Tuesday, July 19, 2011

sprig toys

http://www.sprigtoys.com/products/storybuilders/pigs.php

Interesting set of toys .... combines ...

1. story board - set of pages with stories
2. Pop up panels - illustration of the stories in 3D
3. Blocks - used to reinforce the story - which can be moved around ...

The same type of model is what I am planning for the tool kit for teachers - which they can carry around ...

Friday, July 15, 2011

Science of Everyday life - Discovery & 3M1

http://scienceofeverydaylife.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm?campaign=flyout_students_programs_soel

http://www.discoveryeducation.com/administrators/curricular-resources/science-techbook/#/Content

http://store.discoveryeducation.com/

Student - post online

http://www.cln.org/themes/publish.html


Publish Your Creative Work On-Line Theme Page

This "Theme Page" has links to resources which will help students to publish their creative work (stories, poetry, art, etc) on-line.

Teachers Tools

http://www.4teachers.org/tools/


4Teachers Family of Tools

Expand your curriculum with our timesaving educational resources that use technology to improve instruction across all content areas and grade levels. Find current resources that align with standards, promote higher-order thinking, and support the development of writing skills. Monitor student research and writing, evaluate student performance, and create bilingual online lessons, classroom calendars, and quizzes in less time than traditional methods.

Rishivalley School - KFI

http://www.rishivalley.org/

http://www.river-rv.org/contactus.html

http://river-rv.blogspot.com/

Silent revolution - British council

What is PBL?
According to Wikipedia, Project based learning, or PBL, is a constructivist pedagogy that intends to bring about deep learning by allowing learners to use an inquiry based approach to engage with issues and questions that are rich, real and relevant to their lives. This strategy is well served since the onset of the read/write Web. Teachers have ready made content easily available via the Web and the tools to allow for creative student directed creation of content related to the problems and questions contained in the project being studied.

PBL - Wikispaces - documents

http://abpc.wikispaces.com/Project+Based+Learning


What is PBL?

According to Wikipedia, Project based learning, or PBL, is a constructivist pedagogy that intends to bring about deep learning by allowing learners to use an inquiry based approach to engage with issues and questions that are rich, real and relevant to their lives. This strategy is well served since the onset of the read/write Web. Teachers have ready made content easily available via the Web and the tools to allow for creative student directed creation of content related to the problems and questions contained in the project being studied.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

EDUTOPIA - Core Strategies

The diverse and innovative media resources available from The George Lucas Educational Foundation are designed to connect and inspire positive change in all areas of education.
  • Edutopia.org: An in-depth and interactive resource, Edutopia.org offers practical, hands-on advice, real-world examples, lively contributions from practitioners, and invaluable tips and tools.
  • Edutopia video: Through an extensive offering of documentaries, Edutopia video is a catalyst for innovation by helping educators and parents, as well as business and community leaders, see and understand pioneering best practices.
To understand more about why we are passionate about our work, read about our Core Strategiesand about what our founder and chairman, George Lucas, has to say about education.

Project based learning - Explained

ABL Report - Anandalakshi

ACTIVITY BASED LEARNING 
A Report on an Innovative Method in Tamil Nadu 
By S. Anandalakshmy Ph.D. 
Assisted by the Bala Mandir team: Usha Ramakrishnan, Indu Balagopal, Lakshmi Gopal, Jaya Krishnaswami, Swatantra Saktivel, & Anne Panghat. 
Preamble 
This is year 2007. India is completing its sixty year cycle, since Independence. A time to reflect. A time to take a critical retrospective scan of the education of children in the country. A time to acknowledge that the country has failed to provide a satisfactory education to the millions of children, who look to the State with hope and anticipation. Dozens of studies have substantiated the failure of the system on the whole, even while there are some pockets of successful pedagogic efforts. Innovative methods which engage the children and enable them to achieve mastery over school- related competencies and skills can be located here and there. However, they are small in scale and number.

Workshop on Implementation initiative on Project Based Learning

http://www.intel.com/cd/corporate/education/APAC/ENG/in/newsarchive/news33/410442.htm

http://www.intel.com/cd/corporate/education/apac/eng/in/tools/elements/467739.htm


Intel® Teach Elements: Project-Based Approaches
Are you looking for high-quality free professional development that you can experience now, anytime or anywhere? Take our first course in a new series of high interest, visually compelling short courses that provide deeper exploration of 21st century learning concepts using:
  • Animated tutorials and audio dialogs to explain concepts
  • Interactive knowledge checking exercises
  • Offline activities to apply concepts


    Intel® Teach Program
    The Intel® Teach Program improves teacher effectiveness through professional development, helping teachers integrate technology into their lessons and promoting students' problem-solving, critical thinking, and collaboration skills. With more than 7 million teachers trained in over 60 countries, Intel Teach is the largest, most successful program of its kind.

