Bangalore Visit

I was in Bangalore on the 2nd and 3rd of December 2011, in connection with a meeting, related to the "DE Induction Training Manual," and visited three DE Schools - two in Bangalore City and the other one in Kolar and had the opportunity to interact with teachers, students, DE Karnataka team members. I was very impressed with the presentations made by the teachers in Kolar on a selected topic - an example of "micro teaching," we're by a particular period of 45 minutes duration was meticulously planned out/sliced, minute by minute with considerable detailing on the pedagogy part - where technology will be used, where chalk and talk will be used etc. which I feel is the core of effective integration of technology in teaching. In each of the DE schools of Karnataka, one such period is planned out by selected teachers in consultation with the Coordinators, every month.

The other thing which impressed me was that "Balmela" is now system embedded and every year between November and December such activities are carried out in all the DE Schools with great fun and fervour.

Resource Group Meeting Kendrapada

A one day resource group meeting for Kendrapada district, was held on the 15th of December 2011, in Kakat Mangala UP School, located in Kendrapada town. 12 teachers attended this one day meeting, where they focused on preparing lesson plans - by working in groups. 3 lesson plans were prepared as part of this one day meeting and each of them were presented by a selected teacher from each group.

 The following lesson plans wer developed as part of the one day meeting:

Transpiration in plants - Biology (Life science)

Europe - Geography

Function - Mathematics

All the presentations were interesting but I personally liked the last one for the detailing. The teachers in fact enjoyed the day long hands on workshop/meeting. Some of them even told me that they required some additional resources on air pollution and something on the historic Los Angeles smog. I was able to access the Internet and show them some of the interesting links.

The meeting concluded with a look at videos of some of the ideal lab transactions, shot over some of the schools, visited at different locations.

Resource Group Meeting - RNIASE Cuttack

I attended a one day resource group meeting for selected teachers of Cuttack district, was held in RNIASE Cuttack on the 17th of December 2011. A total of 7 teachers participated in the one day meeting/workshop. I was able to have a very meaningful interaction with the group, who felt very positive about the training being conducted in the respective centres. The following lesson plans/designs were prepared and presented as part of the meeting:

1. Structure of Atom

2. Know about Earth

3. Plant Cell

4. Structure and Function of Blood Cell

5. Poem - Nobody's Friend

6. Function of Eye

7. Thallophyta Plants

I really enjoyed each of the presentations and yes some of them - notably the "structure of the atom," "structure and function of the plant cell"  and the one on "Thallophyta Plants," were worked in considerable detail and presented extremely well by the respective teachers. I personally feel that such workshops and sharing meetings are very fruitful in bringing about effective integration of technology in teaching.

Retreat

Attending the two day retreat was a first in many ways for me. It was the first time that the DE team was included as part of the retreat. It was the first time that the DE team was made to feel that it was part of a larger AIF family and not the "oh the DE people." Many a times I have felt that we are not part of the AIF staff and this was reinforced time and again during the visits to the office as part of the core group meeting. This was the first time that I felt like belonging to a larger whole - the AIF team, working with others to bring about serious socio-economic changes at the ground level. That some of the interventions are working and some of them needs to be streamlined, some of them are at the pilot stage are a different issue, but this is true that all of us are trying hard and really hard to bring about some changes, in the lives of the people we touch, including ourselves.

I really got an opportunity to sit back, relax and take a close look at the various programs as the respective teams went about making their presentations and answering all sorts of questions, raised by the participants - some of which happened to be of a very fundamental nature. In fact in the very process of answering one could sense the clarity of the concepts and the underpinning issues that became clear both to the audience as well as the presenter - the informal setting and the beautiful backdrop did the trick.

I for one got a lot of clarity as far as funding is concerned. How are funds raised, pledge drives conducted, restricted and unrestricted funding, necessity of working out a synergy between the program requirements, translated into budgetary demands and how are fund drives conducted, on the basis of understanding these demands, the necessity of a dedicated fund raising officer, who works in close coordination with the program directors/teams etc.

