning pace. In our technology enabled environment at Millennium School, we even retain poor performing students’ post school hours within premises, and help them in improving their skills with the help of technology-enabled solutions. We carry out these development activities after the formative assessment of a student with the help of our evaluation modules. Under the student assessment system, we resolve a child’s caliber and his grade. If the child lies under the challenged group, we offer him summative assessment text to carry out the test according to his nature and caliber. However, there are farthest places where technology is not readily accessible and approachable.

Abhilasha Singh, Principal, Sonipat School

Our school primarily operates in rural areas where agriculture is a primary mode of occupation and entire economy thrives on agriculture and agro-based products. Therefore, we have kept the fee structure comparatively low in these areas. However, even with respect to the regular use of technology in these areas, we are lagging 10 to 15 years behind. It makes it difficult for teachers to deliver education, when children are already well-versed with technologies like internet and mobile. This is enabling children to get everything on a swipe of finger on a smartphone and have made them intuitive enough to prompt decision about what they wish to learn, and when and how to learn. This is causing teachers to put more efforts to catch students with respect to the usage of technology.

Naresh Duble DGM- FMD & Training ABP, ArmStrong

Some recent surveys conducted for assessing top level universities, globally, could not find any of the Indian universities in top 300. India is known worldwide for producing the good number of doctors and engineers. However, with respect to scientific research its position is competitively low. One of the reasons for inferior level of research capabilities in India is lack of suitable environment inculcating different learning and thinking. School building acoustically designed helps students forming an environment in classroom to improve concentration levels. An apt sound meter measuring the right type of DB level in the classroom has generally reported teachers ending up producing noise in a classroom instead of communication. The building solutions offered by ArmStrong, thus make school buildings acoustically refined and forms a level of engagement between a learner and a teacher.

Neeru Madhuri Parti, Head Academics, Shree Ram Global School, Gurgaon

In present times, a school is not just a means to social objective delivery for imparting learning, but has become a project enterprise ranging between 50 crores to 100 crores. With such a huge cost involved in building a school, the school promoters and CEOs spend sleepless nights in a worry to get return on the huge investment they have made. Despite so much pressure on the schools for managing finances, they are still inherent to their primary objective and passionate about providing quality education. To raise the level of education, initiatives like training for becoming a principal or principal training is of the utmost importance. For example, in the US, a huge amount of money is being spent on training of principals. In addition, the unnecessary pressure from private schools should be lifted as they, along with imparting quality education pays valuable tax.

Rustom Kerawalla, Chairman, Vibgyor High, Mumbai

Running a school administration has become an uphill task in present times. It has become more of a fight with the establishment for issues like fee regulation, taxes, etc. A school owner will spend sleepless nights till the adequate number of students takes admission in his school. Further to focusing on academics, school principals should also concentrate on developing themselves as CEOs and be involved in stages of cost operations, HR functions, maintenance related issues. Earlier, the school trustees used to participate intensively in school administration and accounts, and the principals were restricted only to academics. Now-a-days, things have changed to a greater extent and it has become imperative for principals to focus on areas of cost as well.

Manikandan R, Director –Business Development, Printing & Personal Systems, HP, India

It is with the emerging effect of technology that the world is changing very fast. Things and processes have not remained restricted only to a single place of origin, they have become global. Similarly, students now belong no more to a single place or district, they are global students. The students need to be innovative, collaborated, and should have the critical thinking skills. 70 percent of the jobs that students will be doing tomorrow do not exist today. Therefore, students have to have these three skills to be able to adapt to the changing environment. Flipped classroom is not far from reality, it’s all happening in India.

Since the dawn of human history, education has continued to evolve, diversify and extend its reach and coverage. The traditional classroom teaching methods are no longer effective to achieve current learning standards; therefore, tech-enabled strategies of learning are being used to engage the tech-savvy future generation.

Lt. Col. (Retd.) Atul Sekhar, Principal, Atul Vidalaya

To make the learning experience more exciting, multimedia technologies like video and audio teaching aids, TV, video conferencing, LCD projectors, online group discussions and peer group tutoring, etc., are being incorporated by many education institutes. Similarly, a mix of technology and traditional face-to-face instruction known as blended learning is a great approach, where students find themselves engaging in vibrant online debates, discussions, writing assignments and collaborative group work. A viable and effective approach to deliver high-quality, up-to-date, on-demand education has been possible with mobile devices, cloud applications and other online educational content. We need to think how schools and colleges can build their own wireless infrastructures to support new emerging trends, including a social network where students can communicate and hold class discussions.

Aditi Avasthi Founder, CEO, Embibe

Sometime ago, a point was raised whether there should be government funding in five year plans. In a recent datadriven study between private and public schools, it was found that affordable private sector schools were far more prompt and immersive in teaching than the public schools. It was also seen that private schools are better governed and have higher quality pedagogy.

