The Policy Planning Unit (PPU) of the Education Department, Government of Karnataka, in their continuing effort to create ‘Master Trainers on Public Software educational tools’, organised a 2 day workshop on November 19th and 20th with resource support from Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Azim Premji Foundation, infrastructure support from RV College of Engineering and faculty from IT for Change and RV Educational Consortium. The participants came from all parts of Karnataka and were exclusively high school science and mathematics teachers. These teachers will work with other teachers in their respective schools to build their capacities to use these tools in the regular teaching-learning processes in mathematics and science subjects.
Almost all computer programs in schools so far have focused primarily on teachers and students acquiring basic computer skills, and there is not much attention to ‘computer aided learning’. The teachers also have no opportunity to use these basic computer skills acquired and the training in many cases becomes redundant and irrelevant. The workshop premise is that by shifting the focus to training teachers to use ICT educational tools for teaching regular subjects , it will enable greater ownership and commitment of teachers to using new possibilities offered by ICTs and consequently to more effective use of the ICT tools in the schools.
(for workshop photos please click here)
ICT Tools
These ICT tools adopt a learner centered approach based on a theory of learning called constructivism, its core idea being that knowledge is actively constructed by the learner, building on her existing knowledge and it is not passively received from the teacher . The premise also is that by the teacher herself experiencing this pedagogical approach through use of these educational tools, she would be more amenable and able to adopt it while teaching in her classroom.
As the participants were science and mathematics high school teachers, the focus of the training was also on science and mathematics tools. Thus the tools selected were Geogebra, for mathematics, KSTARS and KtechLab and Kalzium for Science. Because of the strong subject knowledge the participant possessed, we were able to cover some advanced topics in the tools. The participants were required to an assessment which required them to select a topic from the syllabus that they teach, explain and demonstrate how they would use the ICT tool to aid in the teaching of the chosen topic. Finally they had to think of questions that they could ask students to enable critical thinking and constructively understand the topic.
The participants created very interesting lesson plans to teach specific topics of the syllabus as part of their assessment. They were able to integrate the textbook lesson well with the tools capabilities. What was very interesting was how they were able to go outside the scope of the material in the textbooks and ask students to observe certain phenomenon. For example, one of the teachers constructed a circum-circle of a triangle and through the interaction that is available in the tool demonstrated the relationship between the circum-centre(its position with respect to the triangle) and the type of triangle (acute, right-angled, obtuse). There were many such thought provoking lesson plans in all the tools.
In order to move beyond narrow ‘tool focus’ of ICTs, where techno-fascination is often a serious limitation and even danger of such programs, the program also had sessions on educational perspectives and the National Curriculum Framework 2005, where the potential of ICTs to support constructive teaching-learning approaches was discussed. ICT tools are often portrayed as self-learning tools that replace teachers. It was emphasized throughout the workshop that the tools would enable a child to learn only with appropriate facilitation by the teacher and hence the importance of the teacher’s role and her/his own ability to understand and use the tools. The program resources are available on www.karnatakaeducation.org.in.
SMT Trainers
This workshop also gave opportunity for 5 master trainers that we had trained in August 2010 to train the teachers. The master trainers were able to take on many sessions of the training , especially learning how to use the tools. We were able to provide feedback that would enable them to train with much more confidence in their respective districts. These trainers were also able to learn some more advanced use of Geogebra in this workshop. As they had been using these tools since August, some of the trainers also had created their own lessons to use for the training sessions. One feedback for us is to keep emphasising the subject knowledge more than the technology per say because techno-fascination is still a danger that we must contend with – with the master trainers.
Feedback from Participants
The participants were enthusiastic about the possibilities of these tools in daily teaching learning processes. They have been added to the e-mail list to enable them to network, discuss these tools and also share their ideas, issues and solutions. Three of the participants explicitly talked about their experience understanding these tools. One of the mathematics teachers – Jnana Sangeetha said that “it was her dream come true”. She thought that the tool had a lot of potential to help her explain many of the abstract algebra equations with Geogebra. Two other teachers – Shivashankar R N and Narayana B S said that the interactive more enabled them to explore the concepts in different ways so they could take this learning back into the classrooms. Narayana B S said that he realized now why as a teacher he needs to learn how to use the computer and learn how to use these tools before exposing his students to it.
Overall, the learning and feedback was very encouraging and some of the participants have already called us after installing Ubuntu and the education packages in the school systems.