I really got to understand our various intentions much much better. For instance I never knew the difficulties that the LAMP team was facing as far as meaningful implementation at the ground level is concerned. Asutosh was forthright in mentioning the lack of partners with expertise in education at the local level and add to this the inability of the established players to function in those areas. Similarly I got to understand our public health interventions a lot better, thanks to my room mate - Anupam and Charu's passionate presentation and her evident frustration at not being able to extend her portfolio. The discussion on the fellowship program was interesting, especially the ethical angle brought about by the fellowship team as to whether we should internally absorb them in our program as that means an "opportunity loss" as far as a needy NGO is concerned.

All in all from the intricacies of partner selection to the ethics of being a donor agency as well as the technical support provider, as in case of the LAMP program to the modes operandi of funding et al, seemed to be very interesting. Last but not the least a number of close friendships and personal acquaintances were established as part of the two day retreat.

Bargarh Resource Group Meeting

A resource group meeting was held in George High School, Bargarh on the 26th of November, 2011. 25 teachers selected for their lead role in integrating technology in teaching, at the school level, attended this meeting. 9 lesson plans were developed as part of this meeting by teachers working in groups. 

Sambalpur and Bargarh Field Trip

Putibandha UGME School, Sambalpur

Date of visit: 22^nd November 2011

Time spent: 2 hrs

I started my visit with a discussion with the following teachers:

Gitanjali Sahu

Rajasree Behera

Jaysree Seth

Anandini Mishra

Observations

This school has 6 teachers who are undergoing training in DIET Sambalpur and one of them the HM has undergone 9 days of training. I actually spent time in the school interacting with the HM and some of the selected teachers, taking feed- back on how they felt about the training. As usual they were very positive and satisfied with the way it was being conducted. The only request they made was if they can be provided with some more resources, on topics which were not available in the “Edukit.”

The discussions were followed by a collaborative project on “acid, base and salts” with the class VII students. Although the project was well planned and executed and the students were very interactive, the HM didn’t seem to be very enthusiastic while doing the same and had to be prompted on many counts by Samtanu. A video shoot of the same is available. I did ask some of the students as to whether they are learning computers and how many times a week and their answers seem to be satisfactory. This school like other Upper Primary Schools have content provided by APF and NIIT available with them apart from the Edukit.

A video recording of the classroom transaction is available.

Kirba UP School, Burla, Sambalpur

Date of visit: 22^nd November 2011

Time spent: 1.5 hrs hrs

I had a discussion with

Sharmistha Palai

Itishree Badapanda

Kasturi Jena

Observations

Here again I made a classroom observation and the teacher was teaching acid, bases and salt (as per the syllabus) and she did repeat the experiment, using different materials – turmeric paste, lime water, detergent solution and litmus paper (red and blue). This time the teacher, who happens to be a trainee, did display high energy levels and was very enthusiastic and got the students experiment in groups and note down their observations in a sheet, which was prepared earlier. I did not have much of a time to interact with the HM and the teachers as I reached the school late in the afternoon (after reaching from Bhubaneshwar and completing a school visit earlier in the afternoon). It was but evident that the student training was not happening on a very regular basis since the last one month, because of some internal problems between the HM and the teachers and as a result the lab remained locked. The school management committee has since intervened and things are somewhat limping back to normal.

A video recording of the classroom transaction is available.

Cement Nagar High School, Bargarh

Date of visit: 23^rd November 2011

Time spent: 4 hrs

My visit started with a discussion with the HM (who is very new to the school as well as the DE Program) and two other teachers as mentioned below:

Jagabandhu Pradhan

Debjivan Kar

Yudhistir Das

Both the teachers have undergone 14 days of training and were full of praise for the way DE training was being conducted. They were of the view that the training experience was unique and none of the training that they had previously attended (including the ones on pedagogy) could match up to the DE training on techno-pedagogy.

I had expressed my desire earlier to the monitoring expert that I wanted to watch a classroom transaction and a collaborative project in the school and what I saw made me feel extremely satisfied, with the work we have been doing. The first transaction was on “Area of a Parallelogram” by Debjivan Kar. He not only had an excellent hold over content but displayed in good measure the skills, imparted as part of the DE training especially critical and creative thinking. The students enjoyed every bit of bit and posed questions as well as answered questions posed by their teacher, confidently. Good use of computers, were made as part of the transaction, especially Edukit. This was followed by a brilliant display of creative teaching skills by Yudhistir Das, who taught the “laws of reflection” to class IX students and seamlessly integrated a collaborative project as part of his overall lesson design. The students conducted the experiment themselves and noted down their observations. The best part of the overall process was the video that was shot capturing the classroom transaction and an interview with teachers and students on what they felt about the program. The video footage needs to be edited and uploaded.