Project based learning - Checklist

http://pblchecklist.4teachers.org/index.shtml


A project based learning method is a comprehensive approach to instruction. Your students participate in projects and practice an interdisciplinary array of skills from math, language arts, fine arts, geography, science, and technology.
"The collaborative nature of the investigation enhances all of these valuable experiences ... as well as promotes a greater appreciation for social responsibility (Scott, 1994)."




ABL - course

In Activity-Based Learning courses, students do public service, fieldwork, community-based research and internships in conjunction with in-class work. ABL pedagogy aims to enrich students’ academic experience and learning outcomes by connecting theory with practice, and concepts with methods, using data and insight they obtain through engagement with the larger world.

British council , Unicef - ABL in Tamil Nadu


Managing a Silent Revolution: Educational Change in Tamil Nadu from India British Council on Vimeo.


A ‘Silent Revolution' has taken place in south Indian primary schools. A vision of individualized, interactive learning was realised with the implementation of Activity Based Learning. The Tamil Nadu government managed this change and now together with British Council and Unicef, aims to give children relevant and quality exposure to English.
An overview, supported by a short video will show how teachers' attitudes and behaviours have changed and how the creation of an activity based environment was implemented in all government primary schools across this large state.
The talk will continue by describing how ‘Project English' managed by British Council together with Unicef have worked with the state government to develop and deliver a cascade teacher development programme for 120,000 teachers.
Finally the lessons learned from this collaborative project have been pulled together by all three partners to produce a ‘toolkit' of practical guidelines on how to ensure the smooth planning and implementation of large scale INSET projects in developing countries. 



ABL - primary Class

wiki link


Analysing Activity Based Learning in Primary Classes

Overview

So far the concentration in overhauling of primary education, has been to make activity based teaching. The present project tries to analyse how much of this teaching results in activity based learning ,as far as the child/student is concerned.

Aims

The present project aims at finding out how much of learning has resulted from the activity based method of teaching in the different primary classes (class I to class V)

Objectives

Objective

  • To study the different methods of teaching used from class I to class V
  • To observe the interaction of students and report
  • To observe the voluntary participation of students.
  • To understand how the topic of the said period is recapitulated
  • To study the evaluation procedure of the activity by the teacher.
  • To relate the results to the achievement result of the students

Project Plan

Methodology

Observation of the different class teaching will be done for a month in each of the schools chalked out for the study. Initially we will work on Govt. schools, then go on to Public schools and then to the private schools The results of the observation will be tabulated . The teacher teaching the classes will be inte4rviewed to find out how she marks and evaluates the students. Observation of the achievement results will also help tally and correlate with the achievement results.

Milestones

    • How much participation /interaction is present
    • How Teacher recapitulates
    • Evaluation Method
    • Achievement results as indicator
    • How useful this process could be
    • How to improve/on what points
The process will take at least one year's time to get actual results.

Project based learning


Sun Associates offers program evaluation, technical assistance, strategic planning and auditing services to educational organizations such as schools, districts, and states. We work in all areas of educational reform, and we specialize in helping organizations successfully integrate and evaluate the impact of instructional technology across the curriculum. Our job at Sun Associates is to provide the expert guidance and strategic assistance necessary for educators, administrators, students, and parents to create the best environment for teaching and learning.
If you're new to our site, a good place to start is by exploring some examples of current and recent projects. Also, check out the wide variety of materials and resources we offer for teachers and administrators.


Name selection

Ekalaiva - Self learning ....

what is required is activity based learning ....or observe by demonstration

- name from epics would be preferred.....

What is ABL

Activity-based instruction involves...activities! This is in opposite of pure lectures. It means hands-on approaches to instruction, using manipulatives to engage multiple senses, as opposed to just listening to a lecture. For instance, I've used notecards in a lesson to teach complete subjects and predicates. On the notecards I wrote (from a prompt) complete subjects and complete predicates, separate from each other, and had the students find their match. As opposed to just listening to me tell them what the differences are, they see them, evaluate them, and synthesize them (reference 'ole Bloom's Taxonomy).




Activity-bases instruction revolves around students learning though hands-on activities. I think that this method can be great, especially for tactile learners. It breaks up the monotony of the basic teacher-led lecture/students listen and take notes system. Let's face it, not all students learn from listening to their teacher drone on for 50-90 minutes a day. Activity-based allows students to demonstrate an understanding of the material and, usually, work with a partner or group, which leads to socialization

I think, however, that this type instruction is better for a group of students who are highly motivated and goal oriented. If not, these activities can result in chaos, because many students consider this "goof off" time. They don't learn anything and they don't create any type of worthwhile product. I've seen this happen way too many times. Recently, I had my students demonstrate their understanding of Beowulf by creating an Anglo-Saxon newspaper. In this newspaper, they had to write an article summarizing the story of Beowulf. The rest was to focus on Anglo-Saxon events, etc. Instead of creating amazing projects, they wasted 90 mins. chatting about their weekends, and then wanted another day to complete the project. What they turned in was trash and demonstrated very little effort or knowledge. In that case, activity-based instruction was a waste of time.



