DE Working Group Meeting

The DE Working Group Meeting under the Chairmanship of the Additional Secretary SME Department, Shri IC Barda, OAS (SAG) was held on the 30^th of May 2011. The meeting started at 10.50 am and ended at 11.45 am. The other members who attended the meeting are as follows:

• Aparti Mallick, OAS (S), Joint Secretary, SME Department
• Subrata Sarkar, State Program Manager, AIFT

The following decisions were taken as part of the meeting:

• The annual plan based on the output indicators (Program Booklet on Syllabus Based Learning using Computers), for the Secondary Schools will be sent to the teacher trainees by the SME Department.
• Annual plan for the Upper Primary Schools need to be reconciled with Samadhan before being issued by the department.
• AIFT will depute its trainers to visit the department once a week, to give inputs to the trainees for better use of computers as part of their day to day work.
• OPEPA will send their hardware experts to the 52 Secondary Schools included as part of the DE program, to have a look at the hardware problems and make the non-functional systems functional.

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CB Satpathy

CB Satpathy revered as Guruji by Sai devotees, was in Bhubaneshwar recently - as part of a book release ceremony (Bhagabata Part III), authored by him. I was fortunate enough rather blessed to be part of that meeting and had a chance to hear him speak after a long time. His sublime words touched the innermost chords of ones heart and made most of the audience, calm down and ruminate on the nature of soul and life till the end of the meeting and for sometime even after that - which I am sure of. Although high on the spiritual ladder he has that quintessential quality of connecting with the uninitiated at the mundane level and making him understand the most profoundest of metaphysical and occult subjects in a very matter of fact manner. My thoughts go back to 2002 when I had personally met him for the first time in Delhi. His bearing and aura makes a tremendous impact on the each and every one who has met him even for a moment, taking most of them off at a tangent - in restructuring/changing their entire course of  life forever towards the better. I very clearly remember the last words with which he ended the meeting - "every single one of us get a divine inspiration at some point in our life but we are unable to recognize and catch hold of it." I got hold of the book "Shirdi Sai Baba and other Perfect Masters" authored by him and have since compled reading the book. It is an excellent book - partly autobiographical, in that it traces the spiritual transformation of Guruji from the year 1989, which marks a watershed year in his life. This book is a must read for anyone and everyone having an interest in matters spiritual and an excellent study in oriental mysticism.

DE Team - Internal Review

A Digital Equalizer (DE) review meeting was held on the 13^th of May, 2011 in the DE State Resource Centre (SRC), SCERT, Bhubaneswar. The Meeting started at 10.00 am and ended at 6.00 pm.

 The meeting was attended by the following participants:  

J. Sundarakrishnan,                            Director, Digtal Equalizer Program, AIFT

Subrat Sarkar                                     SPM, Digital Equalizer Program, AIFT, Orissa

Anup Mohanty                                    Zonal Coordinator

Santanu Kumar Mishra                         Trainer, SCERT, Bhubaneswar

Gulty Rath                                         Trainer, SCERT, Bhubaneswar

Mrutunjay Mishra                                Trainer, RNIASE, Cuttack

Sanjay Biswal                                    Trainer, PMIASE, Sambalpur

Shanti Bhusan Padhi                           Trainer, DPIASE, Berhampur

Manoranjan Bhoi                                Trainer, DIET, Dolipur

Mohan Chand Padhan                         Trainer, DIET, Sambalpur

Chinmaya Kumar Sahoo                      Trainer, DIET, Khallikote

Pankaj Kumar Pati                             Monitoring Expert, Sambalpur & Bargarh

Jyoti Prakash Sahu                            Monitoring Expert, Ganjam & Gajapati

Soumya Ranjan Rout                          Monitoring Expert, Kendrapada

The following issues were discussed as part of the meeting:    

•  The core objectives of the program were discussed by Director, DE.          
• The main advantage of having this new model (Centralised Resource Centre Training Model) was highlighted by the Director.
• Zone wise presentations were made by trainers and concerned monitoring expert.
•  Zone wise training status and output indicators were discussed threadbare.
•   Director laid stress on the initiatives we can incorporate to achieve our output indicators at the school level.
• Director focused mainly on field level issues such as teacher training and support at the school level by the monitoring expert.