Kadaligarh High School, Redhakhol

Date of visit: 24^th November 2011

Time spent: 4 hrs

This school is located at a distance of 85 kms from Sambalpur town. I had a FGD with the following teachers:

Purnima Rani Nayak, HM

Pragyan Parmita Das, Science Teacher

Birendra Kumar Sahoo, Science Teacher

Apart from the above group two other teachers joined us for a while – Sanskrit and English teacher, who are attending training but are unable to make much use of computers because of the subjects they teach do not have much of content available. Pankaj Pati, Monitoring Expert, Sambalpur, assisted the mathematics teacher, Birendra Kumar Sahoo, in demonstrating “origami” as a pedagogic method for teaching traingles. The students participated enthusiastically, by folding their own papers in learning about triangles. Some of them even made a presentation for the entire class. Pragyan Parmita Das, Science Teacher, did a collaborative project on “sound.” I did not have enough time to watch a lab transaction using “Edukit” on the same as we had to visit another school. The students of this school proved to be an intelligent lot and a majority of them I conversed with were pretty much confident in using different computer applications. All the mandatory registers were being maintained in this school.

Video footage of the collaborative project is available.

The last school I visited on my way back was Jujomara ME school and it was very late past 4 pm and the HM and some of the students were waiting for us. We couldn’t watch a lab transaction and only interacted with the HM and the students – a majority of whom said that they attended computer classes regularly, more than four times a week. This school has a very good reputation as far as CAL program (Govt. run) is concerned.

Cuttack and Kendrapada School Visit

Janashakti High School, Pentha, Kendrapada

Date of visit: 17th November 2011

Time spent: 3.5 hrs

Observations

My visit to the school started with a focussed group discussion with the headmaster and three other teachers who had completed 9 days of training in RNIASE, training centre, Cuttack, as mentioned below. Apart from these 4 teachers the other one was attending the on-going training session in RNIASE.

Narendra Kumar Sethy, HM

Dilip Kumar Sahoo

Ashok Kumar Parida

Nalini Prabha Sahoo

The teachers were very satisfied with the training on techno-pedagogy being imparted in the training centre. Their only regret being the gap between the trainings were quite long – one to one and a half months and I guess nothing can be done about that given the training schedule and the time frame within which we need to complete the training. There was a request for a projector by the HM, which he said will help them a lot, in dealing with one class at a time, doing away with the infrastructural constraints – the small size of the lab.

This was followed by a lab transaction which was carried out by Dilip Kumar Sahoo, on area and circumference of circles. The lab transaction was carried out well and on a ten point scale I will mark it seven. The teacher had an excellent hold over content, made use of technology, activities and mostly importantly could hold the attention of students for a long time. It was very interactive and the students did pose a lot of questions and even gave answers to quite a few that were posed by the teacher. The only missing piece in the entire lab transaction is it was not connected with a lesson plan / design which should ideally have been the case. I will not say that there was no planning but rather there was no documentation available. I personally feel that a lab transaction and a collaborative project should all flow from a well thought out lesson plan / design and although not all the topics can be transacted in this manner due to pressure of completing the syllabus, within a stipulated time, we can at least begin by transacting 25% of the topics, using this engaged learning methodology. I shared my observations with the teacher concerned.

This was followed by a collaborative project / engaged learning activity carried out in the lab on the “chemical properties of metals,” by Nalini Prabha Sahoo. The students were made to think by the teacher before actually starting the experiments. She did this by posing intelligent why and what question’s, which was demonstration, of getting the students engaged by making them think critically. This was followed by demonstration by the teacher herself and experimentation and observation by the students themselves. The students were an excited lot and each of them took interest in holding the test tube and making the experiment along with the observation.