Link

ABL - Merits and Demerits

Activity Based Instruction:
What does activity based instruction classroom look like? Well .. active! Here, the teacher is mostly that of a facilitator rather than of authority in knowledge. He engages the learners into tasks and makes abstract ideas into concrete ones. It is learning by doing rather than learning by listening It can be done in two ways – i) Student cantered instruction where students have freedom to choose a problem and formulate strategies to solve them and ii) Teacher cantered instruction where the teacher takes the lead role.
Advantages of Activity Based Instruction:
1) The most important feature of activity based instruction is learning by doing. So this method of instruction can fulfil the natural urge of a growing child on one hand also can help them learn their lesson.
2) The method also promotes better understanding of a lesson among students as they learn the lesson by practicing the task themselves.
3) It inspires the students to apply their creative ideas, knowledge and minds in solving problems as well as promoting competitive spirit among them.
4) It also helps learner psychologically as they can express their emotions through active participation in something useful.
5) The method also helps in developing their personalities, social traits and inter-personal management skills.
Disadvantages of Activity Based Instruction:
1) The activity based instruction method requires long-term planning with minute details of the whole process because before engaging the learners, the teacher has to make sure that all students have sufficient knowledge and skills regarding the task they are going to perform. So this method can not be used on a regular and daily basis as it involves a lengthy procedure.
2) The objectives of the method can only be fulfilled if the planning of the lesson is flawless. If there is slightest flaw in the planning, this method would do more harm than good.
3) Learners have varied levels of merit and understanding. So less meritorious students might not prepare for a task as other which might lead to failure of objectives of the whole process.
4) Many renowned educationists also are of the opinion that the activity based method is more suitable for branches of experimental sciences and less useful for subjects of social sciences.

Reformatting School Education

Designing the Design problem

Instructional Design

Customer Experience

Designing for Delight

Education - Entrepreneurship

Design Thinking for Product Management

Innovation through design thinking

Thinking tools

Critical thinking in Education

Critical thinking in Education

Critical thinking

Innovation and Design

Six thinking hats

Design Thinking for Business Strategy

Storytelling - Compelling design tool

Design Thinking for Business

Design for startups

The Essence of Design for Startups
View more presentations from Arun Jay

Story Applied to Design

Know about Design

Influence through Story telling

Stories through Design

Design Thinking

Looking for funding - Startup capital

Time Plan :
First fix up a time plan - to go to market , where you have a proof of concept, and a business model that can be showcased to probable investors for their interest in funding.

People to work on the project:
How many people / resources and their time being spent on the project

Calculate the amount - from Centroid - how much we can bootstrap to bring out the POC.

Look for DST funding - write the idea and number of organizations fund for ideas - keep trying with them in parallel.

Look for people - who are interested in similar topic and can scale it up.

Touching Stories

The educational curriculam to be design oriented.....


Changing Education Paradigms - KEN ROBINSON







Design Thinking for Educators

Creative activist toolkit

Storytelling Toolkit

Teachers Toolkit

Heritage education

enquiry based learning

Personal Learning Environment

Education in 21st Century

Virtual Education

Creativity

Future of education - knowledge

education future - web 3.0

Future of education

Education Revolution

Education in India 4

Education in India 3

Education in India 2

Education in India 1

New technology supporting education

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Design Review - 1

    • researching now on education sector - how students can be hands on on topics taught in school

  • 2 hours ago
    Vinay Rao
    • You are getting into teaching?

  • 2 hours ago
    Ramesh Manickam
    • no - for school students - the method of teaching is read / write , now elearning and multimedia kits are in every school.
    • but the students lack the physical touch and feel and sensitisation to working hands on topics

  • 2 hours ago
    Vinay Rao
    • so? yes, I know, Educomp and Co are everywhere
    • Fundamental problem with Schools is the manner of instruction

  • 2 hours ago
    Ramesh Manickam
    • researching on kits that the teachers can use for demo purpose and kits that the students can use hands on
    • yes -many players in the multimedia space
    • what i am researching on is physical products - which the kids can see, play around with , experiment, - more hands on

Marketing Review - 2

    • !

    • Hi eddy
    • I am now working on some concepts for making a prototype

    • We need to get started as a tool kit for teachers and a activity kit for students
    • The activity kit would be like use and throw, so the kids can work in groups in school and then after use - discard or they can take it home
    • SO the school needs to constantly buy the activity kit
    • The tool kit for teachers would be like a pop up card - which when opened will have various areas which can be explained

    • ok Go that
    • Designed it yet or you need help there?

    • i am in the process of listing out the topics for which these toolkits will help
    • Going through the books of 3rd to 8th std
    • and making a list of topics