Reading as an alternative

Our Guest Editor, Sudeshna Chatterjee

Principal, Jamnabai Narsee School

"The 21st century city bred children have - passionate pastimes - surfing the net, watching television or engaging in wars, battles and races on their PS3's and other gizmos.

The lack of playgrounds and safe areas make it almost impossible for them to choose other outdoor pastimes.

Parents, worried about congestion, traffic issues, stalkers and kidnappings are more than comfortable with the child spending play time at home, hooked to a gadget.

• Children may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others.

• Children may become more fearful of the world around them.

• Children may be more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways toward others.

'Chota Bheem' is so cute in his escapades, but the boisterousness and rowdy behaviour of the well-loved characters in these televised serials and films are actually passing off as acceptable behaviour, many socially unacceptable demeanours.

Negative Effects of Video Games

o Children who play violent video games are more likely to have increased aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, and decreased pro social helping, according to a scientific study (Anderson & Bushman, 2001).

o In many games, children are rewarded for being more violent.

o Active participation in on-screen violence, repetition and reward, are effective tools for learning behaviour.

o Too much video game playing makes the child socially isolated. Games can confuse reality and fantasy.

o Academic achievement may be negatively related to over-all time spent playing video games.

o Video games may also have bad effect on some children's health, including obesity, video-induced seizures, postural, muscular and skeletal disorders, such as tendonitis, nerve compression, carpal tunnel syndrome.

o Playing online may make your child vulnerable to online dangers.

o It increases their depression and anxiety levels.

o Children spending too much time playing video games may exhibit impulsive behaviour and have attention problems.

Can we revert to the days of parents sitting with their children, reading together? Let the child pick up the nuances of the language, love for words, pictures, situations and characters while exploring the world through the parents tales and attractive story books. The reading habit acquired in childhood can become a lifetime hobby. Later, the story book can give way to the study book.

Think about it

Why engage experts to start a school

Starting a new school is one of the most involved, complicated and demanding challenges around. The danger is that it is easy to slip into the mindset that all one has to do is construct a building, tart it up a bit and recruit a head and some teachers. The rest will follow.

WRONG 

Opening a new school is a specialised function of numerous different project expertise –requiring very different skills – all rolled into one:

Oh yes - and education

And so a school start up’s focus should be to 

1. Organise the project and your people into specialist teams 

2.  Get the right skills within your management body 

3. When outsourcing, make sure you get people not only highly skilled in their field but also with the appropriate education experience. 

4. Do not underestimate just how long it will take in absolute terms and the time the management group will have to dedicate to make it happen. 

5. Do not underestimate how much money it will need to achieve real excellence. 

6. Get external support and advice for the board of trustees/ governors – to be on your side and give you honest and best advice. 

7. Appointing the Head is the most important decision you will make. 

8. Engage with the other schools in the area. 

9. Engage with the broader local community. 

10. Keep sight of your original ethos and objectives

Tips: 

• Be conservative in your projections of revenues and expenses even if you have an angel who is paying for everything. 

• Make sure real estate agents are aware of the new school. Families moving into the community always ask about schools. Arrange open houses and gatherings to promote your new school. 

• Submit your school's website to sites like this one so that parents and teachers can become aware of its existence. 

• Always plan your facilities with growth and expansion in mind. Be sure to keep them green as well. A sustainable school will last many years. One which is planned without any consideration of sustainability will fail eventually.

It is important to understand and accept Schools follow a scholastic calendar which means any error or delay will set you back by one year. School projects are capital intensive and delay in startup adds to the financial burden. There is no second time, you have to do it right in the initial go. Schools attract image- get it right the first time or else you will be a long time away from success. Parents admit their children in a well set school and not a project under setup.

We at Develop Schools assist individual and corporate promoters start new schools. In fact, you will find from our profile that we have done similar multiple assignments before.

Find enclosed Develop Schools brochure for more details.

Hope the above assists you understand our experience and the spectrum of services we could associate with you on. Expert assistance is always helpful, let us go out and Develop Schools.

Hole in the wall

Rita Wilson, Chief Editor

(Ex-chief executive and Secretary, ICSE)

"Dr. Sugata Mitra is credited with the discovery of Hole-in-the-Wall. In 1999, he decided to test his ideas of unsupervised learning and computers in the field of school education. Dr. Mitra's team carved a "hole in the wall" that separated the NIIT premises from the adjoining slum in Kalkaji, New Delhi. Through this hole, a freely accessible computer was put up for use. This computer proved to be an instant hit among the slum dwellers, especially the children. With no prior experience, the children learnt to use the computer on their own. This prompted Dr. Mitra to propose the following hypothesis:

The acquisition of basic computing skills by any set of children can be achieved through incidental learning provided the learners are given access to a suitable computing facility, with entertaining and motivating content and some minimal (human) guidance.

To broaden the scope of this experiment and to streamline Hole-in-the-Wall more than 30 clusters of computers or Learning Stations have been set up in India and outside India. The results, which have been uniformly encouraging, show that children learn to operate as well as play with the computer with minimum intervention. They picked up skills and tasks by constructing their own learning environment.

Hole-in-the-wall Learning Stations seek to create a new paradigm in the learning process by providing unrestricted computer access to groups of children in an open playground setting. The playground setting offers a host of other advantages. Unconditional access to Learning Stations ensures that both children in-school and out-of-school can use them. Another advantage is that the unstructured nature of this setting also ensures that children themselves take ownership of the Learning Station by forming self-organized groups who learn on their own. Finally, an unsupervised setting ensures that the entire process of learning is learner-centric and is driven by a child’s natural curiosity.

Learning Stations rely more on exploratory learning where children can freely experiment on the Learning Station. Again, groups of children access the Learning Station leading to twin advantages of collaborative learning and multiple children using the Learning Stations at the same time. This leads to much greater impact on children than a traditional lab based setting.

A big advantage of the Learning Station is that it fits in well with traditional schooling and seeks to reinforce structured learning through peer discussions, increased curiosity and better retention.

Learning Stations address a more fundamental skill set –the Process of Learning itself. Learning Stations encourage children to explore and thus, impart problem solving skills and an ability to think critically. So, while a child learns how to use educational software, she also develops an ability to analyse, synthesize and evaluate information which in turn builds her long term ability to learn.