This was followed by one last lab transaction on the “structure and functions of cells,” carried out by Dilip Kumar Sahoo, who displayed excellent teaching skills. It was a very interactive session and he made use of both charts and computers – especially EDU-KIT. He had been a teacher trainer earlier and does know about the importance of the pedagogic aspects.

All in all I was very impressed with the motivation and energy displayed by the HM as well as the teachers and last but not the least our very own resource person – Soumya, who has done a pretty good job as far as hand holding is concerned.

Baleswar Nodal UP School, Poporada, Cuttack

Date of visit: 16th November 2011

Time spent: 3 hrs

My visit to the school started with a focussed group discussion with the headmaster and one of the teacher, who had completed 9 days of training in Dolipur, training centre, Jajpur, as mentioned below. This school has only six teachers and all of them are undergoing training as part of the DE program.

Dibakar Pradhan, HM

Lipsa Naik, Science Teacher

Observations

As far as the training is concerned both the HM and the science teacher were satisfied with the way it is being conducted and their only regret being that they have to travel all the way to Jajpur for the training.

I had the opportunity to watch a collaborative project as well as a lab transaction on “photosynthesis” carried out by Lipsa Naik. It was very well planned and well executed. There were a lot of activities, use of charts and computers. The class was very interactive and the students actually enjoyed it.

Similarly the HM conducted a collaborative project on “triangles” and used the TLM provided by the department for the purpose. He asked a lot of questions and actually made the students do a lot of activities and make their own observations. The only difference between the former and the latter being that while in the former computers and “edukit” were used in case of the latter computers were not used (thus edukit was also not used). The class taken by Lipsa Naik, was technology and activity based learning – rolled into one. It was an excellent example of effective use of techno-pedagogy. The HM was also very encouraging and motivating and because of health reasons, could not climb the stairs to the computer lab, located in the first floor.

My only request to them was to have a lesson design / plan as the starting point and to transact at least 25% of the syllabus, using this method.

I also need to thank Baidyanath Behera, AIF Monitoring Expert, for the good job he is doing. He in fact has mingled well with the teachers and students and as a result is able to get the desired output.

DE Scholarship - 2010-2012

The DE Scholarship was finally distributed as part of the three day "Suravi" event organized by the School and Mass Education Department, Govt., of Orissa. Twenty students - ten boys and ten girls, were selected from 160 graduated DE Schools, on the basis of marks scored in the annual High School Certificate Exams, 2010. Each of the students will get Rs. 24000, spread over a period of two years, covering their higher secondary education.  The scholarships were handed over as part of a glittering ceremony by Shri RN Senapati, IAS, Additional Chief Secretary-cum-Development Commissioner, Govt. of Orissa. Aparajita Sarangi, IAS, Commissioner-cum-Secretary, and other senior members of the School and Mass education dept. were present as part of the occasion.

Technology in Teaching Learning

I recently had the opportunity to visit Khan Nagar High School in Cuttack and was impressed by some of the teachers, who are actually making efforts in effectively integrating technology as part of their day to day teaching learning. I was impressed by the passion displayed by some of the teachers in going about collaborative projects on triangles - different types and preparation of hydrogen gas. They meticulously went about grouping the students and making them observe and note down the critical points as they went about their activities and to round it up making use of computers - EDUKIT and their own resources as a final summing up of the same. The students did enjoy the sessions and did pose a number of questions, that made the class enjoyable and fun and some of the students, even made a presentation at the end. 

Project Quality Monitoring Workshop

A project quality monitoring committee meeting for the central zone was held in RNIASE Cuttack, on the 31st of October, 2011. A total of 3 lesson plans and 10 teaching aids, which were picked up from a host of other projects at the school level, were presented to the committee for approval as per a set of indicators. A total of three teaching aids were finally selected by the committee, as meeting the accepted standards.

DE Resource Group Meeting Southern Zone

A resource group meeting for selected teachers (selected on the basis of performance on output indicators) was held in DPIASE, Berhampur, on the 25th of October. 13 teachers participated in this workshop. t lesson plans and 6 teaching aids were developed as part of this workshop.