Shreevats Jaipuria, Vice Chairman, Jaipuria Group of Schools

If we look from the demographic or market perspective, really the ‘acchee din’ has arrived for the Indian private schools as the economy is developing towards the path of growth. Market is developing, and every person due to better educational facilities plans to send his/her kids to private schools. But, if we look around from the perspective of regulatory system and provisions in India, it is just opposite and we all are facing it. The regulation in India is not conducive to the growth of private schools, whether it is a 25 percent RTE or some other sort of regulation. It increases the cost to a greater extent of operating and running the schools and the brunt comes back to schools. Over and over regulation is just hampering the growth of private schools in India.

Vinesh Menon, Chief Operating Officer, Global Discovery Academy

We are still on the way to keep a balance between being financially viable and delivering quality education. For the past three years, we are running an institution as an education service provider, and are trying to bring paradigm shift the way pedagogy is delivered. We have tied up with school promoters who have become our business partners. With this type of business model, it takes too much effort to maintain balance between business objectives and take care of children without compromising on delivery of education and learning. We are doing it in a professional manner as we are running our activities and operations backed by the Industry professionals. We are bringing out the processes that are quite savvy and simplified. At the same time, we are trying to adapt to IT regulations of the government.

Lisa Jain, Country Representative – India, The College Board

SAT is an exam conducted by The College Board that is carried to help students to approve eligibility for appearing entrance exams for the colleges across the globe. It has been observed that students in India have developed an inclination towards under graduate courses overseas as in the US, UK, Australia, Singapore and other countries. First of all, there is a set of students, who, after being not selected in top level technical courses in India as IITs and others opt for the scholarships in foreign universities for their preferred choices. Apart from that, at foreign colleges, the students sometimes aspire for course combinations that are not available in India like business with music, etc. This all leads to the need of customized course as SAT for the students willing to learn at foreign universities.

Dr Niyati Chitkara, Principal, Chitkara International School, Chandigarh

With an interactive randomly raised question and answer sessions, Dr Niyati Chitkari emphasized on the need of students to be at the center of our all educational activities and modifications to courseware and to any technical introduction to courseware. Even to the contested objection to her suggestions, she even termed PTM (Parent Teacher Meeting) as a verdict to students’ instead of consulted counseling to them.

Satya Narayanan, Chairman and Founder, Indus World School

There is such a knowledge explosion that there is hardly any scope to determine between what is relevant and what is inculcated for development and growth processes. And it is further added with obsoleteness of every emerging technology in a shorter span of time that every course, every skill, every syllabus becomes older in no time. It is time to develop skill of re-skilling. However, this skill of relearning should be added with appropriate filtration of volumes of knowledge scattered across, now on, more readily available mediums and platforms. The school or college curriculum should only have highly selected educational matter in randomly changing technological environment to the benefit of students

Poonam Singh Jhamwal, CMO, Extramarks Education Pvt Ltd.

As school leaders, we expect teachers to be effective, students to be successful and parents to be involved in learning initiatives. In Digital learning, our aim is to take teaching at the level of personalised learning, the empowered, and supported and finally let a student grow in his own personal development and emerge as an individual. In these circumstances technology acts as an enabler, facilitator and moulds a student to the grooming as well as educational needs of the modern times, however, with a human touch. It doesn’t mean the role of school teachers gets limited here. They have to play a more important role of cheerleader and an inspirational leader for students amidst the environment of digital learning. Distribution of leadership is another aspect that a school owner should foster for a successful teaching delivery. Finally, the teachers should be effective, students successful and students involved.

Digital learning has more to do with the right combination of digital platforms, digital content as well as instructional design. The combo has the potential of transforming the education system in India. Ms Sindhu Aven, Head of Academics, Zee Learn Ltd, delves into a digital laboratory

Digital learning is defined as any classroom practice that effectively involves technology to build up to a student’s learning experience in an interactive and fun manner. Digital learning can serve as a great strategy for quality improvement and adding the fun element in education. However, digital learning is not just about providing computer access to the students; it has more to do with the right combination of digital platforms, digital content as well as instructional design. It has the potential of transforming the education system in India, where the quality of instruction and classroom delivery varies immensely from area to area.