The following decisions were taken as part of the meeting:

• Effective utilisation of the time by the monitoring expert spent at the school level. This presupposes a thorough planning on the part of the coordinators before they start visiting a particular school.
• Monitoring expert to give time to classroom observation to validate whether the concerned teacher is imparting pedagogy sections effectively.
• Sensitization workshops for teacher facilitators to be conducted at the Zonal Resource Centres   by the monitoring experts, on a monthly basis .
• The SCERT Trainers were instructed to conduct workshops (Value Addition in integrating technology in teaching) for the Teacher Educators at the respective Zonal Centres after the completion of 18 days of training at SRC.
• The teacher educators of the six zonal centres to conduct training sessions for teacher trainees undergoing training at the Zonal Resource Centres(ZRC).
• Zone wise competition for trained teachers designing good projects and conducting lab transactions.
• Monitoring experts shall make a register and make a note of student’s (rand picked) views on the DE Program.
• Monitoring experts will make a note of how students are conducting lab transactions in presence of the teacher.
• Monitoring expert will observe as to how teachers are conducting lab transactions effectively using EDUKIT.
• The Coordinators were asked to make DST and submit it by 3^rd of July.

DE Review Meeting

A DE review meeting was held on the 13th of April 11. The meeting was chaired by the Commissioner-cum-Secretary, School and Mass Education Department and the others who attended the meeting are as follows:
IC Barda, Additional Secretary, SME Dept
BC Patnaik, Joint Secretary, SME Dept
Aparti Mallick,Joint Secretary, SME Dept 
Subrat Sarkar, State Program Manager, AIF
The following decisions were taken as part of the meeting:

• Training to start in all the remaining three centres – DPIASE Berhampur, DIET Khalikote and    DIET Dolipur, from the 2^nd of May 2011.
• Training in all the three operational centres – PMIASE Sambalpur, DIET Sambalpur and RNIASE Cuttack, to resume from the 2^nd of May 2011.
•  Performance on the DE Output Indicators, integrated as part of the annual plan for all the 104 schools to be made compulsory and a letter to this effect to be issued by the SME department.
• A letter on the roles and responsibilities of each of the stakeholder as part of the DE program, will be issued by the SME department.
•  Maintenance of the computers in all the 52 secondary schools will be carried out with immediate effect and those schools having computers which are all non-functional or of low configuration, will be replaced with upper primary schools having computers and within the same district.
• The State Level Steering Committee under the Chairmanship of the Commissioner-cum-Secretary, SME department, will meet once a quarter to take stock of the DE program. Additional Secretary, SME Department, Director Secondary Education, Director Elementary Education, Director TE and SCERT and Joint Secretary SME department, will be the other members. Joint Secretary SME department will be the convener.
• DE Working Group under the Chairmanship of the Additional Secretary, SME department, to meet on a monthly basis, for resolving routine administrative issues while at the same time taking a stock of the DE Program. Joint Secretary, SME department, and the State Program Manager, AIFT, will be the other members.
• A DE District Level Steering Committee under the Chairmanship of the respective Circle Inspectors to be constituted in all the districts. The committee will meet on a bi-monthly basis to take stock of the DE Program and the performance on the “DE Output Indicators.” The District Project Coordinator SSA, DIs, Headmasters of the DE Schools, and the AIFT monitoring personnel, will be the other members. A letter to this effect will be issued by the SME department.
• A resource group under the chairmanship of the respective headmasters will be constituted in each of the respective DE schools. This will be the lowest level planning and monitoring mechanism taking stock of the performance of the teachers on the DE output indicators, on a monthly basis. Selected teachers chosen by the respective headmasters will be the other members. Apart from taking stock of the DE program on a monthly basis, the group will also monitor the quality of teaching aids, projects developed by the teachers and the students on a monthly basis.
•  A zonal level project quality monitoring committee will be constituted in all the IASEs under the chairmanship of the respective Principal, for reviewing the quality of the projects, teaching aids, prepared by the teachers and students of the schools, under the respective zone. The committee is to meet on a bi-monthly basis. Apart from the Principal, selected teacher educators nominated by the Principal and the AIFT trainers will be the other members.
• A state level project quality monitoring committee will be constituted in SCERT. Director TE and SCERT will be the chairman of the committee and the other members will be Deputy Director Science, SCERT, Deputy Director Science, Directorate of Secondary Education and Deputy Director Pedagogy, OPEPA. The committee will meet once a quarter to review selected projects submitted by the various zonal centres.