Core Group Meeting - New Delhi / 18-21st October 2011

A DE Core Group Meeting was held in New Delhi, from the 18th - 21st Of October 2011. All the State Program Managers and selected Regional Coordinators attended the meeting apart from the Director DE Program. Country Director, AIFT and the Accounts Team were the special attendees while Prof. Dr. Rajaram, Joint Director, CIET, NCERT attended as an external speaker. The following agenda items were taken as part of the meeting:

• Planning for DE expansion under LSP 
• Extension of Full Service for 2 more years 
• Pro-active approach towards Gender 
• Increasing the over all DE tenure rationale
• Induction and Orientation Module for fresh team members
• Additional content for ILTM 
•  DE Blog
• Donor Reports
• Dell Program
• Laptops for coordinators
• Projectors for Schools (Top 25% max in first phase)
• Key Drivers for 2011
• Review of various deliverables of the team as set in Feb 2011
• DSTs for DE Program
• Discussion on Indicators
• Decreasing the number of days from 6 to 5 for DE Coordinators      

ICT Workshop CIET, NCERT New Delhi

I just came back after attending a two day ICT workshop for Secretaries, Directors, ICT Coordinators etc. organized by CIET, NCERT New Delhi. It was a good experience to see the state representatives making their presentations on the status of the CAL initiatives in their respective states. Some of the presentations like those of Gujrat and Punjab were pretty interesting. Presentations by Dr. Rajaram, Joint Director, CIET, Prof Pant were interesting and thought provoking. They put things in perspective - especially the fact that the BOOT model has served its purpose, especially deepening the reach of hardware as far as the schools are concerned. This was the first generation of the so called CAL programs. The time has now come for the second generation programs, which is system embedded and based on the "Total Cost of Ownership." The focus should be more on the effective integration of technology in teaching rather than hardware procurement - a shift from procurement to an output oriented model. My own observations based on the two day deliberations are mentioned below:

• ·  Boot model which is currently considered as the most popular approach to computerization of schools, in a majority of the states, has failed to achieve the expected results. It has resulted in a monopoly situation whereby selected vendors are working in a majority of the states. This has in turn led to a lack of freedom of choice on the part of the customer – the schools, teachers, students et al as far as the basic requirements are concerned – be it resource persons (who are at best hardware mechanics) or content is concerned.
• ·    This in turn is symptomatic of a deep seated malaise, which is systemic in nature – over emphasis on a procurement model rather than an output oriented model. Thus one finds a proliferation of high power purchase committee’s which endlessly deliberates on the configuration of the hardware to be procured, tender process to be followed, utilization certificates to be sent rather than the training requirements of the teachers, training modules and approach to preparing the same (top down or a cafeteria approach), mentoring, monitoring and evaluation etc.
• ·   A system wide approach designed to extract the full impact of employing ICT in schools, is the need of the hour. A system wide approach takes into account the total cost of ownership, which includes the long term costs of purchasing, deploying and maintaining ICTs, costs for replacements, disposal or even operating costs for refresher training, maintenance and technical support etc.
• ·     The boot model has served its purpose of increasing hardware coverage to schools and the time is now ripe for a switch over to the second generation CAL programs – focusing on a more effective and appropriate integration of technology in teaching learning.

DE Team Outing

A outing for the team members was held recently on the 9th of October in Kenduli. Marina, the AIF Clinton Fellow, accompanied the team members. The team visited Kenduli, located at a distance of 25 kms from Bhubaneshwar and spent a very relaxed day enjoying the delicious food cooked by Soumya and Sanjaya.

DE-MAST / Stewart School

A meeting between AIF and the Stewart School Management was held on the 14th of October 2011, in Stewart School. The meeting focused on the nuts and bolts of starting a DE-Mast Centre in the school premises, leveraging the DELL lab, which has been recently set up by AIF, with a funding support from the Jain family. The meeting was a successful one and concluded on a very positive note. It was decided that AIF will implement the MAST program in Stewart School and as a part of that will be implementing some of its well known and popular courses such as ITES, Retail, Plumbing, Fitter etc. The ITES course, which will make use of the high-end DELL lab will start in a months time and all the formalities such as the signing of the MoU will be completed,  by then. This will be the first MAST Centre to be set up and run by AIF in Orissa. The courses will be run by Aide-et-Action, our implementation partners.