Zee Learn has been an early adopter of digital learning. We have been observant and stringent about the extent of digital content being introduced into our classrooms. In Kidzee (our chain of preschools), we have been cautious about maintaining a balance between the developmental needs of the children and the amount of digital exposure. This has been done keeping in mind the sea change in the media habits of children. We, as educators, need to ensure that digital media is used as a medium of learning rather than a medium of entertainment in our classrooms. In Kidzee, we identified that the most effective manner for introducing digital learning would be through tablet applications and audio visuals. Our tablet applications, aim at helping children develop and enhance their fine motor skills (of tapping, swiping, and dragging) along with their cognitive and reasoning skills. They provide interactive and exploratory learning opportunities through the medium of games. Apart from the tablet applications, we actively use audio visuals as a digital medium for learning. These audio visuals aim at covering educational topics through interesting story-based plots.

Similarly in Mount Litera Zee schools, we cater to the digital needs of the primary, secondary, and higher secondary grades. As a part of our school system we promote blended learning. This, as a learning model, promotes the use of interactive whiteboards. These are used to present audio-visuals as well as interactive content in our classrooms. The audio visuals cover educational content through short interesting animations, whereas the interactive content incorporates game-based learning. We also have English digital language labs which promote learning through the medium of technology. The interactive programs in the English digital language lab help the students understand and reflect on their grammar, pronunciation, listening and speaking skills. We also encourage the use of social media in co-scholastic areas. For example, online competitions for photography and short-story writing are held on social media platforms as a part of the Mount Litera Olympiad. Adding to the above, we also have an innovative Digital Citizenship Program that enables our students to understand the right and safe way of using the internet. The students are introduced to the topics of netiquettes, cyber bullying, online safety, privacy, copyright and plagiarism, etc. through this program. Hence, apart from exposing our students to digital learning, we also help them become responsible digital citizens.

As can be seen, digital learning plays a crucial role in both scholastic as well as co-scholastic aspects of education in our schools. So, even though there is an increase of digital learning tools and platforms, we must understand that it is crucial for us to focus on the responsible usage of technology in our schools. We must be aware that the consequences of overexposure to technology are serious, and it is important for us to strike a fine balance. While technology can be a game changer, we should not look at it as a solution for lack of trained teachers or parental involvement. Digital learning complements the involvement of parents and teachers in the student learning process.

Promoting innovation among the young, BIBOX has come up with a unique comprehensive hardware and a software solution which can translate an idea into a prototype, says Sandeep Senan, Director & Founder, BIBOX, interacting with the Elets News Network (ENN)

Please give us a broad overview of your Digital Labs already deployed in the institutes.

We started moving into the schools only last year, February 2014 to be precise. In last one year, we have trained more than 10,000 students. We have also signed 25 schools in Bangalore, Kerala and Delhi with 70% of the schools using our product as an integrated program in the schools. With the kind of response that we have got from the schools, this year we feel that we would at least double the number of schools and the students.

Tell us about your top selling Digital Lab product.

As of now, we have only one product “Bibox Innovation Lab”. The entire session is an hour and 20 minutes long. Every time the students come into the class, they are exposed to a challenge and by the end of it, they are expected to create the prototype with automation, art and craft etc.

What is the price of your top selling product?

The price depends upon school to school and the number of students. Since the entire solution is a service model, the entire material, two mentors (all engineering graduates), tablets which are being used by the kids are a part of the program. Depending on the number of students, our rates vary from 2500/- per annum to 6000/- per annum for a child who attends a BIBOX class.

What kind of systems are parts of the Digital Lab product package that get delivered to the institute for setting up of a digital classroom?

Everything that goes into the school is our propriety and the school only pays per child.

Please tell us about the new Digital Labs you are planning to develop in the future.

Our endeavour is to develop the futuristic products, which is exposed to kids already familiar with the technology and blend with his overall learning. We keep investing into creating newer technology so that these children are able to bring out innovation and make these children ready for the next gen skill sets.

What is the market size of the Digital Labs business in India?

We are unique at this point of time and the solutions are absolutely new. There is no competition as such and hence we stand a good chance to penetrate into the market very well. Proof of the pudding is also to see the enthusiasm in all the schools wherein we had signed up last year.

What kind of growth did your business see in 2014? What growth rates are you aiming for in 2015?

Though, we do not want to disclose our revenues at the moment, our growth next year would ensure that we would earn at least 50-80% more revenue than last year.

Are the digital Labs cheaper than the traditional teaching tools? How has the system of Digital Labs impacted on pedagogy?

In fact in our case, more than the gadget, it is the pedagogy which has made the entire program successful and popular. In our classroom, we divide the children into a group of three, wherein each one of them would have a role viz. Concept Leader, Assembly and Logic guys. Concept leader would lead the team for that day and the responsibility would keep rotating. An assembly guy would create the art and craft for the project and the logic fellow would do the programming. Our programme is based upon the 21st century learning skills and focusses on the 4 “C”s and the STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts and Maths concepts). The overall program is based on the Design Platform and the Challenged Based Learning.