Visit to Ghatipari High School, Ganjam

I had an opportunity to visit Ghatipari High School, located at a distance of about 25 kms from Berhampur, recently. Marina Yakhnis, Clinton Fellow, DE Orissa accompanied me on this visit. The excitement in the atmosphere was palpable, due to the presence of a foreigner in their midst. Although the Headmaster was retiring the very next day and had a lot of tasks to complete - related to the transition, still he was kind enough to spend some quality time with us. I had the opportunity to interact with most of the teachers, who had undergone training in DPIASE, Berhampur (training center) and was glad to know that the training was useful and they enjoyed the entire time they spent, at the training centre. Shanti Bhushan Padhi, the trainer in DPIASE, got a lot of accolades from the teachers for his creative approach and interesting examples related to the training. The most interesting and gratifying thing to know from the teachers was that the training and the EDU-KIT provided by us motivated them to make a use of computers, once they returned from their training. I was even lucky enough to observe a lab transaction - a teacher teaching about the circulatory system using computers with the aid of EDU-KIT. An interaction with the students and the teacher proved beyond doubt that using animations, multimedia etc. were proving to be useful as far as clarity on fundamentals was concerned. Although like any rural school in India there were day to day problems to contend with, I felt that the spirit and enthusiasm which was displayed by both the teachers as well as the students, will make them overcome day to day problems as far as effective and appropriate integration of technology in teaching learning is concerned.

Project Evaluation Committee Meeting - Sambalpur

The project evaluation committee meeting for Sambalpur and Bargarh district, was held recently in PMIASE, Sambalpur. Selected projects from different DE schools, were presented to the committee for evaluation. The initial screening / filtering had been done at the school level, by the school level evaluation committee, comprising of selected teachers.

DE Review-Cum-Refresher

A two day DE Review-Cum-Refresher, was held in Gopalur-on-Sea, recently. It was attaended by all the team members, including the Clinton Fellow, Marina Yakhnis, who has joined the DE Orissa Team, as a monitoring and evaluation expert. The meeting focused on monitoring and evaluation issues, apart from a status update from each of the district presented by the district teams, comprising of the trainers and the monitoring experts. A brain storming session, was conducted with all the team members, with the objective of developing a logic model for the DE     Orissa Program.

DE Resource Group Meeting

A DE resource Group Meeting was held in RNIASE Cuttack on the 16th of August. 11 teachers attended the meeting. A similar meeting was held in DPIASE, Berhampur, on the 10th of September 2011 and 7 teachers attended the meeting. In both the cases the teachers, were selected from  the Secondary and Upper Primary Schools, based on their performance, on the output indicators. The basic objective behind having these meetings is to motivate the star performers and provide them with that extra touch - in the form of additional resources, softwares etc. which will help them in becoming leaders as far as technology integration in teaching learning is concerned, in their specific districts. They will be those identified group of resource persons, who can be used by the government, while planning any ICT related programs in the state or the district as such. They can be easily a part of any state team engaged in designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating ICT  interventions.

DE Team Outing

Recently the Orissa DE Team had an outing and visited Kenduli, the birthplace of Jayadeva, the famous poet and author of "Geeta Govinda." 

Kenduli is located at a distance of 25 kms from Bhubaneshwar, and the drive is through exquisite natural surroundings. For around 10 kms the drive is alongside River Kuakhai.

MAST SEMINAR NEW DELHI

A national seminar on the market aligned skills program, was organized by the livelihoods team of American India Foundation, on the 3rd of August, 2011 in India Habitat Centre New Delhi. The focus basically was on skilling the unskilled in India. The key note speaker was Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, who really enlightened the audience with his erudition, which was reflected in his speech. His entire speech is of course available on his website - www.abdulkalam.com

There were a host of other speakers which included the CEO of Team Lease and HR head of Cafe Coffee Day, who made the sessions enjoyable with their wit, humor and knowledge. The most enjoyable and motivating of the sessions happened to be an interaction with selected mast alumni, who are pursuing successful careers after having overcome many odds in life.

Cuttack, Kendrapada, Ganjam and Gajapati DSCM

The first DSCM for Cuttack, Ganjam, Gajaptia and Kendrapada, districts were held on the 16th, 29th and the 30th of September respectively.

Sambalpur and Bargarh DSCM

The first district level steering committee meeting for Sambalpur and Bargarh were held on the 16th and the 23rd of July respectively. The meeting was chaired by the Inspector of School, Sambalpur and Bargarh and a review of the DE Program at the school level was carried out. All the headmasters of the respective DE schools of both the districts attended the meeting.

SAMBALPUR AND BARGARH JULY 2011 DSCM

Stewart School

American India Foundation has set up a state of the art technology center in Stewart School Bhubaneshwar and will be implementing two of its signature programs as mentioned below, for the academic year 2011-2013. The center has been set up with a generous grant of the Jain brothers (Arun Jain and Ajit Jain - Stewart School alumni) - sons of Mr. CB Jain, a retired IAS officer belonging to the Orissa cadre and has been christened as "Pushpa and CB Jain Centre for Technology." It is interesting to note that Mr. Ajit Jain is Head Insurance in the Berkshire Hathaway Group of Warren Buffet and is reputed to be the second in line of importance after Mr. Buffet himself. The technology centre was formally inaugurated on the 5th of July by Shri Pyarimohan Mohapatra, Hon'ble Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha.

Advanced Corporate Programs for Stewart School, Bhubaneswar

 Connected Classroom

 Adobe Youth Voices

Connected Classroom

Connected Classroom has an ability to stimulate learning on multiple levels, technology can enhance the classroom experience for both teachers and students. The highlights of the program are as below:

Provide Purpose-Built Technology

Equipping teachers and students of all ages with technology designed just for them is one feature of the Connected Classroom. The Latitude™ 2100 netbook is designed to meet the technology needs of students from primary to secondary schools, and is suitable for any classroom environment. It also offers a broad range of notebooks in the Latitude E Series family, powered by Intel^® Core™2 Duo Processors, for more complex applications. Ideal for teachers, the Latitude XT2 Tablet is an ultra-portable, high-performance device. With a multi-touch screen and pen, it allows for greater teacher-student interaction.

Address Multiple Learning Styles

Using multimedia technology to provide visual, auditory and kinesthetic experiences, teachers can significantly increase their students’ understanding and retention of lessons. Interactive whiteboards, projectors and audio systems help teachers differentiate instruction for multiple learning styles, individualize lessons for each student’s needs and encourage students to collaborate and communicate their ideas through technology.

 Assess Student Progress

Teachers are able to encourage participation and track student progress through response systems designed to help engage and actively assess student performance. These systems can also be used to encourage critical thinking and problem solving by enabling students to create questions as part of the learning process.

 Enable Everywhere Learning

Extending the classroom beyond its four walls is another feature of the Connected Classroom. From any device, it can assist in providing access to rich content from any device so that students can access learning material anytime, anywhere — from the classroom to the kitchen table.

Adobe Youth Voices

Adobe Youth Voices is a program with three guiding principles: Engage, Enhance, Exhibit

Engaging young people in exciting and meaningful new ways, Adobe Youth Voices provides an unparalleled opportunity for middle school and high school youth to communicate their concerns, aspirations, and vision. Young people, who may have been feeling disengaged, learn how to think creatively, communicate effectively, and work collaboratively — all critically important skills that can help them attain a competitive edge in school, their careers, and life.

Enhancing educators' skills and resources, the program provides comprehensive professional development in teaching strategies that incorporate cutting-edge digital tools. Those who work with youth can learn new ways to encourage the use of 21st century communications skills in telling stories that make a real impact.

Exhibiting participants' work is a key element of the Adobe Youth Voices program. The program provides youth with forums in which to share their vision and voice for a public purpose — via traveling art exhibits, film screenings, festivals, Internet, publications and through other local and global venues.

In India, American India Foundation is the partner for implementing Adobe Youth Voices in 46 sites (Government, Aided & NGO run schools) in Delhi & NCR, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Orissa.

Adobe Youth Voices portal help collaborate educators & youth to other partner sites and prove an        online platform to share thought & work around the globe.